Unprecedented times. The world is affected by a global COVID-19 pandemic even as, after eight years, Dylan records and releases a new album of original songs (the most voluble of all his albums by far), Rough and Rowdy Ways, that fulfills the promise of his outstanding 2019 US Fall Tour and his dexterous dip into the Sinatra material both in albums and on stage in previous years. The album receives high praise from critics and generates significant attention for Dylan, who, rounding out his eighth decade, is forced to cancel both of his announced 2020 tours due to the pandemic.

2. 2020 AT A GLANCE

3. THE 2020 CALENDAR

6 January	Variety reports that Timothee Chalamet is in talks with Fox Searchlight to play Bob Dylan in a biopic based on Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties (2015) to be directed by James Mangold
January-February	Rough and Rowdy Ways is recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles.
5 February	Steel guitar player on “Meet Me in the Morning” (Blood on the Tracks) and Blood on the Tracks outtake “Call Letter Blues” (Bootleg Series vol. 2) and unused alternate “You’re a Big Girl Now” (Biograph), Buddy Cage, passes away at the age of 73.
7 February	Conor McPherson’s Girl From The North Country makes its Broadway debut with previews at the Belasco Theatre before marking its official Broadway debut on 5 March.
11 February	Heaven’s Door Whiskey announces its availability at European retailers.
9 March	Dylan announces a 25-performance spring-summer tour of the United States’s Pacific Northwest, West Coast, Southwest, South, and East Coast on his website with Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats and Hot Club of Cowtown (featuring former Dylan band member Elana James) to alternate opening for him on tour.
12 March	Bob Dylan is forced to cancel his 15-performance residencies in both Tokyo and Osaka, Japan that were to have taken place from April 1^st to April 24^th with a statement from UDO Artists Inc. on his website: “Given the situation of the widespread Coronavirus, our Prime Minister has requested that we cancel or postpone all forthcoming concerts or events in late March and beyond [. . .] We will look to rebook the shows in the future.”
22 March	Musician Eric Weissberg, who performed on the Blood on Tracks version of “Meet Me in the Morning” and who features in Bootleg Series vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks, dies in Michigan at the age of 80.
24 March	With a Facebook video posting, Teresa Williams, wife to former Dylan band member Larry Campbell (1997-2004), reveals that Campbell has COVID-19. He recovers by mid-May and the two release a duet of them performing Rev. Gary Davis’s “Let’s Get Together Right Down Here” on YouTube to celebrate his recovery.
27 March	With a note on his website and social media platforms about “gratitude for all your support and loyalty across the years,” Dylan unexpectedly releases the longest studio recording of his career online at midnight (Eastern Standard Time), “Murder Most Foul,” describing it as “an unreleased song we recorded a while back” and signing off with “Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.” The website posting is updated with a link to the song’s lyrics on 6 April.
7 April	Beloved singer and songwriter – and former “New Dylan” – John Prine passes away at the age of 73 in a Nashville hospital from complications resulting from COVID-19.
8 April	Dylan achieves his first ever Billboard #1 song when “Murder Most Foul” tops the bewildering “Rock Digital Song Sales” Billboard chart.
17 April	Three weeks to the hour after the release of “Murder Most Foul,” Dylan releases a new song online, “I Contain Multitudes,” increasing speculation about a new album to a fever pitch.
4 May	Beat poet Michael McClure dies in Oakland, California at the age of 87 as a result of complications from a stroke, leaving ninety-year-old Gary Snyder as the last living poet who read at the Six Gallery reading of October 7, 1955 – generally regarded as the initial public expression of the Beat movement. Photographs by Larry Keenan taken in the alley outside of City Lights Bookstore of Dylan, McClure, Allen Ginsberg, and Robbie Robertson on December 5, 1965 are frequently reprinted in books on Dylan. McClure’s essay Bob Dylan: The Poet's Poet, originally published in the March 14, 1974 issue of Rolling Stone was reprinted by Beat Scene Press in their 2019 Chapbook Series.
8 May	At midnight, Dylan uses his website and social platforms to announce a forthcoming album of original songs, Rough and Rowdy Ways, to be released 19 June. Accompanying this announcement, Dylan releases a third new song, “False Prophet,” online.
9 May	“The Architect of Rock & Roll,” Little Richard, passes away at his home in Tullahoma, Tennessee at the age of 87. Within hours of the announcement, Dylan eulogises him on Twitter and Facebook: “I just heard the news about Little Richard and I’m so grieved. He was my shining star and guiding light back when I was only a little boy. His was the original spirit that moved me to do everything I would do. I played some shows with him in Europe in the early nineties and got to hang out in his dressing room a lot. He was always generous, kind and humble. And still dynamite as a performer and a musician and you could still learn plenty from him. In his presence he was always the same Little Richard that I first heard and was awed by growing up and I always was the same little boy. Of course he’ll live forever. But it’s like a part of your life is gone.”
