Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
Longs: -6 6 -6 6 7 -6 6 -6 6
6 -6 6 7 -7
I gott a fee ling
6 6 7 -7 -6 6 5 7 -7
That to night’s go nna be a good night
6 6 7 -7 -6 6 5 -8 -7
That to night’s go nna be a good night
6 6 -8 -7 -6 6 5 -8 -8 -7 -6 / 6 6 7 -7
That to night’s go nna be a good night
Play this part twice and then end adding:
-10 9
Middle sections:
-8 -9 8 -8 -9 8 -8 8 -8 -7 -7 -6 6
8 9 8 -8 9 8 -8 9 8 -8 9 (Let’s go way section)
9 9 8 -8 9
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
+3 -3
+3 +5 -4
+3
+3 +5 -4 -3 +3 +2
+5 -4 +3
+3 +5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -4 +3
+3 -5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -5 -4 -3 +3
+3 +5 -4
+3
+3 +5 -4 -3 +3 +2
+5 -4 +3
+3 +5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -4 +3
+3 -5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -5 -4 -3 +3 +3
+5 -4 -7
+7 +3
+3 +5 -4 -3 +3 +2
+5 -4 +3 +3
+5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -4 +3 +3
-5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -5 -4 -3 +3
+3 +5 -4 -7
+7 +3
+3 +5 -4 -3 +3 +2
+5 -4 +3
+3 +5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -4 +3
+3 -5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -5 -4 -3 +3
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -3 +3
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -4
-4 +6 -5
-4 +6 -5 -4 -4 -3 +3
-5 -6 +6 -5 -6 +6
-5 +6 -5 -4 -4 -3 +3
+6 +7 +7 +6
-5 +7 +6 -5 +7 +6
-5 +7 +6 -5 +7 +6
-5 +7 +7 +6 -5 +7
-5 -5 -5 -5
-5 -3 +3
-5 -5 -5 -5 -5
-5 -5 -5
-5 +6 +6 +6 +6
+6 +6 +6 +6
+6 +6 +6 +6
+5 -4 -3 +3 +3
+2 +5 -4 -3 +3 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 +5 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 -4 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 +5 -3 +3 -3
-4 +3 +5 +5 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 +5 +5 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 +5 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 +5 +3 +3 -3
+3 +5 -4 -7
+7 +3
+3 +5 -4 -3 +3 +2
+5 -4 +3
+5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -4 +3
-5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -5 -4 -3 +3
+3 +5 -4 -7
+7 +3
+5 -4 -3 +3 +2
+5 -4 +3
+5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -4 +3
-5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -5 -4 -3 +3
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -3 +3
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -4 -4
-4 -4 -4
-4 -5 -5 -5 -5
-5 -3 +3
-5 -5 -5 -5 -5
-5 -5 -5
-5 +6 +6 +6 +6
+6 +6 +6 +6
+6 +6 +6 +6
+5 -4 -3 +3 +3
+2 +5 -4 -3 +3 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 +5 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 -4 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 +5 -3 +3 -3
-4 +3 +5 +5 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 +5 +5 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 +5 +5 -4 -4
+3 +5 +5 +5 +5 +5 +5
+5 +5 +6 +6 -5 +6 +6
-5 +6 +6 -5 +6
+6 +6 -5 +6 +6
-5 +6 +6 -5 +6
+6 +6 -5 +6 +6
-5 +6 +6 -5 +6
+6 +6 -5 +6 +6
-5 +6 +6 -5 +6
+3 +3 +3
+3 +3 +3 -1 +1
B +3 +3 +3 +3
+3 +3 +3 +3 -1 +1
B +3 +3 +3 +3 +3 +3
+3 +3 +3 +3 +3 -3
-3 +3 +3 +3 +3 -3 -1
-1 -1 +3 +3 +3 +3 -3
+3 +5 -4 -7
+7 +3
+5 -4 -3 +3 +2
+5 -4 +3
+3 +5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -4 +3
+3 -5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -5 -4 -3 +3
+3 +5 -4 -7
+7 +3
+3 +5 -4 -3 +3 +2
+5 -4 +3 +3
+5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -4 +3 +3
-5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -5 -4 -3 +3
+3 +5 -4 -7
+7 +3
+3 +5 -4 -3 +3 +2
+5 -4 +3 +3
+5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -4 +3 +3
-5 -4 -3 +3 +2
-5 -5 -4 -3 +3
-7
+7
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
-1,-1,-1,-1,2,-2hsb,-2hsb,-2hsb,-3hsb,-3hsb,-3,-3hsb,-3fsb,-2hsb,-3b
(Dwah), ,-3b (Dwah),-3hsb, 2,-1,-1b,-1,-1,-1,2,-2hsb,-2hsb-2hsb, ,-3b
(Dwah), ,-3b (Dwah),-3, ,-3b (Dwah),-3fsb,-2hsb,-3fsb, ,-3b
(Dwah),,4,4,4, ,-3b (Dwah), ,-3b (Dwah),-3,-3fsb,-3fsb,-2b (Dwah),-2
feel free to change it and make it yours!
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
YOU GOTTA LOVE SOMEONE ELTON JOHN
KEY OF E
4 -4 5 5 5
You can win the fight,
5 4 -5b -5b -5 -5b -6 5
you can grab a piece of the sky
4 -4 5 5 5
You can break the rules
-5b -5b -5 -5 5
but be-fore you try
5 5 -5b 5 -4 -4
You got-ta love some-one
-4 -4 5 -4 4 4
You got-ta love some-one
VERSE 2 same as 1
You can stop the world,
steal the face from the moon
You can beat the clock,
but before high noon
You gotta love someone
You gotta love someone
VERSE 3
-4 5 -5 -6b -5 -5 -5 -4
You’ve got one life with a rea-son
5 -5 -6b -5 -5b -5 -5b
You need two hearts on one side
5 -5 -6b -6b -6b 5 -5 -6b -6b -6b
When you stand a-lone and there’s no one there
-5 -6b -6b -6b -5 -6 -6b -5 -5b 5 -4
To share the way it feels in-side and ba-by
VERSE 4 same as 1
You can cheat the devil
and slice a piece of the sun
Burn up the highway but before you run
You gotta love someone
You gotta love someone
Verse 5 same as 3
When you’re gon-na play with fire
You let some-one share the heat
When you’re on your own and there’s no one there
To cool the flames be-neath your feet and ba-by
(Repeat Verse 1)
5 5 -5b 5 -4 -4
You got-ta love some-one
-4 -4 5 -4 4 4
You got-ta love some-one
ENJOY!!!
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
5 5 5 -5 -5 -5 -5 6 6 -4 5 -4 4
I like the way your sparkling ear-rings- lay,
5 5 5 -5 5 4 -4 -4 5
against your skin, so– brown
4 5 5 5 -5 -5 -5
and I wanna sleep with you
-5 6 6 6 5 -4 4 4
in– the desert tonight
-4 5 5 5 -5 5 -4 -4 -4 5
with a billion stars all- a–round
-4 5 6 5 -6 -6 -6 6 6 6 5
’cause I got a peaceful eas–y feeling
4 -5 -5 -5 -5 5 4 -4 -4
and I know you won’t let me– down
4 4 -4 5 -5 6 -4 4 -3 -3″
’cause I’m al—ready standing
-3 -3″ 4 4
on—- the ground
And I found out a long time ago
what a woman can do to your soul
Ah, but she can’t take you anyway
You don’t already know how to go
and I gotta peaceful, easy feeling
and I know you won’t let me down
’cause I’m already standing
on the ground
I get this feeling I may know you
as a lover and a friend
but this voice keeps whispering
in my other ear, tells me
I may never see you again
’cause I get a peaceful, easy feeling
and I know you won’t let me down
’cause I’m already standing on the ground
’cause I’m already standing…
on the ground
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
1.
-6-6 7 -8 8 -8 7 -8 -8 7-6
Listen to the sound of the revolution
-6-6 7-8 8 -8 7 -8 7 -6
Every-body`s out on the street to-night
7 7 -8 -8 7 7 7 -8 -8 7
Every-body`s cool, Ev`ry thing`s alright
7 7 -8 -8 7 -6 -6 7 -8 -8 7
Better pray that your old man don`t get home
6 -6
to-night
5 6 -6 -6 -6 5 6 -6 -6 -6
Let me drive my car where the wild things are
6 6 -6 -8 -8 -8 7-6
I`ve got a Green Limousine
5 6 -6 -6 -6 5 6 -6 7 -6
Every one`s a star but you won`t get far
6 -6 6 -8 -8-8 7 -6
With-out a Green Limousine
7 7 -6 -7 -6 -6 7 7 -7 -6
No need don`t get up-tight, I`ve got room to
-7
spare
7 7 -5 -6 -6 -6-5 -5-6 -6-6 7
Prophets and sweet hitch-hikers I`m gonna take
-6 -10 -9
you there
2.
Some-one burned the flag of the old convention
Set the wheels in motion here to-night
Every-body`s cool, Every-thung`s alright
Gotta feelin` in my bones we`re gonna get it on to-night.
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
6 6 6 6 6 6_
You’re always in my heart
3 -3 5 5 -3 5 5 -5 6 5
From early in the mornin’ til it’s dark
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 3_ -4 -4 5_
I gotta see your sweet, sweet smile everyday
6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5
When I wake up in the mornin’
5 5 6 5 5
And I see you there
3 -3 5 5 5 5 -5 6 5
I always whisper a little prayer
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 -5_ 6 3 5
I gotta see your sweet, sweet smile everyday
3 3 3* -3 -3 3 -3 5
I gotta know that you love me
-3 -3 3 -3 5
And that you want me
-3 -3 -3 -3 6 3 -3
And that you’ll always be there
-3 -3 -3 6 -5 5__ 5 5 -5__
I’ve gotta know that you care
3 3 3 3* -3 3 -3 3 -3 5
And I gotta feel your arms around me
-3 -3 3 -3 5
And that you need me
-3 -3 -3 6 3 -3
And that you’ll always be there
-3 -3 -3 6 -5 5__ 5 5 -5__
I’ve gotta know that you care
6 6 6 6 -5 -5 6 5_
If my times are bringin’ me down
– 3 5 5 -3 5 5 -5 6 5 5
You’re the only one that I want around
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 -5_ 6 3 5_
I gotta see your sweet, sweet smile everyday
6 6 6 6 6 6_
And if I’m all strung out
-3 5 5 -3 5 5 5 -5 6 5 5
You’re the only one who can straighten me out
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 7_ -5* 6 5_
I gotta see your sweet, sweet smile every day
(Repeat Verses 3 & 4, Interlude, Repeat Verses 3 &4)
6 6 6 6 -5 -5 6 5_
You’re always in my heart
-3 5 5 -3 5 5 -5 6 5 5
From early in the mornin’ til it’s dark
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 -5_ 6 3 5_
I gotta see your sweet, sweet smile everyday
5 5 5 -5 -5 -5 -5 3_ -4 -4 5_
I gotta see your sweet, sweet smile everyday
5 5 5 -5 -5 -5 -5 7_ -5* 6 6 -5 5__
I gotta see your sweet, sweet smile everyday
This plays with karaoke music, same Artist, run time 3:00.
