The Optical Files #131: Bob Dylan & The Band - Before the Flood (1974)

I've always had mixed feelings about live albums. There have been a few of them in this series, but I've never been somebody who seeks out live albums & compares performances between shows. Before the Flood has a reputation as one of the best live albums ever, but I have to confess that the magic other people hear doesn't always work on me. I find it difficult to imagine myself there, attending Dylan & The Band's joint arena tour back in '74. As I pointed out in the writeup on the Neil Young live album linked above, when I listen to that one I can smell the beer & feel the sticky floor at the Fillmore. Not so for Before the Flood. Perhaps a concert film would help with that immersion, but none is available. What I'm left with is a pretty energetic bunch of songs that, with a few exceptions, I'd usually rather listen to in their studio recordings.

Part of the reason for this, aside from general failure of imagination on my part, is that the production here is, perhaps ironically, a little too good. A lot of money was spent on these professional recordings & you can tell, especially when you compare it to that Neil Young album. The sound here is spacious, with each instrument cleanly audible & never getting in each other's way. If it weren't for a few mic-popping plosives in the acoustic set, you can almost believe this is a studio recording. Listeners to the album probably get better sound than the concert attendees did.

When you go to see Bob Dylan in concert, you never know which Dylan you're going to get. He might be gregarious, or he might ignore the audience. He might play all the hits or he might stick to deep cuts. 2 things are guaranteed, though: he'll change the arrangements of at least a few tunes, & he will sing in his "Bob Dylan live" voice. The live voice makes very few concessions to tunefulness. When he sings melodically, he mostly sticks it, but the status quo is an up & down cadence with a stretched-out descending melisma belting the last word of each line. It's apparent from the opening track, "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)," & in these performances tends toward comical exaggeration. He sings in his chesty, post-New Morning bellow, & it's odd to hear "Lay Lady Lay" sung in that style.

As for changing arrangements, "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" is probably the biggest surprise. He messes with the chords, the melody, & the lyrics, & comes up with something just as fun as the original. Granted, that song is pretty easy to make work as long as you bring some bluesy swagger to it, & he wasn't touring with trombones so he had to do something. The Band also reinterprets "It Ain't Me, Babe" into something triumphant with backing vocals & the descending upshots, rather than the confessional boundary-setting of the original recording.

It's difficult to write too much more about this because the songs are either tunes I've already written about in this series, or songs on albums that are still to come. (It's hard to resist offering my take on "Just Like a Woman" here, but just wait until I get to Blonde on Blonde...whew!) You'll notice I haven't said much about The Band, & that's because I've never really been a fan, although I certainly admire & respect them. They evolved from Dylan's backing band The Hawks, & their background with him makes the arrangements & playing here nice & tight. I especially enjoy the tasteful organ & guitar solo trading on "All Along the Watchtower" that impresses without stepping on Jimi's toes. The songs of theirs that appear on the album are fine, except for "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," which I have a major beef with. People like to defend the song saying that it was written by a Canadian, but in my mind that makes it worse. It wasn't Robbie's story to tell, & if he respected that he wouldn't have ended up with such a hamfisted piece of wrong-side-of-history Confederate apologism.

Despite everything else, there is 1 absolutely indispensable recording from this album, & that's the last song (& what sounds like an encore), "Blowin' in the Wind." One of the most iconic songs from Dylan's acoustic period is played in an open-armed, marching full-band arrangement that sounds like the footsteps of a deity emerging from a dust cloud to remind the people about what matters. I won't go so far as to say that cut alone was worth the hefty double-CD price I paid, but it's certainly a magical performance. Although I mostly prefer the studio recordings, these versions are nice to listen to for a change of pace. The album captures Dylan in a really exuberant live performance mode, I can't say there's anything really subpar here.

Except "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." Seriously fuck that song.