Review: "I'm Not There" Soundtrack

Various ArtistsI’m Not There OSTColumbiaWe set up the drums and amps on the worn carpet in the living room of my parents suburban house, the house I’d lived in for all of my 17 years. It was Spring, 1971 and I was playing an off-brand solid body electric guitar I’d bought at a second hand shop in Mill Valley for $25 with a trebly sound that approximated that of a Fender Strat: Dylan’s weapon of choice at the time.I was obsessed with the 1966 Manchester bootleg of Dylan and the Hawks that everyone thought back in the early ‘70s had been recorded at the Royal Albert Hall. Actually, I’d been obsessed with everything that had to do with Dylan since that day in the summer of 1965 when I’d heard “Like A Rolling Stone” on Top 40 radio.We bashed out garage band versions of “Tell Me Mama” and “I Don’t Believe You” and “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry.” I’m sure they sounded like hell, like kids who couldn’t play and couldn’t sing imitating Dylan. But to us we sounded pretty great. We were so self-deluded we actually performed at the Senior Prom, likely making fools of ourselves; I wore a top hat I’d bought at the same second hand shop where I’d gotten the guitar; with that hat and my long curly hair I imagined I looked like Dylan as pictured on the back cover of “Bringing It All Back Home.” I couldn’t help but recall my brief foray into rock ‘n’ roll singer covering Dylan as I began listening to the soundtrack for the Dylan film, “I’m Not There,” which is comprised of 33 covers of Dylan songs, and one song, the title track, that Dylan himself sings. That song, “I’m Not There,” was recorded in 1967 at “Big Pink” in Woodstock when Dylan and the Band recorded the collection of songs that came to called “The Basement Tapes.” Until now, Dylan’s “I’m Not There” was only available on bootleg versions of “The Basement Tapes.” It’s an amazing recording; some would argue it’s Dylan’s most mysterious song.The soundtrack features 28 different singers, each attempting to do justice to one or more Dylan songs. The singers include Eddie Vedder, Richie Havens, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, Cat Power’s Chan Marshall, Mason Jennings, Tom Verlaine, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Willie Nelson, Joe Doe, Karen O, Stephen Malkmus, Jeff Tweedy, The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn, Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sufjan Stevens, Antony of Antony & The Johnsons, Roger McGuinn and others.Many of the sings are backed by a group of musicians that include guitarists Nels Cline, Lee Renaldo and/or Smokey Hormel, bassist Tony Garnier (who tours with Dylan), drummer Steve Shelley and Hammond organ player John Medeski and who call themselves The Million Dollar Bashers.The problem in covering a Bob Dylan song is this: it is almost impossible for anyone to record a Dylan song and not end up sounding like they are doing a bad imitation of Dylan. Dylan has proven, with few exceptions, to be the best interpreter of his own songs. The handful of artists who have managed to hold there own with a Dylan song are The Byrds (“Nothing Was Delivered”), Fairport Convention (“I’ll Keep It With Mine”), John Baez (“Love Is Just A Four Letter Word”) and possibly Jimi Hendrix (“All Along The Watchtower”).One problem in interpreting Dylan is that he was a very angry young man and songs such as “Ballad of a Thin Man” or “Can I Please Crawl Out Your Window” demand a singer disgusted with subject of the song he is singing about, and the ability to make the listener believe every word he sings. Neither Stephen Malkmus nor Craig Finn have it in them, and so, on the first few listens, their versions of those songs take epic works and seem to drain them of their power.In a sense, you can’t win when you sing Dylan. Try to imitate him and you reduce yourself to being a singer in a Dylan cover band. But if you attempt to radically reinterpret the song, you risk diluting the message, of losing the edge that Dylan himself brought to these songs when he recorded them.By now you’re probably thinking that I’m about to dismiss this collection, but that’s not the case. I want to warn you, though, that if you are looking for definitive versions of these songs, get the Dylan albums they are on. There is no substitute for listening to Dylan himself.To appreciate the recordings collected on this album requires a