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
James Patrick Page OBE (born 9 January 1944) is an English musician, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin.
Page is prolific in creating guitar riffs and his varied style involves various guitar tunings, technical and melodic solos and aggressive, distorted guitar tone as well as his folk and eastern influenced acoustic work. He is also noted for occasionally playing his guitar with a cello bow to create a droning sound texture to the music.
Page began his career as a studio session musician in London and, by the mid-1960s, alongside Big Jim Sullivan, was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Britain. He was a member of the Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968. When The Yardbirds broke up, he founded Led Zeppelin, which was active from 1968–1980. Following the death of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, he participated in a number of groups throughout the 1980s and 1990s, notably XYZ, The Firm, The Honeydrippers, Coverdale–Page, and Page and Plant. Since 2000, Page has participated in various guest performances with many artists, both live and in studio recordings, and participated in a one-off Led Zeppelin reunion in 2007 that was released as the 2012 concert film Celebration Day. Along with The Edge and Jack White, he participated in the 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud.
Page is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Rolling Stone magazine has described Page as “the pontiff of power riffing” and ranked him number three in their list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”, behind Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. In 2010, he was ranked number two in Gibson’s list of “Top 50 Guitarists of All Time” and, in 2007, number four on Classic Rock’s “100 Wildest Guitar Heroes”. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: once as a member of the Yardbirds (1992) and once as a member of Led Zeppelin (1995).
Page was born to James Patrick Page and Patricia Elizabeth Gaffikin in the west London suburb of Heston on 9 January 1944. His father was a personnel manager at a plastic-coatings plant[11] and his mother, who was of Irish descent, was a doctor’s secretary. In 1952, they moved to Feltham and then to Miles Road, Epsom in Surrey. Page was educated from the age of eight at Epsom County Pound Lane Primary School, and when he was eleven he went to Ewell County Secondary School in West Ewell. He came across his first guitar, a Spanish guitar, in the Miles Road house: “I don’t know whether [the guitar] was left behind by the people [in the house] before [us], or whether it was a friend of the family’s—nobody seemed to know why it was there.” First playing the instrument when aged 12, he took a few lessons in nearby Kingston, but was largely self-taught:
When I grew up there weren’t many other guitarists … There was one other guitarist in my school who actually showed me the first chords that I learned and I went on from there. I was bored so I taught myself the guitar from listening to records. So obviously it was a very personal thing.
This “other guitarist” was a boy called Rod Wyatt, a few years his senior, and together with another boy, Pete Calvert, they would practise at Page’s house; Page would devote six or seven hours on some days to practising and would always take his guitar with him to secondary school, only to have it confiscated and returned to him after class. Among Page’s early influences were rockabilly guitarists Scotty Moore and James Burton, who both played on recordings made by Elvis Presley. Presley’s song “Baby Let’s Play House” is cited by Page as being his inspiration to take up the guitar, and he would reprise Moore’s playing on the song in the live version of “Whole Lotta Love” on The Song Remains the Same. He appeared on BBC1 in 1957 with a Höfner President acoustic, which he’d bought from money saved up from his milk round in the summer holidays and which had a pickup so it could be amplified, but his first solid-bodied electric guitar was a second-hand 1959 Futurama Grazioso, later replaced by a Fender Telecaster, a model he had seen Buddy Holly playing on the TV and a real-life example of which he’d played at an electronics exhibition at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London.
Page’s musical tastes included skiffle (a popular English music genre of the time) and acoustic folk playing, and the blues sounds of Elmore James, B.B. King, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Freddie King and Hubert Sumlin.[ “Basically, that was the start: a mixture between rock and blues.”
At the age of 13, Page appeared on Huw Wheldon’s All Your Own talent quest programme in a skiffle quartet, one performance of which aired on BBC1 in 1957. The group played “Mama Don’t Want to Skiffle Anymore” and another American-flavoured song, “In Them Ol’ Cottonfields Back Home”. When asked by Wheldon what he wanted to do after schooling, Page said, “I want to do biological research [to find a cure for] cancer, if it isn’t discovered by then.”
In an interview with Guitar Player magazine, Page stated that “there was a lot of busking in the early days, but as they say, I had to come to grips with it and it was a good schooling.” When he was fourteen, and billed as James Page, he played in a group called Malcolm Austin and Whirlwinds, alongside Tony Busson on bass, Stuart Cockett on rhythm and a drummer called Tom, knocking out Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis numbers. This band was short-lived, as Page soon found a drummer for a band he’d previously been playing in with Rod Wyatt, David Williams and Pete Calvert, and came up with a name for them: The Paramounts. The Paramounts played gigs in Epsom, once supporting a group who would later become Johnny Kidd & the Pirates.
Although interviewed for a job as a laboratory a*sistant, he ultimately chose to leave secondary school in West Ewell to pursue music, doing so at the age of fifteen – the earliest age permitted at the time – having gained four GCE O levels and on the back of a major row with the school Deputy Head Miss Nicholson about his musical ambitions, about which she was wholly scathing.
Page had difficulty finding other musicians with whom he could play on a regular basis. “It wasn’t as though there was an abundance. I used to play in many groups … anyone who could get a gig together, really.” Following stints backing recitals by Beat poet Royston Ellis at the Mermaid Theatre between 1960–61, and singer Red E. Lewis, who’d seen him playing with the Paramounts at the Contemporary club in Epsom and told his manager Chris Tidmarsh to ask Page to join his backing band, the Redcaps, after the departure of guitarist Bobby Oats, Page was asked by singer Neil Christian to join his band, the Crusaders. Christian had seen a fifteen-year-old Page playing in a local hall, and the guitarist toured with Christian for approximately two years and later played on several of his records, including the 1962 single, “The Road to Love.”
During his stint with Christian, Page fell seriously ill with infectious mononucleosis (i.e. glandular fever) and could not continue touring. While recovering, he decided to put his musical career on hold and concentrate on his other love, painting, and enrolled at Sutton Art College in Surrey. As he explained in 1975:
[I was] travelling around all the time in a bus. I did that for two years after I left school, to the point where I was starting to get really good bread. But I was getting ill. So I went back to art college. And that was a total change in direction. That’s why I say it’s possible to do. As dedicated as I was to playing the guitar, I knew doing it that way was doing me in forever. Every two months I had glandular fever. So for the next 18 months I was living on ten dollars a week and getting my strength up. But I was still playing.
While still a student, Page often performed on stage at the Marquee Club with bands such as Cyril Davies’ All Stars, Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, and fellow guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. He was spotted one night by John Gibb of Brian Howard & the Silhouettes, who asked him to help record some singles for Columbia Graphophone Company, including “The Worrying Kind”. Mike Leander of Decca Records first offered Page regular studio work. His first session for the label was the recording “Diamonds” by Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, which went to Number 1 on the singles chart in early 1963.
After brief stints with Carter-Lewis and the Southerners, Mike Hurst and the Method and Mickey Finn and the Blue Men, Page committed himself to full-time session work. As a session guitarist, he was known as ‘Lil’ Jim Pea’ to prevent confusion with the other noted English session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan. Page was mainly called into sessions as “insurance” in instances when a replacement or second guitarist was required by the recording artist. “It was usually myself and a drummer”, he explained, “though they never mention the drummer these days, just me … Anyone needing a guitarist either went to Big Jim [Sullivan] or myself.” He stated that “In the initial stages they just said, play what you want, cos at that time I couldn’t read music or anything.”
Page was the favoured session guitarist of record producer Shel Talmy. As a result, he secured session work on songs for the Who and the Kinks. Page is credited with playing acoustic twelve-string guitar on two tracks on the Kinks’ debut album, “I’m a Lover Not a Fighter” and “I’ve Been Driving on Bald Mountain”, and possibly on the B-side “I Gotta Move”. He played rhythm guitar on the sessions for the Who’s first single “I Can’t Explain” (although Pete Townshend was reluctant to allow Page’s contribution on the final recording; Page also played lead guitar on the B-side, “Bald Headed Woman”). Page’s studio gigs in 1964 and 1965 included Marianne Faithfull’s “As Tears Go By”, Jonathan King’s “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon”, the Nashville Teens’ “Tobacco Road”, the Rolling Stones’ “Heart of Stone”, Van Morrison & Them’s “Baby, Please Don’t Go”, “Mystic Eyes”, and “Here Comes the Night”, Dave Berry’s “The Crying Game” and “My Baby Left Me”, Brenda Lee’s “Is It True”, and Petula Clark’s “Downtown”.
In a 2010 interview, Page recalled contributing guitar to the incidental music of the Beatles’ 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night, which was being recorded at Abbey Road Studios.
In 1965, Page was hired by Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham to act as house producer and A&R man for the newly formed Immediate Records label, which allowed him to play on and/or produce tracks by John Mayall, Nico, Chris Farlowe, Twice as Much and Clapton. Also in 1965, Page produced one of Dana Gillespie’s early singles, “Thank You Boy”. Page also formed a brief songwriting partnership with then romantic interest Jackie DeShannon. He composed and recorded songs for the John Williams (not to be confused with the film composer John Williams) album The Maureeny Wishful Album with Big Jim Sullivan. Page worked as session musician on Donovan Leitch’s Sunshine Superman and the Johnny Hallyday albums Jeune Homme and Je Suis Né Dans La Rue, the Al Stewart album Love Chronicles and played guitar on five tracks of Joe Cocker’s debut album, With a Little Help from My Friends. Over the years since 1970, Page played lead guitar on 10 Roy Harper tracks, comprising 81 minutes of music.