12 May	“In the interest of public health and safety and after many attempts to try and reschedule these shows for a workable timeframe this year,” Dylan cancels his 25-night tour of the Pacific Northwest, the West Coast, the Southwest, the South, and the East Coast in the United States due to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it likely that 2020 will be the first year without a Bob Dylan tour since 1985.
25 May	Dylan band member from 1992-1999, Bucky Baxter, passes away from a stroke in Florida at the age of 65. Baxter played 740 shows with Dylan, his pedal steel contributing significantly to Dylan’s sound, which continued for decades after his departure as first Larry Campbell and then Donnie Herron assumed the multi-instrumentalist role in Dylan’s band.
19 June	*Rough and Rowdy Ways* – recorded only a few months earlier at Sound City Recorders in Los Angeles – is released by Columbia Records. The album was also released in its entirety as a playlist on Dylan’s official YouTube channel, a first for a Dylan album release. The album receives universal acclaim from critics, earning a 95/100 metascore from Metacritic.
22 June	Debut of the “official lyric video” for “False Prophet” on Dylan’s official YouTube channel.
26 June	New York graphic designer Milton Glaser – who created the poster wherein Dylan’s silhouette was wreathed with a psychedelic, rainbow-hued halo of hair – dies in New York City at the age of 91. This poster was packaged with the 1967 LP Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits.
6 July	Multi-instrumentalist and singer Charlie Daniels, who played guitar on Nashville Skyline and both bass guitar and guitar on Self Portrait and New Morning, dies of a stroke at the age of 83 in a hospital in Hermitage, Tennessee. “When Charlie was around, something good would usually come out of the sessions,” Dylan recalled in Chronicles Volume One
25 July	Musician, writer, broadcaster, & lecturer CP Lee, who authored multiple books on Dylan, specializing in chronicling the infamous “Judas” heckle from Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966, dies in England at the age of 70.
5 August	American writer Pete Hamill, former editor of the New York Post, editor-in-chief of The New York Daily News, and author of the liner notes to 1975’s Blood on the Tracks, dies in New York City at the age of 85.
3 September	Pianist Bill Pursell, who played on “Early Morning Rain,” “Woogie Boogie,” “Copper Kettle,” “Belle Isle,” and “All the Tired Horses” during the fourth overdub session for Self Portrait, passes away in Nashville at the age of 94 as a consequence of complications from COVID-19.
5 September	Music journalist Dan O’Neil, who was the “kid journalist” seen interviewing Dylan before his Sheffield performance in Don’t Look Back, dies in Cardiff at the age of 90.
9 September	The documentary Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President opens in select theaters in the United States. The film, which emphasizes the role of the youth movement in Carter’s 1976 election, features a recent interview that screenplay author Bill Flanagan conducted with Dylan. "When I first met Jimmy, the first thing he did was quote my songs back to me," Dylan recalls in the film. "It was the first time that I realized that my songs had reached into the establishment world. And I had no experience in that realm; I had never seen that side, so it made me a little uneasy. He put my mind at ease by not talking down to me and showing me that he had a sincere appreciation for the songs I had written. He was a kindred spirit to me of a rare kind. The kind of man you don’t meet every day and you’re lucky if you ever do.” Carter and Dylan first met after Dylan and the Band’s second of two Atlanta performances. In the documentary, Carter relates that “The only questions he asked me were questions about my Christian faith, and what it meant to me. Basically the principles of it.” Director Mary Wharton said of the Dylan interview, “He was gracious and professional, and he showed up with some great ideas about what he wanted to say about Carter. He also seemed to be enjoying himself that day and gave us a lot more of his time that I ever would have expected.”
21 September	A new episode of Theme Time Radio Hour recorded during the pandemic, “Whiskey,” broadcasts on SiriusXM’s Deep Tracks channel at noon (Eastern Standard Time) to celebrate Bourbon Heritage Month (who knew?). For the next week until 28 September, the 100 previously released episodes of Theme Time Radio Hour (2006-2009) broadcast back-to-back on Deep Tracks. The new episode is two-hours and features a spry Dylan spinning records. For more info please refer to the session page.
22 September	Rolling Stone publishes a revised list of its “500 Greatest Albums of All Time,” wherein Dylan albums appear eight times (Blood on the Tracks [#9], Highway 61 Revisited [#18], Blonde on Blonde [#38], Bringing It All Back Home [#181], The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan [#255], The Basement Tapes [#335], John Wesley Harding [#337], and “Love & Theft” [#411]). He has more albums on the list than any except John Lennon (eleven), George Harrison (ten), Paul McCartney (ten), and Ringo Starr (nine). The 2003 and 2012 editions of the list both included eleven Dylan albums.
28 September	Vanguard Records co-founder, music producer, and musicologist Maynard Solomon, who released albums by The Weavers, Joan Baez, and Odetta, and passed on recording Bob Dylan in 1961 because he was “too visceral,” dies in New York City at the age of 90.
