How Bob Dylan created a masterpiece with "Love and theft"-rolling Stone

Dylan has drawn throughout the history of American music for his LP released in 2001

A l’aube du XXI^e siècle, la créativité de Bob Dylan semblait être revenue. Son dernier LP, Time Out of Mind sorti en 1997, lui avait récemment valu un Grammy pour l’Album de l’Année et en 2000, il remporta l’Oscar de la Meilleure Chanson Originale pour « Things Have Changed » tirée du film Wonder Boys. D’autres artistes s’en seraient contenté, en particulier ceux qui allaient avoir 60 ans, mais la renaissance de la carrière tardive de l’histoire du rock venait juste de commencer.

When the recording sessions started for Love and theft in 2001, guitarist Larry Campbell was one of the first to think that the album would be special.Just after having recorded "Things Have Change", Dylan played changes in Campbell for one of his new songs, "Po’ Boy "."These were relatively sophisticated changes for a song by Bob Dylan," recalls Campbell.It was the first vague idea of what the song was going to look like.Take elements from the jazz era and add a folk sensitivity to it. "

Of course, Dylan was going to take a look at a specific pre-rock past to seek inspiration."All my songs, the styles I work in, were all developed before I was born," he said at the time.When I came into the world, their mind was always very strong.Billie Holiday was still alive.Duke Ellington.All these old blues singers were still alive.It was the kind of music that was dear to me.Pop music never interested me. "

Dylan worked on this project with his group from the time composed of guitarist Charlie Sexton, guitarist and Banjo Campbell, bassist Tony Garnier and drummer David Kemper.When the recording sessions started at the Manhattan Clinton Recording Studios, Dylan arrived around 3 p.m. in a white western shirt every day and in pliers, pulled out his guitar and got to work.The sessions were reserved in the name of his manager and the studio employees were instructed to tell anyone that they recorded an album with Dylan before he was finished.

The sessions for Love and theft are among the most productive and the least predictable of Dylan's career.It was said to the studio employees that Dylan wanted to sing sitting in a corner of the play, back to the group (a scenario probably inspired by the jacket of King of the Delta Blues Singers Vol. II, an album by Robert Johnson).As soon as the group started playing one of the first songs, Dylan got up, headed for a piano nearby and stayed there for the rest of the day."It was like" Okay, we do this now, "recalls Campbell.He was like a dog who must turn in his basket several times before being able to relax. ”

Some days, Dylan had a former song from Holiday or Jimmy Rushing listened to the members of the group, asked them to learn and then adapt the arrangements and the sensations she gave off for her own songs.However, after having re-listened to a catch, Dylan often asked musicians to change their instruments and to adapt different agreements or tempos for the song."What surprised me was the speed at which he abandoned an arrangement when he worked," said engineer Chris Shaw.He said "What is the tempo?"Let's do it in Fa, decrease the tempo, make sure that the music looks like western music, and I want the drummer to play with brooms and not with baguettes "and suddenly, the song was completely different.Nothing was engraved in marble until we find the tone, the tempo and the style that went with the voice and the words. "

Dylan savait comment faire fonctionner son groupe. « Si les membres du groupe ne comprenaient pas ce qu’il voulait, déclare Shaw, il était frustré et leur bottait les fesses en écoutant la dernière prise et en disant « J’imagine que je n’ai pas la main d’œuvre nécessaire pour faire fonctionner cette chanson. Je vais la faire tout seul avec ma guitare ». Le groupe répliquait « Non, non ! » et se remettait au travail. » Comme l’admet Campbell, « J’imagine que c’est quand on est passé à la chanson suivante qu’on a su qu’on l’a eu d’une forme ou d’une autre ». Ayant besoin d’un autre état d’esprit pour la chanson venant après « Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum », Dylan, sur la proposition de son manager, réenregistra « Mississippi », une chanson qu’il avait enregistrée et finalement écartée de Time Out of Mind avant de l’offrir à Sheryl Crow.

