Music Arcades: Various: The Bob Dylan Songbook

A few years ago, I had a mini-hobby of collecting cover versions of Bob Dylan songs. It was partly inspired by the range and inventiveness of a wave of new versions coming from folk and indie artists of the day. But this collection, compiled in 1991, has only three songs recorded after 1974. And those three — Stan Campbell's squeeky-clean Knocking on Heaven's Door, Manfred Mann's cringemaking You Angel You and the Flamin Groovies' rather pointless Absolutely Sweet Marie — are among the weakest on the CD. Apparently Bob was out of favour with his fellow artists during that period. But the catalogue of Dylan covers since 1991 might stretch to a boxed set, and much of it would be high quality, imaginative stuff.

So I got this CD (second hand from Amazon) around the same time as Music Arcades began and when I first ordered the Steve Gibbons Dylan Project. Thinking about it, that was also when the Barbican put on its Dylan tribute night, featuring everyone from Odetta and Barb Jungr through various members of the Carthy/Waterson dynasty to Willy Mason and (gulp) KT Tunstall. So that may have been another inspiration.

One of the things I did with all these different versions was catalogue them in my own playlist compilation of 79 songs, which you can see here and here, arranged rather prosaically in the order Bob recorded them.

Several of the songs on this CD feature on my playlist. Of course it's a mixed bag, skewed mostly to the late '60s and early '70s. I've mentioned the misses, but the hits include Alan Price doing To Ramona (one of Lucy's most favourite Dylan songs) much better than Willy Mason did, and Bobby Darin putting his heart into Blowing in the Wind. No room for any Bryan Ferry on this selection, but the clear winner here is Rod Stewart, who sings three of the 24 songs (two as a solo artist and one with The Faces). All three are distinctive and remind me that I really must check out some of those early Rod records like Gasoline Alley, when he still had it.