The Dylan-Petty Rehearsal Tapes

Bob and Tom jam on The Beatles, Merle Haggard, and more

I love rehearsal tapes. They have the aura of a window into something you’re not supposed to hear, but also provide a unique look at how a song or a setlist comes together. There aren’t a huge number out there—a dozen or so, mostly from the ’70s and ’80s—but they’re all fascinating. (I wrote about some 1984 rehearsals here and here, and an earlier Dylan-Petty rehearsal for Farm Aid here.)

It’s a mystery how these things leak. I recently heard a story of a tour participant selling a different set of rehearsal tapes to a bootleg label. I don’t know if that’s what happened here, but nevertheless, a few years ago, a set of Dylan + Heartbreakers rehearsals appeared on the Rattlesnake bootleg label. 46 tracks worth, from some indeterminate place and date near the end of 1985 as they prepared to head to Australia.

Because this particular tape originated on a bootleg label, it is not the raw tape. That would likely be hours long, much of it devoted to false starts or dead air or studio chatter or a guitarist tuning their E string interminably. Which I’d still like to hear for historical purposes, but for the purposes of an enjoyable listen, I understand why someone would crop it down to the highlights. The 46 songs on this tape they at least get part of the way through, without too much chatter or dead air. I’m also guessing these come from later rehearsals. They already sound pretty tight; they’re clearly not starting from scratch here.

So I’m going to go through the highlights of the highlights. Not all 46 tracks, but the dozen or so I enjoyed the most. In many cases, those are songs they rehearsed but never played live (in a few cases, it’s a song Dylan never played live). Other times, you hear an unused arrangement or an alternate lyric or something different than what eventually happened on stage. I’ll go in the order they appear on this bootleg, though there are indications that this is not the order these performances actually happened in.

“I Shall Be Released”

This tape begins and ends with “I Shall Be Released,” with one extra version in the middle. The first is the most interesting. It’s just Bob and the backing singers, working on their parts. He’s openly coaching them in a way you rarely hear. Most musicians I interview talk about never getting explicit instruction from Dylan, but maybe it’s different with backing singers. They need to have an actual part. So he’s helping them through it. “‘I see my life’—you have to come right in there too,” he says when they don’t join him immediately for the chorus. Then they arrange a cool part in the round, each vocalist singing the title line at different times. While they did perform “Released” live, they never did this vocal part.

The other two takes are less interesting. They’re too generic arena-rock. Dead, not soaring. The most interesting part is a new verse he sings on both:

You’ll find out where you stand
Even in the arms of somebody else’s wife
You know you should be praying
You could be in the midnight hour of your life

“Gotta Serve Somebody”

They played “Serve Somebody” twice this tour, and neither was that memorable. But here, again, is a cool vocal part in this rehearsal version they didn’t use. The instruments drop out for the “It might be the devil” bit while the singers belt it a cappella, with only Stan Lynch’s drum hits propelling it forward.

“Trouble”

Shot of Love’s “Trouble” has never been performed live at this point—it wouldn’t be for another few years, debuting in 1989. So it’s intriguing to hear Dylan and the Heartbreakers trying it out here. Dylan mostly doesn’t seem to remember the words (this will be a theme on this tape), but he stumbles into a new lyric:

Trouble in the morning
Trouble way down south
Trouble every time you open up your mouth

Overall, though, it’s not that interesting a song, and hearing an extended five-minute jam of it doesn’t help. Not a huge loss to drop it from the tour.

“Sing Me Back Home” (Merle Haggard)

Seven tracks later, we hit one of the most intriguing songs on the tape. It’s labeled “Sing Me Back Home” here, and eventually it kinda turns into the Merle Haggard tune. He sings the chorus a few times, though again not remembering most of the words (good luck to the backing singers trying to follow him).

But more intriguing is the first half. It doesn’t sound like “Sing Me Back Home” yet. It sounds like he’s singing some half-remembered gospel song—and singing it beautifully too. Whatever it is, I wish they’d kept working on it. It’s one of his best vocal performances of the tape.

“Union Sundown”

From the sacred to the profane! “Union Sundown” sometimes appears on worst-Bob-songs-ever lists. I gotta admit, it’s pretty fun here, with Lynch especially ripping through the drum part. Bob doesn’t remember any of the lyrics, enthusiastically singing nonsense verses, which is actually pretty fun. This might be my favorite version of this song. They didn’t play it live the first tour, but would a few times in the summer, marking the song’s live debut.

Now we get into two of the most exciting songs on this entire tape…

“Come Together” (The Beatles)

When I saw “Come Together” on this list, I guessed it was just some loose jam on the chords. But no! This is Dylan, the Heartbreakers, and the Queens of Rhythm actually covering the Beatles classic—something Bob never did before or since.

Hilariously, he seems to know the words to this better than most of his own songs here. It sounds great! Were they really considering playing this in concert, I wonder? They sound pretty polished on it across both performances. I love the enthusiastic “Alright!” Dylan gives at 1:10 in the second take below. Also he shouts out “Rolling Thunder” in the first take. Here are both:

Eight more songs after the jump, including my favorite of all, a never-performed-elsewhere cover of an oldies-radio staple that tops even “Come Together”