When you want to learn about a great musician whom you admire, I think that there’s nothing better than hearing first-hand from people who worked with that person (at least assuming they have no terrible ax to grind). That’s why the series of interviews recently being published by Uncut magazine — with people who have worked in the studio with Dylan from 1989 onwards — are so fascinating and revealing. Revealing in good ways, that is, rather than in gossipy bad ways, like a lot of what gets written about the personal lives of musicians.

Dedicated fans will want to read every word of each interview, but here are some short samples of what’s there, along with links to each interview quoted. There are more still to be published, including with Jim Keltner and Daniel Lanois.

Extracts:

Augie Meyers (Vox organ, accordion, etc):

Bob’s all work when he goes in the studio. He might stay in there for ten or twelve hours. The way you get started is, he just comes up and says, “Hey, let’s try this in this key.” He might change the key two or three times and do it different. I never really knew the titles to any of the songs. We were working on the songs, but he’d change the title, so I didn’t know what the songs were called until after the album came out. Bob actually called them “sketches.”

Bob’s a genius when he’s in the studio. He’s a great piano player; a lot of people don’t know that. It amazed me the way he could instantly change keys, hit all the chord changes. No matter what key he went into, he didn’t have to search for the chord, he could just go straight to it. He asked me one time, “How should I play this song?” I asked, “Did you write it on the keyboard or on the guitar?” He said, “Keyboard.” I said, “Well, you play it on the piano, you’ll feel more comfortable.” After we did the song, he said, “Man, you were right.”

When Daniel Lanois produced Time Out Mind, he wanted it a certain way. But Bob got his way. Bob asked me a couple of questions another time. He asked me, “How would you do this song if you and Doug Sahm did it?” And so I told him. And Daniel said, “Why are you answering the questions? I’m the producer.” I just said, “Hey, Bob asked me a question, so I’m gonna answer it.” Daniel said, “Well, I’m the producer.” And I said, “Hey, I don’t care. If he asks me a question, I’m gonna answer.”

David Lindley (guitarist):

Under The Red Sky was big thing for me. I think they called me in because they didn’t want a stock guitar sound, or even a stock Lindley sound. Dylan would organise stuff in the studio as we were going along, as he heard certain things. He’d shuffle verses around a lot. It was amazing to watch him do it, quite a process. He was always working on stuff, organising verses and finishing things, changing words if he felt they worked better. And it was all done within the structure of what was going on. He was pretty impressive, shooting from the hip.

[...]

There was always the freedom to bring your own ideas to the table. Dylan was very approachable in that respect. We’d talk in the studio. He’d say simple things like “I like that” and “Yeah, do that”. He’s kinda like Ry Cooder in that he does things the same way. With Dylan and Ry, it’s very much a case of “Do that”, “Don’t play there”, “Stop there”. But it wasn’t oppressive in any way, it was really fun. I mean, it was Dylan. C’mon! Then when things started to take form, Don [Was] would get more into specifics. He’d work with what was there, organise it then put it together. In the end, he’d just go “Fuck all that. Just play!” And it would always sound way better. It was get outta jail time.

Don Was (producer of Under the Red Sky):

In many ways, you could attribute Bob’s enduring popularity to his ability to allow each listener to become kind of a co-writer. Maybe that’s why he bristles at that whole “spokesman for a generation” thing. In truth, he’s created a body of work that enables everyone to be their own spokesman. He can do this with a complex song like “Visions Of Johanna” or incredibly simple ones like “Under The Red Sky”. In fact, while we were recording that particular song, there was a moment when I thought that some of the lyrics were addressed to me personally ! It sounds ridiculous now but, when we got to that second bridge, I thought it related to some big cosmic stuff that I was going through at that particular stage of my life. How did he know?? Meanwhile, I’m sure that literally a million other folks have attached their own, completely different significance to that little fable. That’s how great a writer Bob Dylan is. I never did discuss my interpretation of the second bridge with him - it seemed like a really stupid thing to bring up. However, towards the end of the day, I decided to broach the subject matter of the song by asking about the last verse - the one about the river running dry. “Is this song about ecology?” I asked him. “No, but it won’t pollute the environment”, he answered without missing a beat.

Note: This remembrance by Don Was is especially amusing, because Dylan later went out on tour in the wake of Under the Red Sky and repeatedly introduced songs with the line, “This is my ecology song!” Mainly, he introduced the song Wiggle Wiggle that way, one time adding, “It’s about fishing without a pole!” (h/t Bjorner files)

Mark Howard, recording engineer:

Dylan would go out for a ride on his motorcycle every day, and I’d help get him up and running, and he’d take off. But one day, I heard him stall just around the corner. So I ran around the corner to see, and he’s sitting there, on the bike, staring straight ahead. And there are already three people gathered around the front of the motorcycle, saying, “Bob, can we have your autograph?” And he just sat there like they weren’t even there. I ran up and said, “Hey, c’mon guys, leave the guy alone.” He just continued to sit there and stare straight ahead like they weren’t even there. So we got the bike fired up and – bang – he took off. He was living in California in those days, and there was no helmet law in California, but there were in New Orleans. He’d come back from these rides and he’d say, “The police are really friendly around here, they’re all waving at me.” I’m like, “They’re waving at you because you don’t have a helmet on, and they’re telling you to stop!”

[...]

Out of everybody I’ve worked with, Dylan is the most dedicated and focused writer. He would *always* be working o his lyrics. He’d have a piece of paper with thousands of words on it, all different ways, you couldn’t *read* it, it was impossible, because there’d be words going upside-down, sideways, just words all over this page. You couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. And he would look at it, and he’d pull from it. I never saw him eat. He only drank coffee and smoked cigarettes, and he’d sit chipping away at the words, pulling words from other songs, putting them in there. I really appreciated his focus on the song itself, how dedicated, and how hard he worked on it.

Jim Dickinson (keyboards):

“Girl From The Red River Shore” I personally felt was the best thing we recorded. But as we walked in to hear the playback, Dylan was walking in front of me, and he said, “Well, we’ve done everything on that one except call the symphony orchestra.” Which indicated to me that they’d tried to cut it before. I was only there for ten days, and they had tried to cut some songs earlier that didn’t work. If it had been *my* session, I would have got on the phone at that point and called the fucking symphony orchestra. I’ll be very curious to hear that song again after all this time, I was very impressed by that particular cut. But, when he selects the material that’s going to make up a record, Dylan is notorious for leaving off what appears to be the best one.

[...]

He’s a consummate professional. This may seem like a small thing, but I was impressed by the fact that he had hand-written lyric sheets. Y’know, on, like, notebook paper, like he’d done it in study hall. He said he’d been working on some of the songs for five or six years. And he was still working on lyrics as we were cutting. He had a guitar tech who had all these steamer chests full of gear, and Dylan would lean over this one particular chest and work on his lyrics. With a pencil – because he was erasing stuff. That really touched me to see that. Y’know, you see so many artists come in with their Xeroxed copy that their roadie printed-off. But this was very personal, as far as the songs were concerned. I think it is all about the songs for him.

The other thing about his actual performance in the studio that surprised me, was how loud his voice is. How powerful. I did a record with Toots Hibbert a few years ago, and he did that same thing – literally stood four feet from the microphone, and he wasn’t in a booth, he was live out in the room. You’ve got to have some voice to do that.

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