2 October	Release of The Best of The Bootleg Series. For more info please refer to section 4.2.
8 October	The Swedish Academy announces that Louise Glück wins the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal"; she is the first American to win the prize since Dylan’s 2016 win.
15 October	The Wrap announces that Dylan’s production company Grey Water Park Productions will co-produce Calico Joe, a film based on the John Grisham novel (2012) concerning the fictional Joe Castle (“Calico Joe”) who was nearly killed by a pitch in 1973. Of the script, co-written by Grant Heslov and George Clooney, Dylan said in a statement: “George and Grant see in this book what I see in it – a powerful story that will resonate with young and old alike. People in all walks of life will be able relate to it.”
21 October	Douglas Brinkley’s “Inside Bob Dylan’s Lost Interviews and Unseen Letters” is published online at rollingstone.com and in the November issue of Rolling Stone, detailing the contents of the R.R. Auction mentioned in the 19 November entry below.
23 October	Arlo Guthrie announces on his website that, after four years of suffering ministrokes, he is retiring from touring and stage shows.
25 October	American Beat poet and San Francisco’s poet laureate, Diane di Prima, passes away in San Francisco at the age of 86.
28 October	Texas songwriter and singer Billy Joe Shaver passes away in Waco Texas at the age of 81. Dylan recorded his “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” during the 1986 Hearts of Fire recording sessions and mentioned him by name in “I Feel a Change Comin’ On” released on Together Through Life.
30 October	Castle Fine Art announces the second instalment of Mondo Scripto. The 2020 edition includes handwritten lyrics to six songs in pen or pencil (some featuring lyrical updates) by Dylan, each accompanied by a single pencil drawing also by Dylan. The six songs included in this edition are: “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “Girl From the North Country,” “I Want You,” “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” “Just Like a Woman,” and “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
19 November	Boston-based R.R. Auction announces that the collection privately held by the late Minnesota roots musician and music critic Tony Glover, longtime Dylan friend, was sold as individual lots for $495,000 with the majority of the key pieces going to an undisclosed bidder. Significant Dylan items include handwritten Dylan letters to Glover from 20 January 1962 and 16 February 1962, a typewritten and unsigned letter to Glover from 6 December 1963, a typewritten signed letter to Dylan postmarked 13 November 1964, unpublished handwritten lyrics to a Dylan song written for Big Joe Williams from May 1962 (“My eyes are cracked I think I been framed / I can’t seem to remember the sound of my name / What did he teach you I heard someone shout / Did he teach you to wheel & wind yourself out / Did he teach you to reveal, respect, and repent the blues / No Jack he taught me how to sleep in my shoes.”), four 60-minute audio cassettes containing Glover’s unpublished interview with Dylan (for Esquire) that took place in Dylan’s Manhattan office on 18, 22, and 24 March 1971, the handwritten annotations and revisions by Dylan of the typewritten transcript of those interviews, Glover’s reel-to-reel of the “Minnesota Party Tape,” a telegram from Dylan to Glover (“Thanks for the eloquent notes. True articles of faith. You were there. Still are. And always will be.”), a poster from Dylan’s 1961 appearance at Gerde’s Folk City, a program for Dylan’s 1961 Carnegie Chapter Hall concert, Broadside sheet music, and various signed and unsigned Dylan photographs and books.
30 November	The 3-CD Bob Dylan – 50^th Anniversary Collection 1970 is made available for order through European retailers as an extremely limited release set for a 4 December release. It includes Dylan’s studio recordings from 1970 that remained unreleased after Self Portrait (1970), New Morning (1970), Dylan (1973), The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased) 1961-1991 (1991), and The Bootleg Series vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (2013). The release would later be released in 2021 as a digital album in all markets by Columbia featuring new cover art and liner notes by Michael Simmons.
7 December	The New York Times announces that Bob Dylan sold both the publishing rights and also Dylan’s songwriter’s share to his entire catalog of over 600 songs for an estimated $300 million to Universal Music Publishing Group. Universal claims that Dylan’s songs have been covered over 6000 times. To represent the body of work of one of the greatest songwriters of all time — whose cultural importance can’t be overstated — is both a privilege and a responsibility,” noted Jody Gerson, the chief executive of Universal’s publishing division. Dylan did not issue a statement. The publishing rights will stay with Universal until seventy years after Dylan’s death. The article reveals that Dylan’s catalogue includes only one song on which Dylan does not have either songwriting or co-songwriting credit: Robbie Robertson’s The Weight.
13 December	Inspiration for Dylan’s “Gypsy Lou,” Bohemian and free spirit Gypsy Lou Webb, co-founder of Loujon Press, which published the work of Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and William Burroughs, passes away at the age of 104 in Slidell, Louisiana.