curiosity. What would “I Wanna Be Your Lover” sound like if Yo La Tengo performed it? How would Karen O take on “Highway 61 Revisited”? What would Cat Power do with “Stuck Inside a Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again”? If these questions intrigue you, then you will find this album, by turns, entertaining and, at times, sustaining.There are a number of ways to listen to this album, but the one I wouldn’t not suggest is simply starting with the first CD and listening straight through. That’s a good way to quickly be disappointed.Eddie Vedder kicks off the album with “All Along The Watchtower.” Vedder has turned in many strong performances fronting Pearl Jam, but his take on a song that was done to perfection by Dylan himself, and was then reinvented by Jimi Hendrix, is a major mistake. Skip it.Start instead with Sonic Youth’s brilliant version of the title track. This is a highlight, and while I haven’t recently re-listened to every Sonic Youth song (and thus can’t say what follows with authority), my immediate thought when I listened to Thurston Moore’s passionate vocal, was that this might be the vocal performance of his career (thus far). Moore gets that ache in his voice that makes this song when Dylan sings it, and again makes it when Thurston goes for it, backed by his brilliant colleagues. “Goin’ To Acapulco,” another Basement Tapes song follows, and it’s a knockout. Jim James of My Morning Jacket takes the lead vocal, backed by Calexico. While James faithfully apes Dylan’s lead vocal, the arrangement includes a horn section that brings a South of the Border vibe to the song.Other standouts: John Doe’s reading of one of Dylan’s Born Again songs, “Press On,” which sounds a hell of a lot better than I remember the original, but then maybe I was still in shock by the very idea of Dylan accepting Christianity when I head it back in 1980. Karen O totally kicks ass with her art-blues shock treatment of “Highway 61 Revisited.” Willie Nelson, with Calexico as backing band, makes “Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power)” a Willie Nelson song; Nelson is one of the few stylists who really can make any song sound like he wrote it. Tom Verlaine also makes his Dylan song, “Cold Irons Bound,” his own: his voice, his totally unique guitar work and his arrangement come together to make this sound appropriate for a David Lynch soundtrack.Now at first, these were the songs that I thought were keepers, and most of the others were interesting curios, worth a listen to two for their amusement value, not as songs I would ever want to revisit. But a funny thing happened as I kept listening to this lengthy, two-CD soundtrack; one by one, the versions that I’d dismissed started growing on me. Malkmus’ “Ballad of a Think Man,” which I’d so quickly dissed as a soulless cover now sounded like a sophisticated reading of the song, with Malkmus avoiding simply copying Dylan’s vocal. And the Hold Steady’s “Can I Please Crawl Out Your Window” became a Hold Steady song, with Finn putting his stamp on it in a way that honored Dylan and himself.And so it went: Cat Power bringing her newly upbeat spirit to “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again”; Charlotte Gainsbourg bringing a romanticism to her reading of “Just Like A Woman.” And so on.The trick here is to somehow escape from expectations. To somehow come at this album with what my former martial arts teacher called a “beginners mind.” Stephen Malkmus isn’t Bob Dylan. If you put on one of the Dylan songs he sings and expect to hear Dylan you’ll certainly be disappointed. But if you’re open to hear what the former Pavement front man can do with a song written by Dylan, well you might just have a hell of a great time listening to it.And what about my own experiences singing Dylan, back at the beginning of the seventies? Maybe I was too quick to dismiss those rag-tag versions that I screamed out with what seemed like a lifetime of anger at world that was so damn square, a world in which the Vietnam war was still raging, a war in which the Weather Underground were still, in their misguided way, fighting the good fight, a world that was ignoring the warnings signs of environmental doom to come, a world with Nixon in the White House. I wish we’d tape-recorded our set because I have the feeling that our take on Dylan might sound pretty good in a post-punk, post-grunge, post-garage rock revival world.