When questioned about which songs he played on, especially ones where there exists some controversy as to what his exact role was, Page often points out that it is hard to remember exactly what he did given the enormous number of sessions he was playing at the time.[ In a radio interview he explained that “I was doing three sessions a day, fifteen sessions a week. Sometimes I would be playing with a group, sometimes I could be doing film music, it could be a folk session … I was able to fit all these different roles.”
Although Page recorded with many notable musicians, many of these early tracks are only available as bootleg recordings, several of which were released by the Led Zeppelin fan club in the late 1970s. One of the rarest of these is the early jam session featuring him and Stones guitarist Keith Richards covering Robert Johnson’s “Little Queen of Spades”. Several early tracks were compiled on the twin album release, Jimmy Page: Session Man. He also recorded with Richards on guitar and vocals in Olympic Sound Studios on 15 October 1974. Along with Ric Grech on bass and Bruce Rowland on drums, a track called “Scarlet” was cut. Page reflected later in an interview with Rolling Stone’s Cameron Crowe: “I did what could possibly be the next Stones B side. It was Ric Grech, Keith and me doing a number called “Scarlet.” I can’t remember the drummer. It sounded very similar in style and mood to those Blonde on Blonde tracks. It was great, really good. We stayed up all night and went down to Island Studios where Keith put some reggae guitars over one section. I just put some solos on it, but it was eight in the morning of the next day before I did that. He took the tapes to Switzerland and someone found out about them. Keith told people that it was a track from my album”.
Page left studio work when the increasing influence of Stax Records on popular music led to the greater incorporation of brass and orchestral arrangements into recordings at the expense of guitars. He stated that his time as a session player served as extremely good schooling:
My session work was invaluable. At one point I was playing at least three sessions a day, six days a week! And I rarely ever knew in advance what I was going to be playing. But I learned things even on my worst sessions – and believe me, I played on some horrendous things. I finally called it quits after I started getting calls to do Muzak. I decided I couldn’t live that life any more; it was getting too silly. I guess it was destiny that a week after I quit doing sessions Paul Samwell-Smith left the Yardbirds and I was able to take his place. But being a session musician was good fun in the beginning – the studio discipline was great. They’d just count the song off and you couldn’t make any mistakes.
In late 1964, Page was approached about the possibility of replacing Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds, but he declined out of loyalty to his friend. In February 1965, Clapton quit the Yardbirds and Page was formally offered his spot, but unwilling to give up his lucrative career as a session musician and worried about his health under touring conditions, he suggested his friend Jeff Beck. On 16 May 1966, drummer Keith Moon, bass player John Paul Jones, keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, Beck and Page recorded “Beck’s Bolero” in London’s IBC Studios. The experience gave Page an idea to form a new supergroup featuring Beck, along with The Who’s John Entwistle on bass and Moon on drums. However, the lack of a quality vocalist and contractual problems prevented the project from getting off the ground. During this time, Moon suggested the name “Lead Zeppelin” for the first time, after Entwistle commented that the proceedings would take to the air like a lead balloon.
Within weeks, Page attended a Yardbirds concert at Oxford. After the show, he went backstage where Paul Samwell-Smith announced that he was leaving the group. Page offered to replace Samwell-Smith, and this was accepted by the group. He initially played electric bass with the Yardbirds before finally switching to twin lead guitar with Beck when Chris Dreja moved to bass. The musical potential of the line-up was scuttled, however, by interpersonal conflicts caused by constant touring and a lack of commercial success, although they released one single, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”. While Page and Beck played together in the Yardbirds, the trio of Page, Beck and Clapton never played in the original group at the same time. The three guitarists did appear on stage together at the ARMS Charity Concerts in 1983.
After Beck’s departure, the Yardbirds remained a quartet. They recorded one album with Page on lead guitar, Little Games. The album received indifferent reviews and was not a commercial success, peaking at number 80 on the Billboard 200. Though their studio sound was fairly commercial at the time, the band’s live performances were just the opposite, becoming heavier and more experimental. These concerts featured musical aspects that Page would later perfect with Led Zeppelin, most notably performances of “Dazed and Confused”.
After the departure of Keith Relf and Jim McCarty in 1968, Page reconfigured the group with a new line-up to fulfil unfinished tour dates in Scandinavia. To this end, Page recruited vocalist Robert Plant and drummer John Bonham, and he was also contacted by John Paul Jones, who asked to join. During the Scandinavian tour, the new group appeared as the New Yardbirds, but soon recalled the old joke by Keith Moon and John Entwistle. Page stuck with that name to use for his new band. Peter Grant changed it to “Led Zeppelin”, to avoid a mispronunciation as “Leed Zeppelin.”
Led Zeppelin are one of the best-selling music groups in the history of audio recording. Various sources estimate the group’s worldwide sales at more than 200 or even 300 million albums. With 111.5 million RIAA-certified units, they are the second-best-selling band in the United States. Each of their nine studio albums reached the top 10 of the US Billboard album chart, and six reached the number-one spot.
Led Zeppelin were the progenitors of heavy metal and hard rock, and their sound was largely the product of Page’s input as a producer and musician. The band’s individualistic style drew from a wide variety of influences. They performed on multiple record-breaking concert tours, which also earned them a reputation for excess. Although they remained commercially and critically successful, in the later 1970s, the band’s output and touring schedule were limited by the personal difficulties of the members.
Page explained that he had a very specific idea in mind as to what he wanted Led Zeppelin to be, from the very beginning:
I had a lot of ideas from my days with the Yardbirds. The Yardbirds allowed me to improvise a lot in live performance and I started building a textbook of ideas that I eventually used in Zeppelin. In addition to those ideas, I wanted to add acoustic textures. Ultimately, I wanted Zeppelin to be a marriage of blues, hard rock and acoustic music topped with heavy choruses – a combination that had never been done before. Lots of light and shade in the music.
Led Zeppelin broke up in 1980 following the death of Bonham at Page’s home. Page initially refused to touch a guitar, grieving for his friend. For the rest of the 1980s, his work consisted of a series of short-term collaborations in the bands the Firm, the Honeydrippers, reunions and individual work, including film soundtracks. He also became active in philanthropic work.
Page made a return to the stage at a Jeff Beck show in March 1981 at the Hammersmith Odeon. Also in 1981, Page joined with Yes bassist Chris Squire and drummer Alan White to form a supergroup called XYZ (for former Yes-Zeppelin). They rehearsed several times, but the project was shelved. Bootlegs of these sessions revealed that some of the material emerged on later projects, notably The Firm’s “Fortune Hunter” and Yes songs “Mind Drive” and “Can You Imagine?”. Page joined Yes on stage in 1984 at Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, Germany, playing “I’m Down”.
In 1982, Page collaborated with director Michael Winner to record the Death Wish II soundtrack. This and several subsequent Page recordings, including the Death Wish III soundtrack, were recorded and produced at his recording studio, The Sol in Cookham, which he had purchased from Gus Dudgeon in the early 1980s.
In 1983, Page appeared with the A.R.M.S. (Action Research for Multiple Sclerosis) charity series of concerts which honoured Small Faces bassist Ronnie Lane, who suffered from the disease. For the first shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Page’s set consisted of songs from the Death Wish II soundtrack (with Steve Winwood on vocals) and an instrumental version of “Stairway to Heaven”. A four-city tour of the United States followed, with Paul Rodgers of Bad Company replacing Winwood. During the tour, Page and Rodgers performed “Midnight Moonlight”, which would later appear on The Firm’s first album. All of the shows featured an on stage jam of “Layla” that reunited Page with Beck and Clapton. According to the book Hammer of the Gods, it was reportedly around this time that Page told friends that he had just ended seven years of heroin use. On 13 December 1983, Page joined Plant on stage for one encore at the Hammersmith Odeon in London.
Page next linked up with Roy Harper for the 1984 album Whatever Happened to Jugula? and occasional concerts, performing a predominantly acoustic set at folk festivals under various guises such as the MacGregors and Themselves. Also in 1984, Page recorded with Plant as the Honeydrippers the album The Honeydrippers: Volume 1 and with John Paul Jones on the film soundtrack Scream for Help.
Page subsequently collaborated with Rodgers on two albums under the name The Firm. The first album, released in 1985, was the self-titled The Firm. Popular songs included “Radioactive” and “Satisfaction Guaranteed”. The album peaked at number 17 on the Billboard pop albums chart and went gold in the US. It was followed by Mean Business in 1986. The band toured in support of both albums, but soon split up.
Various other projects followed, such as session work for Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and the Rolling Stones (on their 1986 single “One Hit (To the Body)”). In 1986, Page reunited temporarily with his former Yardbirds bandmates to play on several tracks of the Box of Frogs album Strange Land.Page released a solo album entitled Outrider in 1988, which featured contributions from Plant, with Page contributing in turn to Plant’s solo album Now and Zen, which was released the same year. Outrider also featured singer John Miles on the album’s opening track “Wasting My Time”.
Throughout these years, Page also reunited with the other former bandmates of Led Zeppelin to perform live on a few occasions, most notably in 1985 for the Live Aid concert with both Phil Collins and Tony Thompson filling drum duties. However, the band members considered this performance to be sub-standard, with Page having been let down by a poorly tuned Les Paul. Page, Plant and Jones, as well as John Bonham’s son Jason, performed at the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary show on 14 May 1988, closing the 12-hour show.
In 1990, a Knebworth concert to aid the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre and the British School for Performing Arts and Technology saw Plant unexpectedly joined by Page to perform “Misty Mountain Hop”, “Wearing and Tearing” and “Rock and Roll”. The same year, Page appeared with Aerosmith at the Monsters of Rock festival. Page also performed with the band’s former members at Jason Bonham’s wedding. Page also embarked on a collaboration with David Coverdale in 1993 entitled Coverdale Page.
In 1994, Page reunited with Plant for the penultimate performance in MTV’s “Unplugged” series. The 90-minute special, dubbed Unledded, premiered to the highest ratings in MTV’s history. In October of the same year, the session was released as the CD No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded and in 2004 as the DVD No Quarter Unledded. Following a highly successful mid-1990s tour to support No Quarter, Page and Plant recorded 1998’s Walking into Clarksdale, along with drummer Michael Lee.
Page was heavily involved in remastering the Led Zeppelin catalogue. He participated in various charity concerts and charity work, particularly the Action for Brazil’s Children Trust (ABC Trust), founded by his wife Jimena Gomez-Paratcha in 1998. In the same year, Page played guitar for rap singer/producer Puff Daddy’s song “Come with Me”, which heavily samples Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” and was included in the soundtrack of Godzilla. The two later performed the song on Saturday Night Live.
