Culture Club: Bob Dylan, Bootleg 9: The Witmark Demos

This week’s Culture Club will now discuss Bob Dylan, Bootleg 9: The Witmark Demos.

Our music critic Andy Gill thought the latest in the Bob Dylan Bootleg series was an extraordinary insight into the young mind of the young songwriter awarding it five stars and describing it thus:

“There are substantial tranches of similarly earnest strummage, some redeemed by his facility with wordplay, and plenty of evidence of his Woody Guthrie obsession. But the highlights – early takes of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, “Masters Of War”, and versions of “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and “Mr Tambourine Man” both pounded out roughly on piano – must have had a devastating impact on those performers who heard them back in the Sixties.”

But what do you think of the Witmark Demos? Join our arts debate by leaving your comments below and the best will be published in the Independent on Thursday 28th October.

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• http://towardstheback.blogspot.com/ sevensleepers

  The Witmark Demos showcases the young Dylan – a Dylan wrestling with his material and attempting to define his own identity.

  He adopts the templates of his mentors yet grafts the polished lyricism that will define him as the great musical poet of the late twentieth century.

  By the end of this collection Dylan has achieved his goal and we get the first hints of that early classic – 1963’S The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in tracks as unique as Masters of War and Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright.

  This is an extremely worthy release and, let’s be clear, not just for those pen sucking Dylan ‘completeists’.

• snotcricket

  To write the lyrics

  I’m a-thinkin’ and a-wond’rin’ all the way down the road
  I once loved a woman, a child I’m told
  I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
  But don’t think twice, it’s all right

  At 20………………………..