The time period
captured in Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home finds
Bob Dylan, the greatest songwriter of the 20th Century,
at his
most alive and vital. As such, this soundtrack – the
seventh in a volume of unreleased and alternative takes
of classic Dylan cuts that began with a boxset – is
similarly nothing short of phenomenal.
Let’s start at the beginning shall we; after all, No
Direction Home certainly does. It begins with
a 1959 recorded of “When I Got Troubles”, and follows
on to a home recording then a live version of “This
Land is Your Land”. “Song to Woody” has never been
released before, while the live version of “Blowin’ in
the Wind” from the 1964 Philharmonic recording – captured
on volume 6 of the Bootleg series, Live 1964:
Concert at Philharmonic Hall – is nothing short
of sensational.
Tracing his career from the beginnings until 1966,
the soundtrack to No Direction Home really
comes alive on the second disc. Here, alternative
takes on classics like “It Takes a Lot to Laugh,
It Takes a Train to Cry”, “Tombstone Blues”, an explorative
eleven minute electric guitar journey through “Desolation
Row”, and then more – “Highway 61 Revisted”, “Stuck
Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again”, and
an ephemeral “Visions of Johanna”.
It closes with two live tracks – “Ballad of a Thin
Man” and “Like a Rolling Stone” – that closed out
the famed 1966 ‘Royal Albert Hall’ concert, captured
at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and found on
Bootleg volume 4. Mike Bloomfield makes “Maggie’s
Farm” come alive, recorded in 1965 at the Newport
Folk Festival, while on the first disc an alternate
take on “Mr. Tambourine Man” shows it at its most
primitive form.
It’s quite clear that the Bob Dylan found on No
Direction Home is nothing short of a visionary.
He anticipates the future and then he delivers
on it – everything he did was copied made more
popular by others, from the Beatles to the Byrds
to Gram Parson to the Rolling Stones – Bob Dylan
affected the 1960’s like no one else, and possibly
like no one will ever enliven rock ‘n roll to such
an extent ever again.