In October 1999, Page teamed up with The Black Crowes for a two-night performance of material from the Led Zeppelin catalogue and old blues and rock standards. The concert was recorded and released as a double live album, Live at the Greek in 2000. In 2001, he made an appearance on stage with Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst and Wes Scantlin of Puddle of Mudd at the MTV Europe Video Music Awards in Frankfurt, where they performed a version of Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You”.
In 2005, Page was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in recognition of his Brazilian charity work for Task Brazil and Action For Brazil’s Children’s Trust,[51] made an honorary citizen of Rio de Janeiro later that year and was awarded a Grammy Award.
In November 2006, Led Zeppelin was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame. The television broadcasting of the event consisted of an introduction to the band by various famous admirers (including Roger Taylor, Slash, Joe Perry, Steven Tyler, Jack White and Tony Iommi), an award presentation to Page and a short speech by him. After this, rock group Wolfmother played a tribute to Led Zeppelin. During an interview for the BBC in connection with the induction, Page expressed plans to record new material in 2007, saying: “It’s an album that I really need to get out of my system … there’s a good album in there and it’s ready to come out” and “Also there will be some Zeppelin things on the horizon.”
On 10 December 2007, the surviving members of Led Zeppelin, as well as John Bonham’s son, Jason Bonham played a charity concert at the O2 Arena London. According to Guinness World Records 2009, Led Zeppelin set the world record for the “Highest Demand for Tickets for One Music Concert” as 20 million requests for the reunion show were rendered online. On 7 June 2008, Page and John Paul Jones appeared with the Foo Fighters to close the band’s concert at Wembley Stadium, performing “Rock and Roll” and “Ramble On”. For the 2008 Summer Olympics, Page, David Beckham and Leona Lewis represented Britain during the closing ceremonies on 24 August 2008. Beckham rode a double-decker bus into the stadium, and Page and Lewis performed “Whole Lotta Love”.
In 2008, Page co-produced a documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim entitled It Might Get Loud. The film examines the history of the electric guitar, focusing on the careers and styles of Page, The Edge and Jack White. The film premiered on 5 September 2008 at the Toronto International Film Festival. Page also participated in the three-part BBC documentary London Calling: The making of the Olympic handover ceremony on 4 March 2009. On 4 April 2009, Page inducted Jeff Beck into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Page announced his 2010 solo tour while talking to Sky News on 16 December 2009.
In January 2010, Page announced an autobiography published by Genesis Publications, in a hand-crafted, limited edition of 2,150 copies. Page was honoured with a first-ever Global Peace Award by the United Nations’ Pathways to Peace organisation after confirming reports that he would be among the headliners at a planned Show of Peace Concert in Beijing, on 10 October 2010.
On 3 June 2011, Page played with Donovan at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The concert was filmed. Page made an unannounced appearance with The Black Crowes at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London on 13 July 2011. He also played alongside Roy Harper at Harper’s 70th-birthday celebratory concert, in London’s Royal Festival Hall on 5 November 2011.
In November 2011, British Conservative MP Louise Mensch launched a campaign to have Page knighted for his contributions to the music industry. In December 2012, Page, along with Plant and Jones, received the annual Kennedy Center Honors from President Barack Obama in a White House ceremony. The honour is the U.S.’s highest award for those who have influenced American culture through the arts. In February 2013, Plant hinted that he was open to a Led Zeppelin reunion in 2014, stating that he is not the reason for the band’s dormancy, saying “Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones are quite contained in their own worlds and leave it to [him]”, adding that he is “not the bad guy” and that he has “got nothing to do in 2014.”
On 10 May 2014, Page was presented an Honorary Doctorate Degree at the Berklee College of Music commencement ceremony in Boston, Massachusetts.[ In a spring 2014 interview with the BBC about the then forthcoming reissue of Led Zeppelin’s first three albums, Page said he was confident fans would be keen on another reunion show, but Plant later replied that “the chances of it happening [were] zero.” Page then told The New York Times that he was “fed up” with Plant’s refusal to play, stating “I was told last year that Robert Plant said he is doing nothing in 2014, and what do the other two guys think? Well, he knows what the other guys think. Everyone would love to play more concerts for the band. He’s just playing games, and I’m fed up with it, to be honest with you. I don’t sing, so I can’t do much about it”, adding, “I definitely want to play live. Because, you know, I’ve still got a twinkle in my eye. I can still play. So, yeah, I’ll just get myself into musical shape, just concentrating on the guitar.”
On 30 July 2014, an NME article revealed that Plant was “slightly disappointed and baffled” by Page in ongoing Led Zeppelin dispute during which Page declared he was “fed up” with Plant delaying Led Zeppelin reunion plans. Instead, Plant offered Led Zeppelin’s guitarist to write acoustically with him as he is interested in working with Page again but only in an unplugged way.
On 30 September 2014, Page – who hasn’t toured as a solo act since 1988 – announced that he would start a new band and perform material spanning his entire career. He spoke about his prospects for hitting the road, saying: “I haven’t put [musicians] together yet but I’m going to do that next year [i.e. 2015]. If I went out to play, I would play material that spanned everything from my recording career right back to my very, very early days with The Yardbirds. There would certainly be some new material in there as well …”.
On 30 December 2015, Page was featured in the two-hour long BBC Radio 2 programme Johnny Walker Meets, in conversation with DJ Johnny Walker. In October 2017, Page spoke at the Oxford Union about his career in music.
Page is widely considered, by both musical peers and guitarists, one of the greatest and most influential guitarists. His experiences in the studio and with the Yardbirds were key to the success of Led Zeppelin in the 1970s. As a record producer, songwriter and guitarist, he helped make Zeppelin a prototype for countless future rock bands and was one of the major driving forces behind the rock sound of that era, influencing a host of other guitarists.
Guitarists influenced by Page include Eddie Van Halen, Ace Frehley, Joe Satriani, John Frusciante, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Zakk Wylde, Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Perry, Richie Sambora, Angus Young, Slash, Dave Mustaine, Mike McCready, Jerry Cantrell, Stone Gossard, Mick Mars, Paul Stanley, Alex Lifeson, Steve Vai, Dan Hawkins, and Char, among others. Queen’s Brian May told Guitarist in 2004: “I don’t think anyone has epitomised riff writing better than Jimmy Page—he’s one of the great brains of rock music.”
For the recording of most of Led Zeppelin material from Led Zeppelin’s second album onwards, Page used a Gibson Les Paul guitar (sold to him by Joe Walsh) with Marshall amplification. A Harmony Sovereign H-1260 was used in-studio on Led Zeppelin III and Led Zeppelin IV and on-stage from 5 March 1971 to 28 June 1972. During the studio sessions for Led Zeppelin and later for recording the guitar solo in “Stairway to Heaven”, he used a Fender Telecaster (a gift from Jeff Beck). He also used a Danelectro 3021, tuned to DADGAD, most notably on live performances of “Kashmir”.
Page also plays his guitar with a cello bow, as on the live versions of the songs “Dazed and Confused” and “How Many More Times”. This was a technique he developed during his session days. On MTV’s Led Zeppelin Rockumentary, Page said that he obtained the idea of playing the guitar with a bow from David McCallum, Sr. who was also a session musician. Page used his Fender Telecaster and later his Gibson Les Paul for his bow solos.
Gibson released a Jimmy Page Signature Les Paul, discontinued in 1999, then released another version in 2004, which was also discontinued. The 2004 version included 25 guitars signed by Page, 150 aged by Tom Murphy (an acknowledged ageing “master”) and 840 “unlimited” production guitars. The Jimmy Page Signature EDS-1275 has been produced by Gibson. Recently, Gibson reproduced Page’s 1960 Les Paul Black Beauty, the one stolen from him in 1970, with modern modifications. This guitar was sold in 2008 with a run of 25, again signed by Page, plus an additional 500 unsigned guitars.
In December 2009, Gibson released the ‘Jimmy Page “Number Two” Les Paul’. This is a re-creation of Page’s famous “Number Two” Les Paul used by him since about 1974. The model includes the same pick-up switching setup as devised by Page, shaved-down neck profile, Burstbucker pick-up at neck and “Pagebucker” at the bridge. A total of 325 were made in three finishes: 25 Aged by Gibson’s Tom Murphy, signed and played by Page ($26,000), 100 aged ($16,000) and 200 with VOS finish ($12,000).
Page usually recorded in studio with a*sorted amplifiers by Vox, Axis, Fender and Orange amplification. Live, he used Hiwatt and Marshall amplification. The first Led Zeppelin album was played on a Fender Telecaster through a Supro amplifier.
Page used a limited number of effects, including a Maestro Echoplex,[113][114][115] a Dunlop Cry Baby, an MXR Phase 90, a Vox Cry Baby Wah, a Boss CE-2 Chorus, a Yamaha CH-10Mk II Chorus, a Sola Sound Tone Bender Professional Mk II, an MXR Blue Box (distortion/octaver) and a DigiTech Whammy. Page also played a theremin.
Page is credited for the innovations in sound recording he brought to the studio during the years he was a member of Led Zeppelin, many of which he had initially developed as a session musician:
This apprenticeship … became a part of [learning] how things were recorded. I started to learn microphone placements and things like that, what did and what didn’t work. I certainly knew what did and didn’t work with drummers because they put drummers in these little sound booths that had no sound deflection at all and the drums would just sound awful. The reality of it is the drum is a musical instrument, it relies on having a bright room and a live room … And so bit by bit I was learning really how not to record.
He developed a reputation for employing effects in new ways and trying out different methods of using microphones and amplification. During the late 1960s, most British music producers placed microphones directly in front of amplifiers and drums, resulting in the sometimes “tinny” sound of the recordings of the era. Page commented to Guitar World magazine that he felt the drum sounds of the day in particular “sounded like cardboard boxes.”[116] Instead, Page was a fan of 1950s recording techniques, Sun Studio being a particular favourite. In the same Guitar World interview, Page remarked: “Recording used to be a science” and “[engineers] used to have a maxim: distance equals depth.” Taking this maxim to heart, Page developed the idea of placing an additional microphone some distance from the amplifier (as much as twenty feet) and then recording the balance between the two. By adopting this technique, Page became one of the first British producers to record a band’s “ambient sound” – the distance of a note’s time-lag from one end of the room to the other.