4. NEW RELEASES

4.1 Rough & Rowdy Ways

Bob Dylan’s first album with new original songs since 2012 is released 19 June 2020. Three songs were released in advance on bobdylan.com.

For details please refer to the session page here.

4.2 The Best of The Bootleg Series

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Automatiskt genererad beskrivning

Columbia/Legacy Recordings releases The Best of the Bootleg Series as a digital-only compilation album through Spotify, Amazon, and Qobuz.

The 28-track compilation draws from most of the Bootleg Series volumes, passing over volume 4 (but, curiously including “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” from The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert!, which was not part of the Bootleg Series) and volume 6 (Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall).

Sources

BS#	Trk#
66L	3	The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert!, Columbia/Legacy CD 88985374342, 2016
1-3	2, 8, 24, 25, 28	Bootleg Series Volumes 1 – 3 [Rare & Unreleased] 1961-1991, Columbia CD C3K 47382, 1991
5	12, 20	Live 1975 (The Rolling Thunder Revue) – The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5, Columbia/Legacy CD COL-5101402, 2002
7	4, 6	No Direction Home: The Soundtrack – The Bootleg Series Vol. 7, Columbia Legacy CD 520358 2, 30 August 2005
8	13, 91, 21	Tell Tale Signs (Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006) – The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8, Columbia/Legacy ‎CD 88697357952, 2008
9	27	The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 – The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9, Columbia/Legacy CD 88697761782, 2010
10	7, 9, 18	Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) – The Bootleg Series, Vol. 10, Columbia/Legacy CD 8888334882, 2013
11	14, 15	The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11, Columbia/Legacy CD88875016122, 2014
12	10, 11	The Cutting Edge 1965 – 1966: The Bootleg Series Vol.12, Columbia/Legacy CD 88875124412, 2015
13	5, 22	Trouble No More: The Bootleg Series Vol.13 / 1979-1981, Columbia CD 8898545465, 2017
14	1, 26	More Blood, More Tracks – The Bootleg Series Vol. 14 (Deluxe Edition), Columbia/Legacy CD 19075858962, 2018
15	16, 17, 23	Travelin’ Thru: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15 1967-1969, Columbia/Legacy CD 19075981921, 2019

#	Song	note	date	BS
1	Up To Me	take 1	16 September 1974	14
2	Blind Willie McTell	outtake	5 May 1983	1-3
3	Baby, Let Me Follow You Down	live	26 May 1966	66L
4	Maggie’s Farm	live	25 July 1965	7
5	The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar	live	13 November 1980	13
6	Dink’s Song	live	Late September 1961	7
7	Pretty Saro	outtake 1 or 4	3 March 1970	10
8	Mama, You Been On My Mind	outtake	9 June 1964	1-3
9	Mississippi	outtake	January 1997	10
10	Visions Of Johanna	take 5, rehearsal	30 November 1965	12
11	Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues	take 3, rehearsal	2 August 1965	12
12	Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You	live	4 December 1975	5
13	Born In Time	outtake	28 February 1989	8
14	You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere	take 1	May-October 1967	11
15	All You Have to Do Is Dream	take 2	May October 1967	11
16	Wanted Man	take 1	18 February 1969	15
17	Tell Me That It Isn’t True	take 2	14 February 1969	15
18	Wallflower	take 2	4 November 1971	10
19	Most Of The Time	alternate version	12 March 1989	8
20	A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall	live	4 December 1975	5
21	Series Of Dreams	alternate version	23 March 1989	8
22	Slow Train	live	29 June 1981	13
23	I Pity The Poor Immigrant	take 4	6 November 1967	15
24	Moonshiner	outtake	12 August 1963	1-3
25	Seven Days	live	21 April 1976	1-3
26	Tangled Up In Blue	take 3, remake 3	17 September 1974	14
27	Guess I’m Doing Fine	demo	January 1964	9
28	Every Grain Of Sand	demo	23 September 1980	1-3

4.3 50^th Anniversary Collection 1970

The 50^th Anniversary Collections were released in response to a European law stipulating that recordings enter the public domain 50 years after their creation if they aren’t officially released by the copyright holder.

This 3-disc 50th Anniversary Collection 1970 was made available as an extremely limited release 29 November in Europe only. It includes Dylan’s unreleased studio recordings from 1970.

Produced for release by Steve Berkowitz

Sessions originally produced by Bob Johnston

Tapes transferred by Matt Cavaluzzo

Rough mixes by Matt Cavaluzzo and Damian Rodriguez

Editing and mastering by Steve Addabbo

Art Direction and Design: Geoff Gans

Product Manager: Jeroen van der Meer

Archivist and Project Coordinator: Parker Fishel

Additional Research: Jeff Friedman

Track listing

Disc One

From New York City 3 March 1970:

Studio B, Columbia Recording Studios, New York City, New York /

4^th Self Portrait recording session, produced by Bob Johnston:

1. I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound (0:39)

2. Universal Soldier – Take 1 (1:09)

3. Spanish Is The Loving Tongue – Take 1 (3:10)

4. Went To See The Gypsy – Take 2 (2:53)

5. Went To See The Gypsy – Take 3 (2:33)

6. Woogie Boogie (2:06)

From New York City 4 March 1970: Studio B, Columbia Recording Studios,

New York City, New York / 5^th Self Portrait recording session, produced by Bob Johnston.

7. Went To See The Gypsy – Take 4 (2:40)

8. Thirsty Boots – Take 1 (3:50)

From New York City 5 March 1970: Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios, New York City,

New York / 6^th and final Self Portrait recording session, produced by Bob Johnston.

