Tag Archives: Michael Goldberg

Audio: Patti Smith Talks About Singing With Bob Dylan – ‘like drinking the purest water’

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Bob Dylan and Patti Smith at the Beacon Theater, 1995.

I’ve been going through old interviews recently, putting together a collection of my music journalism, and I came across an interview that Jaan Uhelszki and I did with Patti Smith.

In August of 1996, two months after the release of her first album in eight years, Patti Smith sat down for an interview with us for my online magazine, Addicted To Noise.

Patti had a history with both myself and Jaan. She’d known Jaan when Jaan worked at Creem, and I’d interviewed Patti in 1975, before the release of her debut album, Horses.

We had a long conversation with Patti. I’ve pulled out the part where she talks about Bob Dylan. She had gone out on the road with Dylan at the end of 1995. At one point during the interview she said that she felt Bob Dylan was a big reason for why she became an artist.

Patti Smith: I’ve always felt that if there wasn’t a Bob Dylan I don’t know if… I think you have to give back what you’re given. I’ve been inspired and influenced by a lot of great people and I think it’s important, if you have any gifts at all, you have–if you’re given a gift, you have to give of it. One can’t hoard it. I think that is one thing Fred [‘Sonic’ Smith] and I were really talking about after being pretty reclusive for so long, that we did have a certain responsibility and I often, I deeply encouraged Fred, who was one of the most gifted people I ever knew to share his gifts with others and it’s regrettable it didn’t happen.

Some people are very comfortable with their gifts, somebody like Robert Mapplethorpe was very comfortable with them and used them daily. Worked daily. Other people are plagued by their gifts and I feel myself I have a little more of a better balance of comfortable plagued-ness, I have a little bit of plagued, I often feel dogged yet most of the time I feel blessed.

Jaan Uhelszki: The Dylan tour. How did it come about and did you stay in touch with him after you first met him at the Bottom Line in the seventies?

Patti Smith: No I hadn’t talked to him in some time. Really as I gleaned from Bob himself, he really felt that it would be good for me to come back out. He thought that I should come back out, and he said really nice things from onstage. I think that he feels I was a strong influence on things, and he thinks I should be out here–out in the front. He was very encouraging to me. I wasn’t really ready to work then, I really didn’t have a band. We’d been recording but I wasn’t really prepared to do anything. But I was so happy that he asked, that we decided to do it and you know we were a little rusty and rag tag but the people seemed happy and he was happy. My main mission on that small tour–it was only ten dates–was to crack all the energy, to crack all the atmosphere and get the stage ready for him. So we had our time before him and that was my prime directive was to get the night as magic as possible, so when he hit the stage, ’cause he hits a lot of them, that maybe it would feel a little more special than normal. And I think we did a pretty good job and I know that he was happy.

— continued —

Use this link or the one below below to get to the rest of this post.

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

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Audio: Bob Dylan’s Freewheelin’ Outtakes, Alternate Takes Part 2 – ‘Sally Gal,’ ‘Let Me Die in my Footsteps’ & More

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Photo via www.zeitgeistyreport.com.

The other day I posted some outtakes and alternate takes from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which Dylan spent a year, off an on, writing and recording. He completed the album on April 24, 1963.

Man I just can’t get enough of these early ’60s Dylan recordings. His voice is amazing and each performance is it’s own unique thing — we’re so lucky to get to hear these songs.

I know some of you have had them for years, but even so, every time I listen I hear something I didn’t hear before.

So here are more of the songs and versions that didn’t make the official album.

“Solid Road (Rocks and Gravel)”:

Solid Road (Rocks and Gravel) by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

“Going to New Orleans”:

“Let Me Die in my Footsteps”:

Let Me Die in my Footsteps by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

“Wichita Blues I”:

Wichita Blues I by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

“Sally Gal”:

“Whatcha Gonna Do”:

Whatcha Gonna Do by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

“Milkcow’s Calf Blues II”:

Milkcow's Calf Blues II by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –

Best Of 2013 Dept.: Michael Goldberg’s Favorites — music, films, books

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My favorite albums of the year, in no particular order:

1. Body/Head – Coming Apart

2. Bob Dylan, 50th Anniversary Collection 1963

3. Throwing Muses – Purgatory/ Paradise

4. Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell – Old Yellow Moon

5. Bob Dylan – Another Self-Portrait

6. La Lux – It’s Alive

7. Savages – Silence Yourself

8. M.I.A. – Matangi

9. Arcade Fire – Reflektor

10. Joanna Gruesome – Weird Sister

11. Boards of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest

12. Deerhunter – Monomania

13. Sky Ferreira – Night Time, My Time

14. Bill Callahan – Dream River

15. Neil Young – Live at the Cellar Door

16. Haim – Days Are Gone

17. Son Volt – Honky Tonk

18. Personal Records – Eleanor Friedberger

19. William Onyeabor – Who Is William Onyeabor?

Best Comp/Reissue/Box Set:

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, Trout Mask Replica (Zappa Records)

Also of note, though it was released in 2012: Captain Beefheart, Bat Chain Puller

Favorite Music Film/Other Film

These are films I watched this year and really dug: The Butler, Beautiful Losers, Not Fade Away, The Last Mistress, Band of Outsiders

Favorite Music Book / Other Book

The Story of a New Name – Elena Ferrante

I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen – Sylvie Simmons

Just Kids – Patti Smith

I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp – Richard Hell

Musical Highlights of 2013

Dylan’s Another Self Portrait; the rollout of Arcade Fire’s Reflektor; the unfolding of Kim Gordon’s solo career; a highlight not in a good way was Lou Reed’s death; the return of My Bloody Valentine and Neutral Milk Hotel; Jeff Tweedy solo tour; Sleater-Kinney on stage with Pearl Jam singing ‘Rockin’ in the Free World.’