For the recording of several Led Zeppelin tracks, such as “Whole Lotta Love” and “You Shook Me“, Page additionally utilised “reverse echo” – a technique which he claims to have invented himself while with the Yardbirds (he had originally developed the method when recording the 1967 single “Ten Little Indians“).[116] This production technique involved hearing the echo before the main sound instead of after it, achieved by turning the tape over and employing the echo on a spare track, then turning the tape back over again to get the echo preceding the signal.
Page has stated that, as producer, he deliberately changed the audio engineers on Led Zeppelin albums, from Glyn Johns for the first album, to Eddie Kramer for Led Zeppelin II, to Andy Johns for Led Zeppelin III and later albums. He explained: “I consciously kept changing engineers because I didn’t want people to think that they were responsible for our sound. I wanted people to know it was me.”
John Paul Jones acknowledged that Page’s production techniques were a key component of the success of Led Zeppelin:
The backwards echo stuff [and] a lot of the microphone techniques were just inspired. Using distance-miking … and small amplifiers. Everybody thinks we go in the studio with huge walls of amplifiers, but Page doesn’t. He uses a really small amplifier and he just mikes it up really well, so that it fits into a sonic picture.
In an interview that Page himself gave to Guitar World magazine in 1993, he remarked on his work as a producer:
Many people think of me as just a riff guitarist, but I think of myself in broader terms … As a record producer I would like to be remembered as someone who was able to sustain a band of unquestionable individual talent and push it to the forefront during its working career. I think I really captured the best of our output, growth, change and maturity on tape – the multifaceted gem that is Led Zeppelin.
An early 1960s companion was American recording artist Jackie DeShannon, possibly the inspiration for the Page composition and Led Zeppelin recording “Tangerine”.
French model Charlotte Martin was Page’s partner from 1970 to about 1982 or 1983. Page called her “My Lady”. Together they had a daughter, Scarlet Page (born in 1971), who is a photographer.
Also during the 1970s, Page had a well-documented, several-year-long relationship with “baby groupie” Lori Mattix (also known as Lori Maddox), beginning when she was 13 or 14 and while he was an adult in his twenties. In light of the Me Too movement four decades later, this attracted renewed attention as statutory rape.
From 1986 to 1995, Page was married to Patricia Ecker, a model and waitress. They have a son, James Patrick Page (born April 1988). Page later married Jimena Gómez-Paratcha, whom he met in Brazil on the No Quarter tour. He adopted her oldest daughter Jana (born 1994) and they have two children together: Zofia Jade (born 1997) and Ashen Josan (born 1999). Page and Gómez-Paratcha divorced in 2008.
Page has been in a relationship with actress and poet Scarlett Sabet since 2014.
In 1967, when Page was still with The Yardbirds, he purchased the Thames Boathouse on the River Thames in Pangbourne, Berkshire and resided there until 1973. The Boathouse was also the place where Page and Plant first officially got together in the summer of 1968 and Led Zeppelin was formed.
In 1972, Page bought the Tower House from Richard Harris. It was the home that William Burges (1827–81) had designed for himself in London. “I had an interest going back to my teens in the pre-Raphaelite movement and the architecture of Burges”, Page said. “What a wonderful world to discover.” The reputation of Burges rests on his extravagant designs and his contribution to the Gothic revival in architecture in the nineteenth century.[130]
From 1980 to 2004 Page owned the Mill House, Mill Lane, Windsor, which was formerly the home of actor Michael Caine. Fellow Led Zeppelin band member John Bonham died at the house in 1980.
From the early 1970s to the early 1990s, Page owned the Boleskine House, the former residence of occultist Aleister Crowley.[131][132] Sections of Page’s fantasy sequence in the film The Song Remains the Same were filmed at night on the mountainside directly behind Boleskine House.
Page also previously owned Plumpton Place in Sussex, formerly owned by Edward Hudson, the owner of Country Life magazine and with certain parts of the house designed by Edwin Lutyens. This house features in the Zeppelin film The Song Remains The Same where Page is seen sitting on the lawn playing a hurdy-gurdy.
He currently resides in Sonning, Berkshire in Deanery Garden, a house also designed by Edwin Lutyens for Edward Hudson.
Page has acknowledged heavy recreational drug use throughout the 1970s. In an interview with Guitar World magazine in 2003, he stated: “I can’t speak for the [other members of the band], but for me drugs were an integral part of the whole thing, right from the beginning, right to the end.” After the band’s 1973 North American tour, Page told Nick Kent: “Oh, everyone went over the top a few times. I know I did and, to be honest with you, I don’t really remember much of what happened.”
In 1975, Page began to use heroin, according Richard Cole. Cole claims that he and Page took the drug during the recording sessions of the album Presence, and Page admitted shortly afterwards that he was addicted to the drug.
By Led Zeppelin’s 1977 North American tour, Page’s heroin addiction was beginning to hamper his guitar playing performances. By this time the guitarist had lost a noticeable amount of weight. His onstage appearance was not the only obvious change; his addiction caused Page to become so inward and isolated it altered the dynamics between him and Plant considerably. During the recording sessions for In Through the Out Door in 1978, Page’s diminished influence on the album (relative to bassist John Paul Jones) is partly attributed to his heroin addiction, which resulted in his absence from the studio for long periods of time.
Page reportedly overcame his heroin habit in the early 1980s, although he was arrested for possession of cocaine in both 1982 and 1984.[140][141][142] He was given a 12-month conditional discharge in 1982 and, despite a second offence usually carrying a jail sentence, he was only fined.
In a 1988 interview with Musician magazine, Page took offence when the interviewer noted that heroin had been a*sociated with his name and insisted: “Do I look as if I’m a smack addict? Well, I’m not. Thank you very much.”
In an interview he gave to Q magazine in 2003, Page responded to a question as to whether he regrets getting so involved in heroin and cocaine:
I don’t regret it at all because when I needed to be really focused, I was really focused. That’s it. Both Presence and In Through the Out Door were only recorded in three weeks: that’s really going some. You’ve got to be on top of it.
Page’s interest in the occult started as a schoolboy at the age of fifteen, when he read English occultist’s Aleister Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice. He later said that following this discovery, he thought: “Yes, that’s it. My thing: I’ve found it.”
The appearance of four symbols on the jacket of Led Zeppelin’s fourth album has been linked to Page’s interest in the occult.[145] The four symbols represented each member of the band. Page’s own so-called “Zoso” symbol originated in Ars Magica Arteficii (1557) by Gerolamo Cardano, an old alchemical grimoire, where it has been identified as a sigil consisting of zodiac signs. The sigil is reproduced in Dictionary of Occult, Hermetic and Alchemical Sigils by Fred Gettings.
During tours and performances after the release of the fourth album, Page often had the “Zoso” symbol embroidered on his clothes, along with zodiac symbols. These were visible most notably on his “Dragon Suit”, which included the signs for Capricorn, Scorpio and Cancer which are Page’s Sun, Ascendant and Moon signs, respectively. The “Zoso” symbol also appeared on Page’s amplifiers.
The artwork inside the album cover of Led Zeppelin IV is from a painting attributed to the artist Barrington Colby, influenced by the traditional Rider/Waite Tarot card design for the card called “The Hermit”. Very little is known about Colby and rumours have persisted down the years that Page himself is responsible for the painting. Page transforms into this character during his fantasy sequence in Led Zeppelin’s concert film The Song Remains the Same.
In the early 1970s Page owned an occult bookshop and publishing house, The Equinox Booksellers and Publishers, at 4 Holland Street in Kensington, London, named after Crowley’s biannual magazine, The Equinox. The design of the interior incorporated Egyptian and Art Deco motifs, with Crowley’s birth chart affixed to a wall. Page’s reasons for setting up the bookshop were straightforward:
There was not one bookshop in London with a good collection of occult books and I was so pissed off at not being able to get the books I wanted.
The company published two books: a facsimile of Crowley’s 1904 edition of The Goetiaand Astrology, A Cosmic Science by Isabel Hickey. The lease eventually expired on the premises and was not renewed. As Page said: “It obviously wasn’t going to run the way it should without some drastic business changes, and I didn’t really want to have to agree to all that. I basically just wanted the shop to be the nucleus, that’s all.”
Page has maintained a strong interest in Crowley for many years. In 1978, he explained:
I feel Aleister Crowley is a misunderstood genius of the 20th century. It is because his whole thing was liberation of the person, of the entity and that restrictions would foul you up, lead to frustration which leads to violence, crime, mental breakdown, depending on what sort of makeup you have underneath. The further this age we’re in now gets into technology and alienation, a lot of the points he’s made seem to manifest themselves all down the line. … I’m not saying it’s a system for anybody to follow. I don’t agree with everything but I find a lot of it relevant and it’s those things that people attacked him on, so he was misunderstood. … I’m not trying to interest anyone in Aleister Crowley any more than I am in Charles Dickens. All it was, was that at a particular time he was expounding a theory of self-liberation, which is something which is so important. He was like an eye to the world, into the forthcoming situation. My studies have been quite intensive, but I don’t particularly want to go into it because it’s a personal thing and isn’t in relation to anything apart from the fact that I’ve employed his system in my own day to day life. … The thing is to come to terms with one’s free will, discover one’s place and what one is, and from that you can go ahead and do it and not spend your whole life suppressed and frustrated. It’s very basically coming to terms with yourself.
Page was commissioned to write the soundtrack music for the film Lucifer Rising by Crowley admirer and underground movie director Kenneth Anger. Page ultimately produced 23 minutes of music, which Anger felt was insufficient because the film ran for 28 minutes and Anger wanted the film to have a full soundtrack. Anger claimed Page took three years to deliver the music and the final product was only 23 minutes of “droning”. The director also slammed the guitarist in the press by calling him a “dabbler” in the occult and an addict and being too strung out on drugs to complete the project. Page countered that he had fulfilled all his obligations, even going so far as to lend Anger his own film editing equipment to help him finish the project. Page released the Lucifer Rising music on vinyl in 2012 via his website on “Lucifer Rising and other sound tracks”. Side one contained “Lucifer Rising – Main Track”, whilst side two contained the tracks “Incubus”, “Damask”, “Unharmonics”, “Damask – Ambient”, and “Lucifer Rising – Percussive Return”. In the December 2012 Rolling Stone cover story “Jimmy Page Looks Back”, Page said: “… there was a request, suggesting that Lucifer Rising should come out again with my music on. I ignored it.”
