Highway 61 Revisited
I find it funny that copyright holders are lobbying governments to force ISPs to track down file-traders . Because the history of recorded music is available at any surfer’s fingertips. You don’t need a P2P program at all. A rudimentary knowledge of computerese and you can search for a RapidShare download or even a direct zip file.
Thank god.
In the seventies, recording artists played it close to the vest. They would issue no licenses and release no live material, except for the de rigueur, sweetened in the studio, double live album. You didn’t want to kill the golden goose, your record sales, you lived off your record sales.
But not the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead took Philips’ invention to a new extreme. The success of that band, far into the eighties, up until Jerry Garcia’s death, was built upon the trading of cassette tapes. But they’re not the only ones… Metallica’s fan base was built by tape trading too. That’s the hardest thing to do, spread the word. But, if you’re good, people can’t help but tell others about you. Just like I’m going to tell you about this cover of "Highway 61 Revisited".
The original "Highway 61" is a horse race. It leaves the gate with a whistle and gallops all the way to its three and a half minute finishing line. It was an track deep into Dylan’s 1965 album that featured the gargantuan hit "Like A Rolling Stone". If you were a nascent rocker, you knew every lick of this album. Lyrical incisiveness was no longer limited to folkies, you could plug in and still tell your story. Pickers all over the world were liberated. People like Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne. Who united twenty five years later at Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium to lay down a version of the song that was aged in decades of rock history. They took the original and filtered it down to its essence, its pure soul. Ironically, in accompaniment with Jackson Browne’s acoustic guitar. And the Boss’ harmonica.
The reason people go to the live show is for the vitality. There’s a life force absent from the record. The record is perfected, it’s sterile. It’s like going back in time and fixing a date. Whereas live is one time only. You’re in the bedroom of your high school crush, what are you going to do?
And we have crushes on our rock stars. We think if we could only meet them, talk to them, never mind bed them, our lives would suddenly work. We’re convinced when they’re looking out from the stage that they’re actually staring at us. That’s just how powerful the music, the experience, is.
I can’t even remember what the Christic Institute is/was. But I do know you couldn’t get a ticket to this benefit concert. Today they paper the house, even for best-selling artists. As late as 1990, the ticket was still golden, you beamed when it spat out of the ticket machine, as if Willy Wonka himself handed it to you. And you went to the gig with a sense of anticipation.
Bruce performs "Darkness". Even "Thunder Road" and "My Hometown". But what is truly transcendent is this take on "Highway 61" with his homies.
Yes, despite our inability to even speak to them, the musicians are friends. When they get together and play they’re having such a good time they don’t even think about the audience.
Jackson picks out a groove. Only vaguely reminiscent of the original take. Bruce lays down some harmonica chops and Jackson starts to sing:
God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son’
Abe said, ‘Man, you must be puttin’ me on’
God said, ‘No.’ Abe said, ‘What?’
God said, ‘Abe you can do what you want, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run’
Abe said, ‘Where do you want this killin’ done?’
God said, ‘Out on Highway 61.’
Then Bruce picks up and makes the lyrics his own:
Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
I got forty red white and blue shoe strings
And a thousand telephones man don’t ring
You know where I can get rid of these things
Louie the King said let me think, for a minute son
Yes I think it can be easily done
Take everything out on Highway 61.
Mack the Finger and Louie the King are relatives of the Magic Rat, they’re characters straight out of the second side of "Born To Run", scrambling around in Jungleland.
And Bonnie steps up to the mic and sings:
Well the fifth daughter on the twelfth night
Told the first father that she just didn’t feel right
My complexion she said is much too light
He said come over here, step into the light, he says hmm, yes
Let me tell the second mother what has been done
But the second mother was with the seventh son
And they were both out on Highway 61.
She’s like a cross between a dame on Grand Theft Auto, the coolest chick in your high school and a diva channeling the history of the blues. You just want to get closer to the flame.
And when Jackson comes back in, the Boss and Bonnie are helping out, singing backgrounds. They’re together, locked on. Not auto-tuned, but pulsing together in live performance. Recorded for all posterity but unavailable widely until the Internet. Now you can find the track easily.
This is not a rote cover. The musicians make the song their own. It’s the little hiccup in Jackson’s guitar work that truly makes the track, hooks you. Like your buddies sitting in your parents’ basement playing Beatle songs. Strumming hard for EMPHASIS!
This is a cover song. A show capper. Rearranged in your own style. Picked to make a statement.
Well the frozen gambler he was very bored
Tryin’ to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it could be very easily done
We’ll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.
We’re bored with the official music scene. With its filters and blanded out product. We’re looking for something different, something with more soul. Which is why we go online. Sure, we download the new stuff, but so often delete it when it doesn’t live up to the hype. But then we come across gems and play them ad infinitum. Because they contain the essence.
The essence is life. Absent from the Mariah melismas. The beat-driven escapades. If you use a drum machine, won’t the final product SOUND like a machine?
I’m gonna link you to a lame YouTube clip. But if you do just a bit of Googling, you can download a pristine take of "Highway 61 Revisited". And you should. Because you’ll be hooked by Jackson Lee Hooker’s guitar work. And the man who gives him that appellation’s wailing harmonica playing. And the glue of Bonnie’s voice.
Don’t put this on a CD. Don’t clean it up. Just post it where everybody can hear it, even the tech unsavvy. And pray that two decades on, these three go on tour. Together.
