The stage was set to cut a classic, but something was not right. Miami's legendary Criteria Studios was promptly booked, the site that housed such landmark recordings as Derek & The Dominos' "Layla," Bob Marley's "Could You Be Loved," the Eagles' "Hotel California," and even the Bee Gees, "Stayin' Alive." "'Want to go somewhere else? Let's go to Miami.' Miami was the furthest point away." "So we were ready to start and then Bob said, 'You know, I can't work this close to home, with the family here. That heavily distorted vocal tone became the signature sound of Time Out Of Mind, and it matched the material perfectly. "Then right after the harmonica stuff," Howard says, "his voice came through the mic and then he heard his voice come through with this distortion all over it. Like this old, dirty, Little Walter kind of blues sound." "I said, 'Yes.' So I pumped it through a little Tube Screamer distortion pedal and then, bam, ran it through a little amp and when the harmonica came on it sounded amazing. … Is there any way you can make it sound electric?'" recalls Howard. "I finished this House of Blues recording and I was on the last mix of that when Bob said, 'I play harmonica on this next track. The Album's Gritty BeginningsĪs is the case many times in the studio, a small experiment led to the happy accident that provided one of the most important ingredients to the sonic stew of Time Out Of Mind: Dylan's gritty vocal tone. There Dylan began to share song ideas with Lanois and shape new sounds at the mixing board next to Howard. Dylan came by to oversee the final mixes at a studio installation they'd built in Oxnard, Calif., called Teatro. That team had worked well together, and in August 1996 Dylan returned to Lanois and Howard to mix a live recording from the House of Blues in Atlanta. Produced by Daniel Lanois ( U2, Peter Gabriel, Robbie Robertson) and engineered by Mark Howard (Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Neil Young), Oh Mercy had a "two guys on a back porch … kind of vibe," as Lanois described it in a 2011 interview. To me, loss has always been Dylan's motor: from 'Girl From The North Country' to 'Visions Of Johanna' to 'You're A Big Girl Now' to 'Ring Them Bells' -the terrible acknowledgement that all we love must drain away from us like sand in an hour glass."Īt that time, his last successful stint in the studio was for 1989's Oh Mercy, a comeback in its own right. "After hearing the record a couple of times, it began to manifest as his latest meditation on loss. "Dylan has a way of making his misery connect with your misery, no matter how remote his life may be from most people's," says Hitchcock. His career had already weathered several commercial and critical lulls and resurgences, all the while the man himself continued his "Never Ending Tour," perpetually placing him in front of audiences that so revered him, yet became increasingly fickle as Dylan's perceived heyday distanced. "The first time I heard Time Out Of Mind it annoyed me that somebody as exalted as Bob Dylan should parade his misery so blatantly," admits singer/songwriter Robyn Hitchcock, a devout Dylan disciple "Was his life really that wretched, after all he'd achieved, and all the adulation that had come his way?"īy 1997, Dylan hadn't released an album of new original songs in seven years, an unprecedented span for such a prolific artist. Yet Dylan painted a masterpiece with Time Out Of Mind, an astonishing feat considering how much darkness found its way into this shining moment in his career, how much magic came out in moments of chaotic mishap and given the fact that the album almost didn't come out at all. How meaningful must an album be to resurrect and redefine a career as big as Bob Dylan's? How well-crafted must it be to best Paul McCartney, Babyface and Radiohead for the Album Of The Year GRAMMY, spawn hits for Garth Brooks and Adele in the decade to come, and set the sonic bar for modern classics? Time Out Of Mind accomplished all of this.įrom early in his career, the mere concept of a new Dylan album had become akin to the old paradoxical riddle: Could God create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?
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