9. Little Moses – Take 1 (1:16)

10. Alberta – Take 2 (2:55)

11. Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies – Take 1 (4:58)

12. Things About Comin’ My Way – Takes 2 & 3 (2:33)

13. Went To See The Gypsy – Take 6 (2:30)

14. Untitled 1970 Instrumental #1 (2:48)

15. Come a Little Bit Closer – Take 2 (1:19)

16. Alberta ¬– Take 5 (2:54)

From New York City 1 May 1970: Columbia Studio B, New York City, New York /

1^st New Morning recording session, produced by Bob Johnston.

17. Sign On The Window – Take 2 (3.23)

18. Sign On The Window – Takes 3, 4 & 5 (1:34)

19. If Not For You – Take 1 (0,53)

20. Time Passes Slowly – Rehearsal (2:24)

21. If Not For You – Take 2 (3:30)

22. If Not For You – Take 3 (2:55)

23. Song To Woody – Take 1 (3:56)

24. Mama, You Been On My Mind – Take 1 (2:01)

25. Yesterday – Take 1 (2:57)

Note

The two Alberta versions from Disc One (Tracks 10 and 16) are the same take but different mixes. One is lossless (Track 10) but the other is from an mp3 (Track 16).

Disc 2

From New York City 1 May 1970 continued.

1. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Take 1 (3:50)

2. I Met Him On A Sunday (Ronde-Ronde) – Take 1 (2:48)

3. One Too Many Mornings – Take 1 (3:17)

4. Ghost Riders In The Sky – Take 1 (2:32)

5. Cupid – Take 1 (3:30)

6. All I Have To Do Is Dream – Take 1 (2:15)

7. Gates Of Eden – Take 1 (3:53)

From New York City 1 June 1970: Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios, New York City, New York

2^nd New Morning recording session, produced by Bob Johnston.

21. Alligator Man (2:57)

22. Alligator Man [Rock Version] (2:41)

23. Alligator Man [Country Version] (2:51)

24. Day Of The Locusts – Take 2 (3:50)

25. Sarah Jane 1 (3:09)

26. Sign On The Window (3:41)

27. Sarah Jane 2 (2:15)

Disc Three

From New York City 2 June 1970: Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios, New York City, New York

3^rd New Morning recording session, produced by Bob Johnston.

1. If Not For You – Take 1 (3:14) – same as track #21!

2. If Not For You – Take 2 (2:25) – same as track #22!

From New York City 3 June 1970: Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios, New York City, New York/4^th New Morning recording session, produced by Bob Johnston.

3. Jamaica Farewell (4:01)

4. Can’t Help Falling in Love (3:27)

5. Long Black Veil (6:53)

6. One More Weekend (3:23)

From New York City 4 June 1970: Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios, New York City, New York/

5^th New Morning recording session, produced by Bob Johnston.

7. Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie – Take 1 (4:38)

8. Three Angels (2:26)

9. Tomorrow Is A Long Time – Take 1 (3:36)

10. Tomorrow Is A Long Time – Take 2 (3:30)

11. New Morning (3:34)

12. Untitled 1970 Instrumental #2 (2;39)

From New York City 5 June 1970: Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios, New York City, New York/

6^th New Morning recording session, produced by Bob Johnston.

13. Went To See The Gypsy (3:03)

14. Sign On The Window – Stereo Mix (3:14)

15. Winterlude (2:15)

16. I Forgot To Remember To Forget 1 (2,10)

17. I Forgot To Remember To Forget 2 (2:24

18. Lily Of The West – Take 2 (3:42)

19. Father Of Night – Rehearsal (1;31)

20. Lily Of The West (3:29)

From New York City 12 August 1970: Studio E, Columbia Recording Studios, New York City, New York /8^th and last New Morning recording session, produced by Bob Johnston.

21. If Not For You – Take 1 (3:14) – same as track #1!

22. If Not For You – Take 2 (3:31) – same as track #2!

Note

Although take 3 of Sign On The Window is lossy (from an mp3), the 'stereo mix' of that take on Disc 3 (Track 14) is lossless.

Summary of Dylan songs:

Disc 1

16. Alberta (take 5 [take 2?])

Disc 2

17. If Not For You

18. Sign on the Window (take 1)

19. Sign on the Window (take 2)

20. Sign on the Window (take 3)

23. Alligator Man (country version)

24. Day of the Locusts (take 2)

26. Sign on the Window

27. Sarah Jane (take 2)

Disc 3

1. If Not For You (take 1)

2. If Not For You (take 2)

6. One More Weekend

19. Father of Night (rehearsal)

20. Lily of the West

21. If Not For You (take 1) [as above]

22. If Not For You (take 2) [as above]

5. THE NEVER ENDING TOUR

5.1 TOUR OF JAPAN

This tour was announced late 2019 and cancelled 12 March 2020 due to the Corona pandemic.