Although Page collected works by Crowley, he has never described himself as a Thelemite nor was he ever initiated into the OTO. The Equinox Bookstore and Boleskine House were both sold off during the 1980s, as Page settled into family life and participated in charity work.
Early in his career, Page played on a number of recordings by British rock and pop artists as a session guitarist. As a member of the Yardbirds, he recorded Little Games (1967) (expanded in 1992 as Little Games Sessions & More), Live Yardbirds! Featuring Jimmy Page (1971), and Cumular Limit (2000). Beginning in 1968, he recorded nine albums with Led Zeppelin (see Led Zeppelin discography for the complete list). After Zeppelin, Page has recorded in several different settings. One of the first is the soundtrack album Death Wish II (1982). As a member of the Firm, he recorded The Firm (1985) and Mean Business (1986). Collaborations followed, including Whatever Happened to Jugula? (1985) with Roy Harper, Coverdale•Page (1993), Walking into Clarksdale (1998) with Robert Plant, and Live at the Greek (2000) with the Black Crowes. His only solo album, Outrider, was released in 1988. As a guest performer, he has contributed to several albums and singles.
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman; May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author and visual artist. Widely regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture for more than 50 years. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” (1963) and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and anti-war movements. His lyrics during this period incorporated a range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defied pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture.
Following his self-titled debut album in 1962, which mainly comprised traditional folk songs, Dylan made his breakthrough as a songwriter with the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan the following year. The album features “Blowin’ in the Wind” and the thematically complex “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”. For many of these songs, he adapted the tunes and phraseology of older folk songs. He went on to release the politically charged The Times They Are a-Changin’ and the more lyrically abstract and introspective Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964. In 1965 and 1966, Dylan drew controversy when he adopted electrically amplified rock instrumentation, and in the space of 15 months recorded three of the most important and influential rock albums of the 1960s: Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966). Commenting on the six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965), Rolling Stone wrote: “No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time.”
In July 1966, Dylan withdrew from touring after a motorcycle accident. During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of the Band, who had previously backed him on tour. These recordings were released as the collaborative album The Basement Tapes in 1975. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan explored country music and rural themes in John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969), and New Morning (1970). In 1975, he released Blood on the Tracks, which many saw as a return to form. In the late 1970s, he became a born-again Christian and released a series of albums of contemporary gospel music before returning to his more familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. Dylan’s 1997 album Time Out of Mind marked the beginning of a renaissance for his career. He has released five critically acclaimed albums of original material since then, the most recent being Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). He also recorded a series of three albums in the 2010s comprising versions of traditional American standards, especially songs recorded by Frank Sinatra. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour.
Since 1994, Dylan has published eight books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. He has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize Board in 2008 awarded him a special citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power”. In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.
Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew:שבתאי זיסל בן אברהם Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham) in St. Mary’s Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Range west of Lake Superior. Dylan’s paternal grandparents, Anna Kirghiz and Zigman Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States following the anti-Semitic pogroms of 1905. His maternal grandparents, Florence and Ben Stone, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the United States in 1902. In his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan wrote that his paternal grandmother’s family originated from the Kağızman district of Kars Province in northeastern Turkey.
Dylan’s father Abram Zimmerman and mother Beatrice “Beatty” Stone were part of a small, close-knit Jewish community. They lived in Duluth until Dylan was six, when his father contracted polio and the family returned to his mother’s hometown, Hibbing, where they lived for the rest of Dylan’s childhood, and his father and paternal uncles ran a furniture and appliances store. In his early years he listened to the radio—first to blues and country stations from Shreveport, Louisiana, and later, when he was a teenager, to rock and roll.
Dylan formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School. In the Golden Chords, he performed covers of songs by Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Their performance of Danny & the Juniors’ “Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay” at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone. In 1959, Dylan’s high school yearbook carried the caption “Robert Zimmerman: to join ‘Little Richard’.” That year, as Elston Gunnn, he performed two dates with Bobby Vee, playing piano and clapping. In September 1959, Dylan moved to Minneapolis and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. His focus on rock and roll gave way to American folk music, as he explained in a 1985 interview:
The thing about rock’n’roll is that for me anyway it wasn’t enough… There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms… but the songs weren’t serious or didn’t reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.
Living at the Jewish-centric fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu house, Dylan began to perform at the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse a few blocks from campus, and became involved in the Dinkytown folk music circuit. During this period, he began to introduce himself as “Bob Dylan.” In his memoir, he said he had considered adopting the surname Dillon before he unexpectedly saw poems by Dylan Thomas, and decided upon that less common variant. Explaining his change of name in a 2004 interview, he said, “You’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”
In May 1960, Dylan dropped out of college at the end of his first year. In January 1961, he traveled to New York City to perform there and visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie, who was seriously ill with Huntington’s disease in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and influenced his early performances. Describing Guthrie’s impact, he wrote: “The songs themselves had the infinite sweep of humanity in them… [He] was the true voice of the American spirit. I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie’s greatest disciple.” As well as visiting Guthrie in hospital, Dylan befriended Guthrie’s protégé Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Much of Guthrie’s repertoire was channeled through Elliott, and Dylan paid tribute to Elliott in Chronicles: Volume One. Dylan later said he was influenced by African-American poets he heard on the New York streets, especially Big Brown.
From February 1961, Dylan played at clubs around Greenwich Village, befriending and picking up material from folk singers there, including Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, Odetta, the New Lost City Ramblers and Irish musicians the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. On April 11, Dylan commenced a two-week engagement at Gerde’s Folk City, supporting John Lee Hooker. In September, New York Times critic Robert Shelton boosted Dylan’s career with a very enthusiastic review of his performance at Gerde’s Folk City: “Bob Dylan: A Distinctive Folk-Song Stylist”. That month, Dylan played harmonica on folk singer Carolyn Hester’s third album. This brought him to the attention of the album’s producer, John Hammond, who signed Dylan to Columbia Records.
Dylan’s first album, Bob Dylan, released March 19, 1962, consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel with two original compositions. The album sold only 5,000 copies in its first year, just enough to break even. Within Columbia Records, some referred to Dylan as “Hammond’s Folly” and suggested dropping his contract, but Hammond defended him and was supported by songwriter Johnny Cash. In March 1962, Dylan contributed harmonica and backup vocals to the album Three Kings and the Queen, accompanying Victoria Spivey and Big Joe Williams on a recording for Spivey Records. While working for Columbia, Dylan recorded under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt for Broadside, a folk magazine and record label. Dylan used the pseudonym Bob Landy to record as a piano player on The Blues Project, a 1964 anthology album by Elektra Records. As Tedham Porterhouse, Dylan played harmonica on Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s 1964 album Jack Elliott.
Dylan made two important career moves in August 1962: he legally changed his name to Bob Dylan, and signed a management contract with Albert Grossman. (In June 1961, Dylan had signed an agreement with Roy Silver. In 1962, Grossman paid Silver $10,000 to become sole manager.) Grossman remained Dylan’s manager until 1970, and was known for his sometimes confrontational personality and protective loyalty. Dylan said, “He was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker figure … you could smell him coming.” Tension between Grossman and John Hammond led to the latter suggesting Dylan work with the young African-American jazz producer Tom Wilson, who produced several tracks for the second album without formal credit. Wilson produced the next three albums Dylan recorded.
Dylan made his first trip to the United Kingdom from December 1962 to January 1963. He had been invited by television director Philip Saville to appear in a drama, Madhouse on Castle Street, which Saville was directing for BBC Television. At the end of the play, Dylan performed “Blowin’ in the Wind”, one of its first public performances. The film recording of Madhouse on Castle Street was discarded by the BBC in 1968. While in London, Dylan performed at London folk clubs, including the Troubadour, Les Cousins, and Bunjies. He also learned material from UK performers, including Martin Carthy.
By the release of Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, in May 1963, he had begun to make his name as a singer-songwriter. Many songs on the album were labeled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger’s passion for topical songs. “Oxford Town”, for example, was an account of James Meredith’s ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi. The first song on the album, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, partly derived its melody from the traditional slave song, “No More Auction Block”, while its lyrics questioned the social and political status quo. The song was widely recorded by other artists and became a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary. Another song, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”, was based on the folk ballad “Lord Randall”. With veiled references to an impending apocalypse, it gained resonance when the Cuban Missile Crisis developed a few weeks after Dylan began performing it. Like “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” marked a new direction in songwriting, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with traditional folk form.
Dylan’s topical songs led to his being viewed as more than just a songwriter. Janet Maslin wrote in 1980 of Freewheelin’: “These were the songs that established [Dylan] as the voice of his generation—someone who implicitly understood how concerned young Americans felt about nuclear disarmament and the growing Civil Rights Movement: his mixture of moral authority and nonconformity was perhaps the most timely of his attributes.” Freewheelin’ also included love songs and surreal talking blues. Humor was an important part of Dylan’s persona, and the range of material on the album impressed listeners, including the Beatles. George Harrison said of the album: “We just played it, just wore it out. The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude—it was incredibly original and wonderful.”
The rough edge of Dylan’s singing was unsettling to some but an attraction to others. Novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote: “When we first heard this raw, very young, and seemingly untrained voice, frankly nasal, as if sandpaper could sing, the effect was dramatic and electrifying.”[ Many early songs reached the public through more palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez, who became Dylan’s advocate and lover. Baez was influential in bringing Dylan to prominence by recording several of his early songs and inviting him on stage during her concerts. “It didn’t take long before people got it, that he was pretty damned special,” says Baez.
Others who had hits with Dylan’s songs in the early 1960s included the Byrds, Sonny & Cher, the Hollies, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Association, Manfred Mann and the Turtles. Most attempted a pop feel and rhythm, while Dylan and Baez performed them mostly as sparse folk songs. The covers became so ubiquitous that CBS promoted him with the slogan “Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan”.
“Mixed-Up Confusion”, recorded during the Freewheelin’ sessions with a backing band, was released as Dylan’s first single in December 1962, but then swiftly withdrawn. In contrast to the mostly solo acoustic performances on the album, the single showed a willingness to experiment with a rockabilly sound. Cameron Crowe described it as “a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards Elvis Presley and Sun Records.”
In May 1963, Dylan’s political profile rose when he walked out of The Ed Sullivan Show. During rehearsals, Dylan had been told by CBS television’s head of program practices that “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Rather than comply with censorship, Dylan refused to appear.
