My Back Pages

February 10, 2015 • 3:50 pm

Here’s ensemble of rock greats at Dylan’s 30th anniversary concert in 1992 (!). The split screen is annoying, but this is the best version I can embed. No twerking, no flames, no flashing lights, no dancing M&Ms:  just fantastic music—and great solos by Clapton and Young.

If you don’t know who everyone is, you need to bone up. The song, of course, was written by Dylan but made famous by the Byrds, one of whom sings here.

34 thoughts on “My Back Pages”

  2. Oh, wow. Made my day. I love them all, but no one, NO ONE, goes straight to my heart like Neil. I’ve been in love with him all my life. Well, okay, for just 45 years. 😉

    1. Yeah – Dylan I’ve always been ambivalent about, but Neil Young is, to me, the greatest singer-songwriter of all time, the greatest solo artist of all time. Sugar Mountain, Old Man, The Thrasher, Tell Me Why; and After The Goldrush, Zuma, Harvest Moon…aaah, so lovely. An ear for melody that Dylan just doesn’t have.

      1. Neil is great, but Dylan is King…or maybe now, with his latest release, Chairman of the Board…

        1. I know, a lot of people agree with you. My dad’d be one of them – but I definitely think Neil Young is the more gifted songwriter. There’s the odd Dylan song that blows me away – Lay Lady Lay, 4th Time Around, My Back Pages, Buckets Of Rain, etc. – but no period of consistent brilliance, where he was conjuring up brilliant melody after brilliant melody, like Young circa After The Goldrush and Zuma through to Rust Never Sleeps.

          Still, I listened to a lot of Dylan in my late teens and I can kind of see why he captivated people. Watching Don’t Look Back gave me a sense of his magnetism when he first arrived, an alien matchstick thing, as weird and attractive as Ziggy Stardust would’ve been a decade later. Don’t like Bowie that much either, but I think they were both captivating to young people in the same way.

          1. Yes, I know, I know. I’m afraid when it comes to other peoples’ musical tastes I turn into the Ayatollah Khomeini.

            BTW, oranges are clearly superior.

  3. A great song and a great performance!

    And the “split screen” is a stereoscopic video. You can see this in 3D if you are practiced in looking at stereoscopic images… diverge your eyes…

      1. I think my eyes have diverged back and forth between wall-eyed and cross-eyed trying to watch that. 👀. Great music, though!! I love Dylan but have been greatly disappointed by the two times I’ve seen him live. Neil is much better live – and Eric.

        1. I went to a Dylan concert a couple years ago. It was the worst performance I’ve ever been to.

          Mark Knopfler was on before Dylan, however, and he was great. So it wasn’t a completely lost evening.

          1. I had the Foo Fighters for openers (who I wasn’t looking forward to, because I didn’t really know them) but they were MUCH better than Dylan (and I have loved Dylan for 40 years!) Dave Grolsch(?) of FF is really good. Dylan apparently performs something like 300 times a year, but he acts as if the audience isn’t there. Very strange. I couldn’t even recognize the Dylan songs which I knew like the back of my hand. It was all soooo flat.

    1. I rather like the jumbo screens. Otherwise those in the nosebleed seats just see ants moving around down on the stage.

  5. That would have been a great concert to be at – sadly I wasn’t!

    I don’t understand the ‘split screen’ comments – it looks fine to me.

  6. This is a delightful concert.

    Unfortunately it was marred by Sinnead O’Connor getting booed off the stage in wake of her earlier appearance on Saturday Night Live in which she tore up a photo of the pope.

    Rather bizarre, since Dylan is the archetypal protest singer. I mean, at a Dylan tribute!?!?
    Really??

    This business was entirely edited out of video releases of the concert. You pretty much only saw it if you saw the live broadcast (as is also the case with S O’Cs original papal picture rendering.)

  9. Fantastic lineup. Great song. The Almighty Byrds…never shall forget hearing Eight Miles High when I was around 10 years old and I thought this is what music should be like.

  11. Always lovely to see George playing. Yes, the spiritual gobbledegook he picked up while in the Beatles is embarrassing but he seemed to be the kind of guy who could make lemonade out of lemons. That’s lovable. Would that more people of faith could pull that off.

    Nice song.

    Mike

  12. 3/5 of the Traveling Wilbury’s with a lot of superstar guests! I’m a bit more into Neil Young than Dylan, but I think they’re both standout songwriters. Late in my adolescence, circa 1980, I got Young’s 3 lp collection overview of his career from 1966 to 1976, Decade, and I was blown away — not only the radio favorites but so many other excellent songs. I also loved Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 2, which collected not only a few hits that didn’t make it onto Volume 1, but also served as a more expansive intro to Dylan. Admittedly, on a few songs like Mr. Tambourine Man I preferred the Byrds’ version, but then there are songs of his, such as Like a Rolling Stone or Knocking on Heaven’s Door on which I much prefer his version to any version by “better” singers.

  15. Dr. Coyne, thanks for the video. I hadn’t seen it before an throughly enjoyed it as I really like that song and love when well-known musicians take turns at the same song.

    I had seen a video of a rehearsal of this song where Eric Clapton plays a disappointing, generic lead but he did much better in front of the audience.

    Oh to hear what George Harrison might have offered up as his lead for the song.

  16. Thanks. That’s one of my favorite Dylan songs. I can think of some keyboard warriors who could use reminding that: in a soldier’s stance I aimed my hands at the mongrel dogs who teach, fearing not I’d become my enemy in the instant that I preached, my existence led by confusion boats, mutiny from stern to bow, oh but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now…

    Also, if you’ve never seen the rock and roll hall of fame performance of While My Guitar Gently Weeps where Prince steals the show playing ridiculous lead guitar (with Dhani Harrison smiling in appreciation and awe), you really should.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFNW5F8K9Y

  17. Dylan is the best singer song writer ever. He in a league of his own, above everyone else. If you believe otherwise you are wrong.

Comments are closed.