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Time Tripping Back to 1970 with Neil Young: “Live at the Cellar Door”

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“Opening up and finding what’s inside me to write.”

By Michael Goldberg.

Neil Young bangs away at the chords. And there’s such sadness in his voice. He’s playing an acoustic guitar. He’s nearly finished his third song of the night. Banging away too hard. Or maybe the way he’s banging at those chords is perfect. And oh, the sadness.

In that quavering voice he sings:

Yes only love can break your heart, What if your world should fall apart?

Love broke my heart, and my world fell apart. I was 17. When you’re 17 you don’t know you’ll recover. When you’re 17 everything about love is the first time, even if it’s not the first time.

When you were young and on your own, How did it feel to be alone?

She had long brown hair, almost down to her waist. She wore white peasant blouses and worn denim overalls. It was 1970 and the world was so different. There are a lot of clichés about the ‘60s, which actually didn’t end until the early ‘70s (countercultural movements don’t conveniently end as a new decade begins), a lot of misunderstanding about what it was like back then.

There was a day in 1970 when we sat together, her and I, in the swing that hung from a huge tree in her family’s very private, very large front yard, and the wind was making the leaves in the trees shimmer, and the future seemed wide open, full of possibility, I mean anything was possible. Her body warm against mine as we swung back and forth. The whole world about to be remade, I just knew it.

I am lonely but you can free me, All in the way that you smile.

Yes, that was exactly it. Exactly.

Neil’s music was part of my soundtrack during the ‘60s and the ‘70s. He sang the sad songs and as a teenager I didn’t want to know the pain I heard in his voice. But I did know it. Every time her and I were apart, I knew it. Still I loved to hear Neil’s voice.

And later, after it was over, when we just couldn’t make it together — that girl and I — I knew for real how true Neil’s words were, and today they’re still true.

Neil’s new album, Live at the Cellar Door, was recorded in 1970, 43 years ago, at the Cellar Door, a club in Washington, DC. Listening to it I see, hear, feel, smell those days, a rush of moving images, as if my life was captured on film and these old recordings are the key to starting up the projector. All the ways I blew it, and how crazy it got. And she wouldn’t take my calls, wouldn’t see me when I came to her door, and I thought I’d explode.

Yes, love can break your heart — a cliché and so what, ‘cause it’s the truth.

Hearing Neil sing those old songs in that tenor voice, the tenor voice of a young man, it breaks my heart all over again. Neil was 25 when he played those songs at the Cellar Door.

For the rest of this column, head to Addicted To Noise.

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

My 1996 Interview With Lou Reed

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I read the news today, oh boy. Fuck. Lou Reed dead. I can’t believe it. I know we all die, but Lou Reed? I remember as a kid listening to a used copy of the Velvets’ first album in the living room of my parents house and trying to hear all the words to “Heroin.”

I was fascinated by the Velvets long before I really understood what they were all about, and why they were so important. I have played their albums for decades, particularly the third album, The Velvet Underground, and Loaded.

Like for millions of other fans all over the world, for me this is truly a sad day.

In 1996, when I was editor and publisher of Addicted To Noise, I had the opportunity to interview Lou Reed. The interview is still online. Here’s part of the introduction, with a link to the rest of the story.

Lou Reed is dressed in black. Black leather pants. Black t-shirt. Black shoes. Electricity is, literally, crackling off him, as he stands in his elegantly cool, private sixth floor office at the back of Sister Ray Enterprises, overlooking Broadway in the Village.

“Did you hear that?” he asks, walking over to an open window and closing it.

I think he’s referring to the street sounds, but I’m wrong.

At Sister Ray, there are Lou Reed and Velvet Underground posters on the walls, as well as framed gold and platinum albums for New York. A rack holds copies of many of Reed’s older albums; boxes of the recent Velvet Underground boxed set sit on a bookcase. A photographer is setting up to shoot Reed up front. Reed’s publicist is on the phone, dealing from a couch at the back, just outside the room where Reed and I are talking. Nearby is Reed’s Internet expert, Struan Oglanby.

“I’m getting a shock every time I get up,” Reed says with a grimace, taking a seat back at his desk. “That was that snapping sound.” Then, in that classic Lou Reed monotone, “I conduct a lot of electricity. It’s really strange.”

Maybe not so strange. We are, after all, talking about Lou Reed, founder of the Velvet Underground. Writer of such highly charged songs as “Heroin,” “I’m Waiting For The Man,” “Sweet Jane” and, of course, “Rock & Roll.” And Lisa Says.” And “Walk On The Wild Side.” And “Satellite Of Love.” And “The Blue Mask.” And “Romeo Had Juliette.” And “Dirty Blvd.” And….

You can read the rest of the interview here.

Watch Lou Reed perform “Sweet Jane.”