By this time, Dylan and Baez were prominent in the civil rights movement, singing together at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. Dylan’s third album, The Times They Are a-Changin’, reflected a more politicized Dylan. The songs often took as their subject matter contemporary stories, with “Only a Pawn in Their Game” addressing the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers; and the Brechtian “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” the death of black hotel barmaid Hattie Carroll, at the hands of young white socialite William Zantzinger. On a more general theme, “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “North Country Blues” addressed despair engendered by the breakdown of farming and mining communities. This political material was accompanied by two personal love songs, “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “One Too Many Mornings”.
By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements. Accepting the “Tom Paine Award” from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee shortly after the a*sassination of John F. Kennedy, an intoxicated Dylan questioned the role of the committee, characterized the members as old and balding, and claimed to see something of himself and of every man in Kennedy’s a*sassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded in a single evening on June 9, 1964, had a lighter mood. The humorous Dylan reemerged on “I Shall Be Free No. 10” and “Motorpsycho Nightmare”. “Spanish Harlem Incident” and “To Ramona” are passionate love songs, while “Black Crow Blues” and “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” suggest the rock and roll soon to dominate Dylan’s music. “It Ain’t Me Babe”, on the surface a song about spurned love, has been described as a rejection of the role of political spokesman thrust upon him.[81] His newest direction was signaled by two lengthy songs: the impressionistic “Chimes of Freedom”, which sets social commentary against a metaphorical landscape in a style characterized by Allen Ginsberg as “chains of flashing images,” and “My Back Pages”, which attacks the simplistic and arch seriousness of his own earlier topical songs and seems to predict the backlash he was about to encounter from his former champions as he took a new direction.
In the latter half of 1964 and into 1965, Dylan moved from folk songwriter to folk-rock pop-music star. His jeans and work shirts were replaced by a Carnaby Street wardrobe, sunglasses day or night, and pointed “Beatle boots”. A London reporter wrote: “Hair that would set the teeth of a comb on edge. A loud shirt that would dim the neon lights of Leicester Square. He looks like an undernourished cockatoo.” Dylan began to spar with interviewers. Appearing on the Les Crane television show and asked about a movie he planned, he told Crane it would be a cowboy horror movie. Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied, “No, I play my mother.”
Dylan’s late March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home was another leap,[85] featuring his first recordings with electric instruments, under producer Tom Wilson’s guidance.[86] One influence on Dylan’s decision to go electric was The Animals’ version of “The House of the Rising Sun”. Drummer John Steel states Dylan told him when he first heard this version on his car radio, he stopped to listen, “jumped out of his car” and “banged on the bonnet”. The first single, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, owed much to Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business”;[ its free-association lyrics described as harking back to the energy of beat poetry and as a forerunner of rap and hip-hop. The song was provided with an early music video, which opened D. A. Pennebaker’s cinéma vérité presentation of Dylan’s 1965 tour of Great Britain, Dont Look Back. Instead of miming, Dylan illustrated the lyrics by throwing cue cards containing key words from the song on the ground. Pennebaker said the sequence was Dylan’s idea, and it has been imitated in music videos and advertisements.
The second side of Bringing It All Back Home contained four long songs on which Dylan accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. “Mr. Tambourine Man” became one of his best-known songs when the Byrds recorded an electric version that reached number one in the US and UK. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” were two of Dylan’s most important compositions.
In 1965, headlining the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed his first electric set since high school with a pickup group featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar and Al Kooper on organ. Dylan had appeared at Newport in 1963 and 1964, but in 1965 met with cheering and booing and left the stage after three songs. One version has it that the boos were from folk fans whom Dylan had alienated by appearing, unexpectedly, with an electric guitar. Murray Lerner, who filmed the performance, said: “I absolutely think that they were booing Dylan going electric.” An alternative account claims audience members were upset by poor sound and a short set. This account is supported by Kooper and one of the directors of the festival who claims his recording proves the only boos were in response to MC Peter Yarrow’s flustered announcement that there was only enough time for a short set.
Nevertheless, Dylan’s performance provoked a hostile response from the folk music establishment. In the September issue of Sing Out!, Ewan MacColl wrote: “Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside disciplines formulated over time …’But what of Bobby Dylan?’ scream the outraged teenagers … Only a completely non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music, could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel.” On July 29, four days after Newport, Dylan was back in the studio in New York, recording “Positively 4th Street”. The lyrics contained images of vengeance and paranoia, and have been interpreted as Dylan’s put-down of former friends from the folk community he had known in clubs along West 4th Street.
In July 1965, Dylan’s six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” peaked at number two in the U.S. chart. In 2004 and in 2011, Rolling Stone listed it as number one of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. Bruce Springsteen, in his speech for Dylan’s inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said that on first hearing the single, “that snare shot sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind.” The song opened Dylan’s next album, Highway 61 Revisited, named after the road that led from Dylan’s Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans. The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, flavored by Mike Bloomfield’s blues guitar and Al Kooper’s organ riffs. “Desolation Row”, backed by acoustic guitar and understated bass, offers the sole exception, with Dylan alluding to figures in Western culture in a song described by Andy Gill as “an 11-minute epic of entropy, which takes the form of a Fellini-esque parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge cast of celebrated characters, some historical (Einstein, Nero), some biblical (Noah, Cain and Abel), some fictional (Ophelia, Romeo, Cinderella), some literary (T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound), and some who fit into none of the above categories, notably Dr. Filth and his dubious nurse”.
In support of the album, Dylan was booked for two U.S. concerts with Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks from his studio crew and Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, former members of Ronnie Hawkins’s backing band the Hawks. On August 28 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the group was heckled by an audience still annoyed by Dylan’s electric sound. The band’s reception on September 3 at the Hollywood Bowl was more favorable.
From September 24, 1965, in Austin, Texas, Dylan toured the U.S. and Canada for six months, backed by the five musicians from the Hawks who became known as The Band. While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences, their studio efforts foundered. Producer Bob Johnston persuaded Dylan to record in Nashville in February 1966, and surrounded him with top-notch session men. At Dylan’s insistence, Robertson and Kooper came from New York City to play on the sessions. The Nashville sessions produced the double album Blonde on Blonde (1966), featuring what Dylan called “that thin wild mercury sound”. Kooper described it as “taking two cultures and smashing them together with a huge explosion”: the musical world of Nashville and the world of the “quintessential New York hipster” Bob Dylan.
On November 22, 1965, Dylan quietly married 25-year-old former model Sara Lownds. Robertson has described how he received a phone call that morning to accompany the couple to a courthouse on Long Island, and then to a reception hosted by Albert and Sally Grossman at the Algonquin Hotel. Some of Dylan’s friends, including Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, say that, immediately after the event, Dylan denied he was married. Journalist Nora Ephron made the news public in the New York Post in February 1966 with the headline “Hush! Bob Dylan is wed.”
Dylan toured Australia and Europe in April and May 1966. Each show was split in two. Dylan performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second, backed by the Hawks, he played electrically amplified music. This contrast provoked many fans, who jeered and slow handclapped. The tour culminated in a raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England on May 17, 1966. A recording of this concert was released in 1998: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966. At the climax of the evening, a member of the audience, angered by Dylan’s electric backing, shouted: “Judas!” to which Dylan responded, “I don’t believe you … You’re a liar!” Dylan turned to his band and said, “Play it f*cking loud!” as they launched into the final song of the night—”Like a Rolling Stone”.
During his 1966 tour, Dylan was described as exhausted and acting “as if on a death trip”. D. A. Pennebaker, the filmmaker accompanying the tour, described Dylan as “taking a lot of amphetamine and who-knows-what-else”. In a 1969 interview with Jann Wenner, Dylan said, “I was on the road for almost five years. It wore me down. I was on drugs, a lot of things … just to keep going, you know?” In 2011, BBC Radio 4 reported that, in an interview that Robert Shelton taped in 1966, Dylan said he had kicked heroin in New York City: “I got very, very strung out for a while … I had about a $25-a-day habit and I kicked it.” Some journalists questioned the validity of this confession, pointing out that Dylan had “been telling journalists wild lies about his past since the earliest days of his career”.
After his tour, Dylan returned to New York, but the pressures increased. ABC Television had paid an advance for a TV show. His publisher, Macmillan, was demanding a manuscript of the poem/novel Tarantula. Manager Albert Grossman had scheduled a concert tour for the latter part of the year.
On July 29, 1966, Dylan crashed his 500 cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle near his home in Woodstock, New York, and was thrown to the ground. Though the extent of his injuries was never disclosed, Dylan said that he broke several vertebrae in his neck. Mystery still surrounds the circumstances of the accident since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized. Dylan’s biographers have written that the crash offered Dylan the chance to escape the pressures around him. Dylan confirmed this interpretation in his autobiography: “I had been in a motorcycle accident and I’d been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race.”Dylan withdrew from public and, apart from a few appearances, did not tour again for almost eight years.
Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began to edit D. A. Pennebaker’s film of his 1966 tour. A rough cut was shown to ABC Television, which rejected it as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience. The film was subsequently titled Eat the Document on bootleg copies, and it has been screened at a handful of film festivals.[135] In 1967 he began recording with the Hawks at his home and in the basement of the Hawks’ nearby house, “Big Pink”. These songs, initially demos for other artists to record, provided hits for Julie Driscoll and the Brian Auger Trinity (“This Wheel’s on Fire”), the Byrds (“You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, “Nothing Was Delivered”) and Manfred Mann (“Mighty Quinn”). Columbia released selections in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Over the years, many more songs recorded by Dylan and his band in 1967 appeared on bootleg recordings, culminating in the 2014 official Columbia release The Basement Tapes Complete which contained 138 songs and alternative takes. In the coming months, the Hawks recorded the album Music from Big Pink using songs they worked on in their basement in Woodstock, and renamed themselves the Band, beginning a long recording and performing career of their own.
In October and November 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville. Back in the studio after 19 months, he was accompanied by Charlie McCoy on bass, Kenny Buttrey on drums, and Pete Drake on steel guitar.The result was John Wesley Harding, a contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape that drew on the American West and the Bible. The sparse structure and instrumentation, with lyrics that took the Judeo-Christian tradition seriously, departed from Dylan’s own work and from the psychedelic fervor of the 1960s. It included “All Along the Watchtower”, with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9). The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose version Dylan acknowledged as definitive. Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, and Dylan made his first live appearance in twenty months at a Guthrie memorial concert held at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968, where he was backed by the Band.