APRIL

1	Tokyo, Japan	Zepp DiverCity
2	Tokyo, Japan	Zepp DiverCity
4	Tokyo, Japan	Zepp DiverCity
5	Tokyo, Japan	Zepp DiverCity
6	Tokyo, Japan	Zepp DiverCity
8	Osaka, Japan	Zepp Namba
9	Osaka, Japan	Zepp Namba
10	Osaka, Japan	Zepp Namba
14	Tokyo, Japan	Zepp Tokyo
15	Tokyo, Japan	Zepp Tokyo
17	Tokyo, Japan	Zepp DiverCity
19	Tokyo, Japan	Zepp DiverCity
20	Tokyo, Japan	Zepp DiverCity
21	Tokyo, Japan	Zepp DiverCity

5.2 US SUMMER TOUR

This tour was announced 9 March 2020 and cancelled 12 May 2020.

JUNE

4	Bend, Oregon	Les Schwab Amphitheatre
6	Ridgefield, Washington	Sunlight Supply Amphitheater
7	Auburn, Washington	White River Amphitheatre
9	Eugene, Oregon	Matthew Knight Arena
12	Stateline, Nevada	Harveys Outdoor Amphitheatre
13	Berkeley, California	Greek Theatre
14	Berkeley, California	Greek Theatre
17	San Diego, California	Pechanga Arena
18	Los Angeles, California	Hollywood Bowl
20	Las Vegas, Nevada	Mandalay Bay Events Center
21	Glendale, Arizona	Gila River Arena
23	Albuquerque, New Mexico	Tingley Coliseum
24	Amarillo, Texas	Amarillo Civic Center
26	Irving, Texas	The Pavilion @ Toyota Music Factory
27	Little Rock, Arkansas	Simmons Bank Arena
28	Southaven, Mississippi	BankPlus Amphitheatre @ Snowden Grove
30	Brandon, Mississippi	Brandon Amphitheatre

JULY

2	Nashville, Tennessee	Bridgestone Arena
3	Alpharetta, Georgia	Ameris Bank Amphitheatre
5	Virginia Beach, Virginia	Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheatre
7	Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania	Mohegan Sun Arena
8	Forest Hills, New York	Forest Hills Stadium
9	Saratoga Springs, New York	Saratoga Performing Arts Center
11	Essex Junction, Vermont	Champlain Valley Exposition
12	Bethel Woods, New York	Bethel Woods Center for the Arts

