Bob Dylan - Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol 8 – Rare & Unreleased 1989-2006

“A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true”

So said Bob Dylan, looking back over his life in 2004’s Chronicles Volume One, recalling what it was like to try and find his muse again in the late 80s. It’s perhaps a fitting quote given that Series Of Dreams, a highlight of The Bootleg Series Vol 1-3, was written in this period. A single take (as opposed to the composite on the previous release) of the same song is on this eighth instalment in the famed series. It’s no less jaw-dropping than before, the swirling maelstrom behind this well-known song perhaps best proving an insight into Bob’s mindset at the time.

Working with producer Daniel Lanois for 1989’s Oh Mercy proved to be a godsend. During a tortuous 80s, most pegged Dylan as a washed-up onetime legend, not least Bob himself, who later wrote of having “singlehandedly shot myself in the foot too many times… I felt done for. An empty burned-out wreck.” By the end of the Oh Mercy sessions, however, Dylan had recorded songs he would later think of as having inherited, rather than written. Songs so shocking to him it was “like someone had pulled the cord to stop the train”, even if he had to run them by Bono first before taking them into the studio. Oh yeah, and he was apparently listening to Ice-T and NWA.

This chaotic backdrop gave birth to Oh Mercy, the jumping off point for Tell Tale Signs and an album which, along with his Lanois-produced 1997 reresurgence, Time Out Of Mind, provides the outtake highlights of this set. That many are alternate versions of now-known songs (Dignity, Series Dreams, Born In Time, all originally from the Oh Mercy sessions; two early Mississippi’s from TOOM’s sessions) shows how Bob was both intent on creating cohesive albums again (none of the Oh Mercy outtakes would have simply fitted the LP proper) and stockpiling songs he felt could be used later, mindful of the way things had slowed down.

There’s still room for some bona fide classics. Red River Shore is another unrequited love song. Without the youthful pining of, say, Visions Of Johanna, however, Dylan flips the script. A life where “some of us scare ourselves to death in the dark just to be where the angels fly” is offset by an accordion, cannily giving this devastation the feel of a romantic riverside meal with a lover. Even further on down the line, the unreleased December 2005-recorded Can’t Escape From You is arguably greater than anything on 2006’s Modern Times, mixing that album’s deftness with a little Elvis drive.

This is perhaps the first Bootleg Series release with some songs that could be deemed inessential. A live Cocaine Blues from 1997 proves little more than a World Gone Wrong outtake, a cover of Robert Johnson’s 32-20 Blues: Bob periodically reconnects with the songs from his past in order to drive forward again. It does, however, all amount to the story of Bob’s late-period resurgence being well told. Recent soundtrack odds and ends round out the between-albums picture, while a few live “Love & Theft” songs show that, even in his mid-60s, Bob can still shoot fire from the stage.

The overriding lesson from these Tell Tale Signs is of Bob’s immaculate role as performer. There is no one “final version” of a track – just the one that happens to make sense on the day. Dreaming Of You emerges as a younger sibling of Love Sick; Marchin’ To The City steps towards ’Til I Fell In Love With You; snatches of lyrics and imagery are reconfigured throughout. In many ways, this isn’t just an unreleased side of Bob Dylan. Like “Love & Theft” itself, it’s a history of American music from a walking Wurlitzer jukebox; perhaps even the most distinctive blues singer and songwriter ever. Without having to add a fake vinyl crackle or 78 pops, Bob emerges from the great beyond as timeless and ghostly as Charley Patton or John Jacob Niles.

What makes the Bootleg Series so successful? It doesn’t just stuff a load of fan-pleasing takes of the same song together, the likes of which every lesser artist can package for the devoted. In the main, these releases are so well picked and packaged that the choices can’t help but appeal to a wider audience. (Longtime fans, however, have the choice of shelling out £70- odd extra for a 3-CD version with bonus 7” single and 150-page booklet of single picture sleeves… Good way to piss off one of the most devoted fanbases in the world.)

What was Dylan doing in the last two decades, other than proving he could still live up to the “Legend” epithet? Chartering the path of American music’s entire history, human condition and mortality.

SonyBMG | 88697357952 (2-CD)

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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