Oof. 431 tracks is a lot of Bob Dylan. That’s over a whopping great 27 CDs too. The good news though, is that in 1974, Bob was right at the top of his game, and therefore The 1974 Live Recordings is an absolute joy to listen to, vibrant, fresh and invigorating. I wouldn’t, however, listen to it all in one sitting, if I were you!
Of these copious tracks, Dylan aficionados are going to explode with excitement to learn that 417 of them have never been officially released before now. Obviously, I’m not going to sit here and talk about all 431 cuts. I mean, you’d probably need to book a month off work just to read an article like that, let alone to listen to the entire box set.
So here’s what I propose – I’ll pick out my personal highlights. A lot of those, somewhat handily, can be found on the Spotify Sampler of the set. So ‘Mr. Tambourine Man‘ (live at The Forum, Inglewood) is given a beefed up, accordion enhanced makeover that is simply exuberant, while ‘The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll‘, some eleven years after the murder addressed in the song took place, still sounds emotionally distraught and full of anger and exasperation that such things could still happen. The fact that this is delivered acoustically makes the whole thing still more affecting.
It’s a remarkable boxset in many ways, although with so many songs included, there are undoubtedly going to be a few missteps along the way too. It doesn’t matter though, as the sheer greatness of the most successful recordings here outstrips those lesser – very occasionally nigh on unlistenable – moments by some distance. Those cringe-inducing moments come largely when Dylan seems to adopt a faux-Tom Waits rasp (Rolling Stone called it ‘Shouty Al Pacino‘ which is probably as accurate as you could describe it) and it evokes a feeling somewhere between amusement and bemusement on the listener’s part. So while we have a pleasant enough delivery of ‘The Times They Are A-Changin‘, again at Inglewood, there are several less interesting takes of this, and other classic Dylan tunes too. The great thing though, is that, with The Band providing our main man’s foil here, the musicianship is never anything less than outstanding. Ecstasy in musical form.
What is perhaps most striking though, about The 1974 Live Recordings is that, with it being around the time that Dylan’s Planet Waves album was released, it gives you a kind of ‘voyeuristic window’ into the undeniable out-and-out classics that were to follow in the shape of Blood On The Tracks and Desire. So the slower version of ‘Forever Young‘ is kind of like a forerunner to ‘Isis‘ and is furnished with absolute heart and soul. In fact, he is definitely giving more TLC to the tracks from that record. For instance, I’d never really paid that much attention to ‘Wedding Song‘ before this, but it is so passionately dispatched, with such a powerful intensity that it’s impossible not to think “Wow!”
In all honesty, there’s little else to say about this boxset – I mean, if you’re a Dylan obsessive, you’re going to buy this and you’re going to love it. At least half of it is fabulous, with probably another 35 per cent good to great. I’d say that’s a damn good turnaround for a 27-CD set, wouldn’t you? If you can afford it, it ought to be regarded as an unmissable addition to your collection. It’s impossible not to give this a high rating, despite the few niggles.