6. NEW BOOKS

Derek Barker: The Songs He Didn't Write. Bob Dylan Under The Influence. A Supplement. Isis Magazine 2002. Softback 144 pages. This book looks at all new instances of Bob Dylan’s recordings and performances of ‘cover’ songs since the original 2008 publication of The Songs He Didn’t Write. All of Dylan’s American Songbook and Christmas recordings – 68 in all – are contained in this update. These sit alongside a further 120 songs, some performed in concert, but mostly they are from recently discovered recording sessions like The Complete Basement Tapes, the 1980-81 Rundown Studios sessions for Shot Of Love, the June 1981 tour rehearsals, Terry Gans’ 2020 documentation of the Infidels recording sessions and more. Finally, there are a handful of additions and omissions from the original book. In total, this update contains 188 entries.
Christopher E Bowman: Me, The Boat And A Guy Named Bob Tradewind Publishing 2020. Softback 452 pages. In the spring of 1972, a twenty-year-old kid from California took off to see the world. His journey led him down the East African coast and across several oceans to a magical Caribbean island and the building of a beautiful schooner: Water Pearl, partly owned by Bob Dylan. “I’m either in New York or on the West Coast or down in the Caribbean. Me and another guy own a boat down there,” Dylan once said. Finally, after forty years, here is the story of the cosmic chain of events behind Dylan’s boat.
Paolo Brillo: No Such Thing as Forever: Images from 30 years of The Never Ending Tour 1989-2019. Red Planet 2020. Hardback 308 pages. The Never Ending Tour is the popular name for Bob Dylan s endless touring schedule. During the course of the tour, musicians have come and gone as the band continued to evolve. The shows amassed a huge fan base with some fans travelling from around the world to attend as many Dylan shows as possible. Dylan played his 2,000th show of the Never Ending Tour in October 2007 and his 3,000th show of the Never Ending Tour in April 2019, in Innsbruck, Austria (featured in the book). Dylan has attributed much of the versatility of his live shows to the talent of his backing band, with whom he recorded each of his 21st Century studio albums. The tour s name was cemented when a journalist asked Dylan if it was a never ending tour. which Dylan affirmed. Since then he has tried to pay down the tag saying in a recent interview , Critics should know there is no such thing as forever .
Mary Freeman: Bob Dylan's Command of Metaphor and other essays Shed Chamber Press 2020, Softback 156 pages. Written at the height of Bob Dylan's popularity, this book's essays link his metaphors to the poetry of Shakespeare, Blake, Donne, and T.S. Eliot. Literary critics as diverse as Aristotle, Coleridge, Philip Wheelwright, and Northrup Frye concur that the command of metaphor may be the most important native talent for a poet to possess. In this book their theories are brought to bear on Dylan's lyrics in close studies, answering the question "Why was Bob Dylan awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 2016?" In addition, one essay (entitled "Chapter Three"), explores the Sixties, the reasons for the cultural revolution that happened then, and how the metaphors in the lyrics of Bob Dylan, a major voice in the day, relate to it.
Terry Gans: Surviving In A Ruthless World. Bob Dylan's Voyage to Infidels. Red Planet 2020. Hardback 264 pages. With permission and authorization, Surviving in a Ruthless World tells the story of the lyrical development of the songs and the shifts in style throughout the recording sessions for Bob Dylan’s Infidels album. The book is packed with new material much of which Gans obtained through his unprecedented research access to the Tulsa Bob Dylan Archives.
Aubrey L. Glazer: God Knows, Everything is Broken: The Great (Gnostic) Americana Songbook of Bob Dylan. Penni Publications 2019. Softback 415 pages. What is it about the songbook of Bob Dylan that continues to captivate our deeper yearnings for meaning and hope in a world so dark and broken? While Dylan’s songbook has been analyzed in numerous studies, whether as classical literature, as scriptural theology, as mystical prophesy, or as the musings of a Zen master, the present study, God Knows Everything is Broken, aims to be a “generative” exploration of the depth and breadth of Dylan’s songbook in as of yet unexplored registers by examining the uniquely cynical but coherent gnostic theology within the arc of his lyrics.
Glenn Hughes: From Dickinson to Dylan: Visions of Transcendence in Modernist Literature University of Missouri Press 2020, Hardback. 192 pages. Glenn Hughes examines the ways in which six literary modernists - Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, and Bob Dylan - have explored the human relationship to a transcendent mystery of meaning. Hughes argues that visions of transcendence are, perhaps surprisingly, a significant feature in modernist literature, and that these authors' works account for many of the options for interpreting what transcendent reality might be. This work is unique in its extended focus, in a comparative study spanning a century, on the persistence and centrality in modernist literature of the struggle to understand and articulate the dependence of human meaning on the mystery of transcendent meaning.
Spencer Leigh: Bob Dylan Outlaw Blues Foreword by Ian Mcnabb McNidder & Grace 2020. Softback 511 pages. Yes, this is yet another biography! Despite his age, Bob Dylan still tours extensively. Famously known for not looking happy, the author looks at what motivates him. `Journalists are very fond of saying Bob Dylan is an enigma,' says Spencer Leigh, `but that word is flawed. It's as good as saying you don't know... I have not called Bob Dylan an enigma at any point in the book as I have tried to find answers.' Spencer Leigh has spoken to over 300 musicians, friends and acquaintances of Bob Dylan in his research for this book.
Jochen Markhorst: Mississippi Bob Dylan's midlife masterpiece Independent published 2020, Softback 93 pages. “I know of two versions of Mississippi. We thought we were done with “Love And Theft”, and then a friend of Bob’s passed him a note, and he said, oh, yeah, I forgot about this: Mississippi,” drummer David Kemper tells in 2008.For any other artist it would be a career highlight, but Dylan "forgets" he still has a masterpiece like Mississippi shelved in a drawer. The song has been in that drawer for almost five years. During the run-up to and the recordings for Time Out Of Mind, in 1996 and 1997, Dylan made a few attempts, but in the end, out of dissatisfaction with Daniel Lanois's approach, he rejects the recordings. The release of those rejected recordings, on The Bootleg Series: Tell Tale Signs (2008), doesn't really reveal what may have dissatisfied the master. Beautiful versions of an extraordinary song.
