![]() ![]() ![]() Yet the effect comes alive more in this remixed version (particularly on ‘Cold Irons Bound’). On the remixed album you can hear the different placement of amps, with some guitarists further forward than others, which is down to Lanois’s clever set-up in the studio. There were no less than four drummers during the sessions. Dylan brought in multiple players for every instrument, from star session players such as drummer Jim Keltner and legendary blues axeman Duke Robillard to members of Dylan’s touring band, including pedal steel player Bucky Baxter and long-standing bassist Tony Garnier. The result is that you notice more instruments in the mix – not surprising considering how many musicians there were. In its place is an album that is bare and spectral, and sounds ‘up close’, almost as if you’re in the studio hearing it live. Elsewhere, it is more obvious that Lanois’s heavy reverb and artificial effects have been dialled back. The cover of Fragments – Time Out Of Mind Sessions (1996-1997) Īt times you have to listen closely to hear the differences between the remixed album and the original. ![]() The five-CD box set also includes alternate takes and demos of songs from the sessions, live performances of the album’s songs, and various takes on four songs that never made the cut. It gives listeners the chance to hear the record as Dylan wanted it. Now, however, just as McCartney released his own remixed version of Let It Be in 2003 to lose Spector’s input, the opening disc of Dylan’s 17th ‘Bootleg Series’, Fragments, features the album remixed by Michael Brauer with Lanois’s embellishments stripped back. Lanois would be the last producer Dylan worked with, choosing to do it himself under the pseudonym ‘Jack Frost’ ever since. You’d be forgiven for assuming a Beatle and a future Nobel Laureate would get their own way, but there was a time when this wasn’t the case. But they illustrate the creative conflicts that once took place between legendary musicians and star producers. Of course, Dylan’s and McCartney’s clashes with their producers are very different (not least as McCartney was one of four when it came to decision-making). They all would say the same… that album sounds to me a little off.’ Ask Daniel Lanois, who was trying to produce the songs. ‘My recollection of that record is that it was a struggle,’ Dylan said four years after its release. Yet Dylan was disappointed with Lanois’s artificial edits post-production, just like McCartney had been with Let It Be. Dylan’s 30th studio album was widely accepted as his most complete work since Blood on the Tracks in 1974, and swept the board at the 1998 Grammys, winning Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk Album and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. But what came out of it was a seminal record: Time Out Of Mind. ![]() Their relationship was fraught, filled with creative differences, tantrums, fights, and even smashed guitars. But what came out of it was a seminal recordįrom September 1996 to March 1997, they worked together in two studios, beginning in a disused theatre in California, before moving to Miami’s Criteria Studios. The relationship between Dylan and Lanois was fraught, filled with creative differences, tantrums, fights, and even smashed guitars. They were so complex.’ Dylan hadn’t written any melodies, but gave Lanois a collection of old Delta blues records to illustrate the raw sound he wanted. ‘They had regret and hope, beauty and optimism. ‘They had a lot in them,’ he would later say. Although they hadn’t kept in touch, Dylan wanted Lanois’s verdict on some lyrics he had written: was there enough to make a record? Lanois was receptive. They had worked together on Oh Mercy in 1989 after Lanois was recommended by Bono. In 1996 Dylan, who hadn’t released any original material since Under the Red Sky six years earlier, met with Lanois. He was behind a string of hits for stars including U2, Emmylou Harris and the Neville Brothers. Daniel Lanois might not be a household name like Spector, but in the 1980s and 1990s musicians queued for his services and trademark swampy, atmospheric sound. This was not the disc he had conceived: some of the most cherished songs in his oeuvre had been hijacked by superstar producer Phil Spector, who stamped his trademark ‘Wall of Sound’ during the album’s post-production process, filling it with lavish embellishments.įast-forward to the mid-1990s and another legendary songwriter was at loggerheads with a different superstar producer, then still a dominant force in the era of mega-selling records. As millions of fans around the world bought the band’s final album, Paul McCartney was horrified. To understand Bob Dylan’s Fragments – Time Out Of Mind Sessions (1996-1997) – due to be released on Friday – you have to go back half a century to the release of the Beatles’s Let It Be. ![]()
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