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Since they had never recorded a complete album with Dylan, the members of the group also learned to obey his musical desires (the guitarists had the right to look at his part if they played too many plansfanciful guitar while he sang) and not to worry about errors."If you have a microscope and peel some of these songs, you will hear some choices of strange agreements, a note that walks here and there," says Campbell.Bob had the impression that something was good when you felt him well.There was certain things that I wanted to redo but he said to me "No, it's good.This is how it must be "".

After the sessions for Time Out of Mind sometimes stormy with producer Daniel Lanois, Dylan had decided to produce Love and theft himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost."We did not know who Jack Frost was until we see him on the album," said Augigi Meyers, the organist and former member of the Sir Douglas Quintet group who had been called to play on the LP (likeHe had done it on Time Out of Mind).Taking control seemed to be suitable in Dylan, even when he was preparing to get out of a monument like Time Out of Mind."Bob was a little more relaxed when you recorded Love and theft," said Meyers.It was seen in his body language ”.

Seeing a new number of Rolling Stone in the studio with the Destiny’s Child on the cover and "Booty Camp" in title, Dylan had the idea of sliding the phrase "Booty Call" in "Cry a While".He told Shaw that he wanted to release a live album, but with all the dates and cities listed incorrectly to disturb the dylanologists.

Une fois terminé, l’album, dont le titre était inspiré par Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, l’étude de l’historien Eric Lott publiée en 1993, était aussi sombre et austère que Time Out of Mind. « En gros, les chansons traitent de ce que bon nombre de mes chansons traitent, c’est-à-dire des affaires, de la politique, de la guerre et, peut-être, de l’intérêt amoureux, a déclaré Dylan à l’époque. Tout l’album traite du pouvoir. Si la vie nous apprend quelque chose, c’est bien que les femmes et les hommes feront tout pour obtenir le pouvoir. L’album traite du pouvoir, de la richesse, du savoir et du salut, de la façon dont je les considère ».

"High water (for Charley Patton)" is a song Country Blues Apocalyptic whose name is a tribute to the guitarist and singer of Delta Blues of the Johnson era."When I listen to" High Water "today, it’s sort of like the Bible, says Crow.You read Bible verses and you cannot believe what is going on today.In "High Water", the lyrics are special: "" Don’t reach out for me ", She Said/" Can’t you see I’m Drowning Too ".This is not only what is happening in the political world, it is also what is happening from an environmental point of view. "

The album is also playful and fanciful."Moonlight", "Summer Days" and "Bye and Bye" (whose arrangement was inspired by the song "Having Myself A Time" by Holiday released in 1938) characterize the sound of a man at ease with him-Mend and with the past."He is able to transform a melody and then sing it like a crooner," says Crow.I love that ".The pre-rock genres he used have never been so vibrant and so connected.Dylan was respectful of American roots music.Perhaps reflecting its own rebirth (and its recovery after a heart problem a few years earlier), Dylan rarely seemed so clever and alive.

Love and Theft a tout à coup pris une résonance effrayante : sa date de sortie officielle, le 11 septembre, coïncidait avec les terribles attaques à New York et à Washington D.C. Les Dylanologistes ont essayé de trouver leur propre interprétation des paroles, interprétant par exemple « Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum » comme une prémonition des attentats ayant frappé les tours jumelles. « Il y avait des conspirateurs qui essayaient de prouver que Bob était prescient des événements du 11 septembre, comment il les avait prévus et comment il en parlait dans ses chansons, déclare Campbell. Le même genre de rumeurs qui ont entouré la supposée mort de Paul McCartney. Je crois que beaucoup de gens ont trouvé une sorte de refuge face à la folie de cet événement dans ce nouvel album de Bob Dylan ».

Dylan, who considered the album as the first part of a trilogy that was going to continue with Modern Times and Together Through Life, continued to explore American music."With a little luck, the album will speak to several generations," he said about Love and theft.This is what I try to do because doing another album at this time in my career ... I do not have the impression that what I do may be called a career.It's no longer a vocation. "