Jochen Markhorst: Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat): Bob Dylan's Hushed-Up Classic from 1978. Independent published 2020, Softback 85 pages. “I don’t know if I could name all twenty-nine of my records, but I could name some of them. I liked a bunch of albums I did in the eighties. I liked Street-Legal a whole lot. I did that in the seventies." So Bob Dylan recollected with interviewer Denise Worrell in November 1985 at his home in Malibu. Partly posed, no doubt. Dylan can probably list more than "some of" his own albums. But it's telling that Street Legal is the only one he mentions. At the time, in 1978, Street-Legal was critically burned to the ground in his own country. It bothers him. From September through December in 1978, Dylan toured the United States, performing songs from the new album, but not many and not wholeheartedly. And when he does, he remarkably often announces them with a somewhat sour introduction, even when announcing the album’s highlight, on December 9, 1978 in Columbia, the last time Dylan will perform the song: "Thank you. We’d like to do a song from the new album called Street-Legal. This was a single. I know it sold about 100 copies. Anyway, I think it just sold 25, but I guess that we can play it anyway." That’s not true. "Where Are You Tonight?" did not sell a hundred copies. Not even twenty-five. The song – one of the very great songs in Dylan's oeuvre – has never been released as a single at all! Anyway, after December 9, 1978, Dylan never looked back at this monumental song, Markhorst does.
Jochen Markhorst: Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan's Mercurial Masterpiece. Independent published 2020, Softback 160 pages. The Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016 is met with resistance. But we can all agree that the songs of the old bard have penetrated the collective memory worldwide. When asked what makes him so Nobel Prize worthy, the late Sara Danius, then Secretary of the Swedish Academy, replied, “You may start with Blonde On Blonde, the album from 1966. It’s got many classics. It’s an extraordinary example of his brilliant way of rhyming and putting together refrains, and his pictorial way of thinking.” She is not the only one who is touched by the “pictorial way of thinking” on that record. Jerry Garcia always treated "Visions Of Johanna" like a relic, Mick Jagger sings "Just Like A Woman" at the memorial service for his partner, Roger Waters claims that "Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands" changed his life and Tom Waits says about that monument: “A grand song. It's like Beowulf, it takes me to the meadow.” In Blonde On Blonde, Bob Dylan's mercurial masterpiece, Dylan scholar Markhorst takes the reader through the beauty and background of both the album’s fourteen songs and its outtakes.
Jochen Markhorst: The Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan's Summer of 1967. Independent published 2020, Softback 240 pages. Woodstock, 1967: The Summer Of Love passes Dylan by. While Sergeant Pepper showers the popular music scene with the sounds of sitar, trumpets, tape experiments, strings, studio effects, and psychedelics, Dylan and The Band hole up for months in the countryside in a big house, playing antique folk and country songs in the basement of Big Pink. In between, he tinkers and jams with The Band on about seventy new songs that sound both fresh and old-fashioned at the same time. Some of them are gratefully picked up by others. Manfred Mann scores with "The Mighty Quinn", Julie Driscoll has a hit with "This Wheel's On Fire", The Byrds have a hit with "You Ain't Going Nowhere," and nearly half the music world happily records "I Shall Be Released.” As for the originals: the world has to make do with pirated releases – especially The Great White Wonder, the legendary first rock bootleg. In 1975, The Basement Tapes is released, on which a modest, polished selection of the recordings can be found; only in 2014 are almost all of the recordings officially released, in The Basement Tapes Complete, volume 11 in The Bootleg Series. In his sixth Dylan book, Jochen Markhorst takes the reader along 32 of the best and most completed Basement songs, highlighting the background, history, and impact of the legendary Basement Tapes.
Jochen Markhorst: Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s Poetic Letter from 1965. Independent published 2020, Softback 131 pages. Bob Dylan's legendary 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited is still considered one of the best albums in rock history. The opening song "Like A Rolling Stone" is a meterorite whose impact shook the world. When Bruce Springsteen is asked if he feels he owes Dylan anything, The Boss replied: “When I was sixteen and I had Highway 61 on my little mono record player in my room at night, I’d listen to it a thousand times. It’s one of those debts that you can never repay.” Of the album Dylan says, “I could buy it myself.” The final track is the only exclusively-acoustic track on the record, the long, melancholic, poetic explosion "Desolation Row", Dylan's kaleidoscopic impression of “what goes on around here”, the mysterious masterpiece that is a first building block of his later Nobel Prize. “Like Desolation Row...there's no logical way that you can arrive at lyrics like that. I don't know how it was done,” Dylan mused more than twenty years later, in 1987. In Desolation Row: Bob Dylan's Poetic Letter from 1965, the seventh Dylan book by Dylan scholar Jochen Markhorst, the reader is taken through the history, background and impact of the ten-verse song, the recording sessions, and the aftermath of its release, in which he comes close to unlocking the song’s mysteries.
Andrew Muir; The true Performing of it. Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare. Updated edition. Red Planet 2020. Softback 402 pages. Andrew Muir’s 2019 book about Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare has been updated with a new 10,000-word Afterword. Entitled “The Time is Out of Joint,” the new chapter looks at happenings since the publication of the original book including the release of Rough & Rowdy Ways with its many Shakespeare allusions.
Adrian Smith: Slouching Towards Big Pink. Essays on Bob Dylan and The Band, Woody Guthrie and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Takahe Publishing 2020, Softback 231 pages. This book focuses on Bob Dylan and The Band’s performances at the Woody Guthrie tribute concerts staged in Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968, and on a deeply controversial song that Dylan has never reprised: Guthrie’s last complete composition, “Dear Mrs. Roosevelt”. Why Woody Guthrie wrote “Dear Mrs Roosevelt”, and how Bob Dylan rescued it from obscurity twenty years later, reflects the close relationship between ‘people’s music’ and progressive politics in America from the 1930s to the 1960s. No president has been celebrated in song as much as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and no First Lady has loved folk music like Eleanor Roosevelt – this is as much their story as that of Guthrie, Dylan, and his sidemen.
Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara: Little People, Big Dreams: Bob Dylan. Francis Lincoln Children's Books 2020. Hardback 32 pages. Bob Dylan was born in Duluth, Minnesota. As a teenager, he played in various bands and, over time, his interest in music deepened into a particular passion for American folk music and blues. Dylan moved to New York City in 1961, where he began to perform poetry and music in clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village. There, he recorded a number of albums that made him one of the most influential musicians of history. This fascinating book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the musician's life.
Mike Wyvill & John Wraith: Went Into The Town: Dylan's 2019 Concerts. Two Riders 2020. Softback 64 pages. One in an ongoing series of Bob Dylan tour summaries. This volume features complete track listings of every 2019 show and is lavishly illustrated with photos, tickets, and other ephemera.