More of those fascinating interview transcripts with various Dylan musical associates have been published online by Uncut magazine. They’re all worthy of a complete read.

From the interview with the highly estimable drummer and clearly very wise man Jim Keltner:

Of these unreleased songs that are coming out, I have a memory of “Girl From The Red River Shore”. I have a memory of it as being just beautiful. On Time Out Of Mind, I was sitting right in front of Bob. It was the first time I’d ever recorded with him like that. He was in the corner part of the room, facing out, and they had my drums facing him full on, with the rest of the musicians all around. It was interesting for me to work with him that way. And that particular song, it was one of those really beautiful Bob moments: a great song, and he sang it really beautifully.

I wanted to check the words with him. With Bob, I don’t get the words right away, there’s so much story in his songs that you usually only get it when you listen later, especially when you’re involved in the playing. What happens with me, though – and I’m sure it’s the same with the guitar players and the other musicians who play with Bob – is there’ll be key words in there that set me off in some musical direction.

[...]

Man, there were so many funny things that happened while we were doing that record, and, plus, I was going through a personal crisis at that time, that Bob was actually talking me through, in a funny way. There really was so much going on during that record - but I just can’t tell you any of those stories. I can’t tell you any of the personal stories, and the stories that were really funny to me, I don’t want to break the confidence that my friends have in me. But it was a funny time, and an intense time.

And from the producer of Oh Mercy and Time Out Of Mind, Daniel Lanois:

I’ve heard Bob have several voices over the decades and I like them all. I liked the Nashville Skyline era a lot. There was a particular tone that he adopted. The thing about Bob’s voice is that he has very dense print. The microphone loves his voice. He’s got about a 20 dB advantage over other singers – in the sense that he’s got that mid-range in his print. To we record-makers, that means that you get to turn the microphone down 20 dB, because he’s delivering an extra 20, which means you then get a 20dB improvement on your signal to noise ratio. So the bleeding into Bob’s mike is not a problem, it’s an enhancement. But if a quieter singer was in the room, with a lesser print, you could not get away with that recording that we did on Time Out Of Mind cos it would just be junky and mumbo-jumbo.

Too many cymbals spilling into the singer’s mike and so on. So Bob is a great artist to record with people around him. That’s a very big part of the sound of Time Out Of Mind – the cacophonous out-of-control situation is well represented.

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