Rave: Bringing It All Back Home

Enjoyed a nice dinner at Miriam in Park Slope with TL and LC. Quality nouveau Mediterranean cuisine, and following the trend these days, a touch on the pricey side. But within reason. Always good to see those two, and always good to be in a restaurant that plays good music - tonight's highlight being the hushed cover of Bob Dylan's "I Threw It All Away" from Yo La Tengo's President Yo La Tengo.

Which brings me to my all too obvious rave - Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home. On a whimsical walk on Sunday afternoon through the heart of Williamsburg, I decided to stop in to Sound Fix and do what I do best - buy some CDs. Out came Matthew Dear's Asa Breed, which ain't that bad, and Bringing It All Back Home. As I mentioned to TL and LC tonight, my exposure to Dylan has worked its way back in a standard but sub-optimal way: starting with the radio and greatest hits collections, moving through the two critical darlings Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks early in college, and finally, slowly evolving into the completest stance that sees me pick up a new record every few months and give it some honest time - with the last three purchases being Modern Times, New Morning, and, now, Bringing It All Back Home.

All of this for my single point: time spent missing older Dylan records is time wasted. This record is great, from the patter of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" to open, to the lovely "She Belongs to Me," through the slightly revved-up "Outlaw Blues," and the closing "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" the album is pretty well stunning - imagining Dylan sets your mind a-reelin'.

Currently, I am thoroughly enjoying the record, as I thoroughly enjoyed this interview re-posted from the always excellent Dust Congress, about Bruce Langhorne, guitarist on Bringing It All Back Home and inspiration for "Mr. Tambourine Man" (original interview from The Independent):

On the morning of the explosion, Bruce Langhorne recalls, he had been pondering the question of what percentage of powdered magnesium could safely be included in a home-made mix of rocket propellant.

"I realise now that I had one or two gaps in my knowledge of chemistry," he says. "I was 12."

His mother Dorothy was downstairs in the kitchen, working on her own, less hazardous, recipes."I made the rocket using a steel jacket, packed with magnesium and plaster of Paris..."

"With a view to what?"

"I was going to launch it out of my bedroom window to see how far it would get across the park. We were living in New York City, in Spanish Harlem, at that time. I hadn't realised quite how fast magnesium burns. The rocket exploded before it took off. My mother heard this 'boom'. When she came into my (omega) room, she saw I had blown my hand off basically, and my face was all covered in blood. It looked for a while as though I might lose an eye."

Langhorne, 68, is talking to me at the kitchen table in his house at Venice Beach, Los Angeles. He raises his right hand. Its fourth and fifth fingers are intact; the thumb, index and middle fingers are reduced to short stumps.

"My mom told me afterwards that I looked at her and said: 'Well, at least I won't have to play that stupid violin any more.' As a child," he adds, "you are very adaptable."

Bruce Langhorne had already been identified as versatile and highly gifted, but nobody could have foreseen just how successfully he would overcome this early trauma. The inspiration for the song "Mr Tambourine Man", he played guitar on many of Bob Dylan's greatest recordings, including the 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. He played the electric solo on "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", and percussion on "Like a Rolling Stone".

"If you had Bruce playing with you," Dylan wrote, in his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles, "that's all you would need to do just about anything."

***

He didn't start playing the guitar till he was 17, busking in the company of a caricaturist who would sketch people who stopped to listen.

"I was playing basically with two fingers and the nub of a third," he says. "That meant I had to play two notes with one finger, or else strum. So I developed a technique that used each of my fingers to generate a harmonic line. I couldn't be taught by classical techniques. I had to rely on communication and empathy. Which is why I really liked working with Bob Dylan."

The two met in 1961 in New York, at the folk club Gerde's Folk City, where Langhorne was accompanist to the MC, a gospel singer named Brother John Sellers.

"When I first heard Bobby," Langhorne says, "I have to be truthful; I was not impressed by his voice. But he turned into such a wonderful writer, such a wonderful artist."

"In Scorsese's documentary, you describe the intuitive rapport you developed with Dylan."

"The connection I had with Bobby was telepathic, and when I use that word, I mean it. Telepathic. Between the two of us, that level of communication was always very strong. I played on every song on Bringing It All Back Home. Some of those numbers were barely rehearsed. Some were done in one or two takes."

"And Dylan said that you inspired him to write 'Mr Tambourine Man'."

"He did write that song about me. I used to have this drum - a kind of huge Turkish tambourine that made a sound like a whole percussion section. He saw me playing it at a party. It's in a museum now."

"Through Chronicles, and his current broadcasts as a DJ on Theme Time Radio Hour, Dylan is revealing himself to be someone with a surprisingly playful sense of humour."

"Well, he always did have a great sense of irony. In the early days we went up to record a TV show with a presenter called Wes Crane. We were live in this studio in Manhattan. Bobby said: 'Oh Wes - I really like your tie.' Wes said: 'You like it? Here. Have it. It's yours.' And he took the tie off, and gave it to him. Then Bob said: 'And Wes - those boots you have on. I really like those boots..." Langhorne gives his long, sonorous laugh. "Bob is very funny, and very, very bright. And cynical."

"Has he been in touch?"

"Well he was, not so long ago, when my dad was still alive and living next door to us here. He told me he wanted to meet my father."

"And did he?"

"Sure. They met. They talked. It was amazing, because my dad was already becoming senile at that time. He lived to be 93."

"Why did Bob Dylan want to meet your father?"

"I couldn't tell you. He just wanted to." Langhorne pauses. "Bobby and I have a great deal of respect for each other."

See the full interview, it's a fun read.