Dylan’s next release, Nashville Skyline (1969), was mainstream country featuring Nashville musicians, a mellow-voiced Dylan, a duet with Johnny Cash, and the hit single “Lay Lady Lay”. Variety wrote, “Dylan is definitely doing something that can be called singing. Somehow he has managed to add an octave to his range.” During one recording session, Dylan and Cash recorded a series of duets but only their version of Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country” was released on the album.
In May 1969, Dylan appeared on the first episode of Johnny Cash’s television show and sang a duet with Cash of “Girl from the North Country”, with solos of “Living the Blues” and “I Threw It All Away.” Dylan next traveled to England to top the bill at the Isle of Wight festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at the Woodstock Festival closer to his home.
In the early 1970s, critics charged that Dylan’s output was varied and unpredictable. Rolling Stone writer Greil Marcus asked “What is this shit?” on first listening to Self Portrait, released in June 1970. It was a double LP including few original songs, and was poorly received. In October 1970, Dylan released New Morning, considered a return to form. This album included “Day of the Locusts”, a song in which Dylan gave an account of receiving an honorary degree from Princeton University on June 9, 1970. In November 1968, Dylan had co-written “I’d Have You Anytime” with George Harrison; Harrison recorded “I’d Have You Anytime” and Dylan’s “If Not for You” for his 1970 solo triple album All Things Must Pass. Dylan’s surprise appearance at Harrison’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh attracted media coverage, reflecting that Dylan’s live appearances had become rare.
Between March 16 and 19, 1971, Dylan reserved three days at Blue Rock, a small studio in Greenwich Village, to record with Leon Russell. These sessions resulted in “Watching the River Flow” and a new recording of “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. On November 4, 1971, Dylan recorded “George Jackson”, which he released a week later. For many, the single was a surprising return to protest material, mourning the killing of Black Panther George Jackson in San Quentin State Prison that year. Dylan contributed piano and harmony to Steve Goodman’s album, Somebody Else’s Troubles, under the pseudonym Robert Milkwood Thomas (referencing Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas and his own previous name) in September 1972.
In 1972, Dylan signed to Sam Peckinpah’s film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providing songs and backing music for the movie, and playing “Alias”, a member of Billy’s gang with some historical basis. Despite the film’s failure at the box office, the song “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” became one of Dylan’s most covered songs.
Also in 1972, Dylan protested the move to deport John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who had been convicted of possessing cannabis, by sending a letter to the U.S. Immigration Service, in part: “Hurray for John & Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country’s got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!”
Dylan began 1973 by signing with a new label, David Geffen’s Asylum Records when his contract with Columbia Records expired. His next album, Planet Waves, was recorded in the fall of 1973, using the Band as his backing group as they rehearsed for a major tour. The album included two versions of “Forever Young”, which became one of his most popular songs. As one critic described it, the song projected “something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke of the father in Dylan”, and Dylan himself commented: “I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental.” Columbia Records simultaneously released Dylan, a collection of studio outtakes, widely interpreted as a churlish response to Dylan’s signing with a rival record label.
In January 1974, Dylan, backed by the Band, embarked on a North American tour of 40 concerts—his first tour for seven years. A live double album, Before the Flood, was released on Asylum Records. Soon, according to Clive Davis, Columbia Records sent word they “will spare nothing to bring Dylan back into the fold.” Dylan had second thoughts about Asylum, unhappy that Geffen had sold only 600,000 copies of Planet Waves despite millions of unfulfilled ticket requests for the 1974 tour; he returned to Columbia Records, which reissued his two Asylum albums.
After the tour, Dylan and his wife became estranged. He filled a small red notebook with songs about relationships and ruptures, and recorded an album entitled Blood on the Tracks in September 1974. Dylan delayed the release and re-recorded half of the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production a*sistance from his brother, David Zimmerman.
Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. In the NME, Nick Kent described “the accompaniments [as] often so trashy they sound like mere practice takes.”[174] In Rolling Stone, Jon Landau wrote that “the record has been made with typical shoddiness.” Over the years critics came to see it as one of Dylan’s greatest achievements. For the Salon website, journalist Bill Wyman wrote: “Blood on the Tracks is his only flawless album and his best produced; the songs, each of them, are constructed in disciplined fashion. It is his kindest album and most dismayed, and seems in hindsight to have achieved a sublime balance between the logorrhea-plagued excesses of his mid-1960s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years.” Novelist Rick Moody called it “the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape.”
In the middle of that year, Dylan wrote a ballad championing boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, imprisoned for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1966. After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote “Hurricane”, presenting the case for Carter’s innocence. Despite its length—over eight minutes—the song was released as a single, peaking at 33 on the U.S. Billboard chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan’s next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. The tour featured about one hundred performers and supporters from the Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone Burnett, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Joni Mitchell, David Mansfield, Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson, Joan Baez and Scarlet Rivera, whom Dylan discovered walking down the street, her violin case on her back.
Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour encompassed the release of the album Desire, with many of Dylan’s new songs featuring a travelogue-like narrative style, showing the influence of his new collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy. The 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special, Hard Rain, and the LP Hard Rain; no concert album from first half of the tour was released until 2002’s Live 1975.
he 1975 tour with the Revue provided the backdrop to Dylan’s nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara, a sprawling narrative mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received poor, sometimes scathing, reviews. Later in that year, a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, was more widely released. More than forty years later, a documentary about the 1975 leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese was released by Netflix on June 12, 2019.
In November 1976, Dylan appeared at the Band’s “farewell” concert, with Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison and Neil Young. Martin Scorsese’s 1978 cinematic chronicle of the concert, The Last Waltz, included about half of Dylan’s set. In 1976, Dylan wrote and duetted on “Sign Language” for Eric Clapton’s No Reason To Cry.
In 1978, Dylan embarked on a year-long world tour, performing 114 shows in Japan, the Far East, Europe and North America, to a total audience of two million. Dylan a*sembled an eight-piece band and three backing singers. Concerts in Tokyo in February and March were released as the live double album, Bob Dylan at Budokan. Reviews were mixed. Robert Christgau awarded the album a C+ rating, giving the album a derisory review, while Janet Maslin defended it in Rolling Stone, writing: “These latest live versions of his old songs have the effect of liberating Bob Dylan from the originals.” When Dylan brought the tour to the U.S. in September 1978, the press described the look and sound as a ‘Las Vegas Tour’. The 1978 tour grossed more than $20 million, and Dylan told the Los Angeles Times that he had debts because “I had a couple of bad years. I put a lot of money into the movie, built a big house … and it costs a lot to get divorced in California.”
In April and May 1978, Dylan took the same band and vocalists into Rundown Studios in Santa Monica, California, to record an album of new material: Street-Legal. It was described by Michael Gray as, “after Blood On The Tracks, arguably Dylan’s best record of the 1970s: a crucial album documenting a crucial period in Dylan’s own life.” However, it had poor sound and mixing (attributed to Dylan’s studio practices), muddying the instrumental detail until a remastered CD release in 1999 restored some of the songs’ strengths.
n the late 1970s, Dylan converted to Evangelical Christianity, undertaking a three-month discipleship course run by the Association of Vineyard Churches; and released three albums of contemporary gospel music. Slow Train Coming (1979) featured the guitar accompaniment of Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) and was produced by veteran R&B producer Jerry Wexler. Wexler said that Dylan had tried to evangelize him during the recording. He replied: “Bob, you’re dealing with a 62-year-old Jewish atheist. Let’s just make an album.” Dylan won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the song “Gotta Serve Somebody.” His second Christian-themed album, Saved (1980), received mixed reviews, described by Michael Gray as “the nearest thing to a follow-up album Dylan has ever made, Slow Train Coming II and inferior”. His third overtly Christian album was Shot of Love in 1981. When touring in late 1979 and early 1980, Dylan would not play his older, secular works, and he delivered declarations of his faith from the stage, such as:
Years ago they … said I was a prophet. I used to say, “No I’m not a prophet”, they say “Yes you are, you’re a prophet.” I said, “No it’s not me.” They used to say “You sure are a prophet.” They used to convince me I was a prophet. Now I come out and say Jesus Christ is the answer. They say, “Bob Dylan’s no prophet.” They just can’t handle it.
Dylan’s Christianity was unpopular with some fans and musicians. Shortly before his murder, John Lennon recorded “Serve Yourself” in response to Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody.” By 1981, Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times that “neither age (he’s now 40) nor his much-publicized conversion to born-again Christianity has altered his essentially iconoclastic temperament.”
In late 1980, Dylan briefly played concerts billed as “A Musical Retrospective”, restoring popular 1960s songs to the repertoire. Shot of Love, recorded early the next year, featured his first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with Christian songs. “Every Grain of Sand” reminded some of William Blake’s verses.
In the 1980s, reception of Dylan’s recordings varied, from the well-regarded Infidels in 1983 to the panned Down in the Groove in 1988. Michael Gray condemned Dylan’s 1980s albums for carelessness in the studio and for failing to release his best songs. As an example of the latter, the Infidels recording sessions, which again employed Knopfler on lead guitar and also as the album’s producer, resulted in several notable songs that Dylan left off the album. Best regarded of these were “Blind Willie McTell”, a tribute to the dead blues musician and an evocation of African American history, “Foot of Pride” and “Lord Protect My Child.” These three songs were released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.
Between July 1984 and March 1985, Dylan recorded Empire Burlesque.[213] Arthur Baker, who had remixed hits for Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper, was asked to engineer and mix the album. Baker said he felt he was hired to make Dylan’s album sound “a little bit more contemporary.”
In 1985 Dylan sang on USA for Africa’s famine relief single “We Are the World”. He also joined Artists United Against Apartheid providing vocals for their single “Sun City”. On July 13, 1985, he appeared at the climax at the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. Backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, he performed a ragged version of “Hollis Brown”, his ballad of rural poverty, and then said to the worldwide audience exceeding one billion people: “I hope that some of the money … maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe … one or two million, maybe … and use it to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks.”[215] His remarks were widely criticized as inappropriate, but they did inspire Willie Nelson to organize a series of events, Farm Aid, to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.
In April 1986, Dylan made a foray into rap music when he added vocals to the opening verse of “Street Rock”, featured on Kurtis Blow’s album Kingdom Blow. Dylan’s next studio album, Knocked Out Loaded, in July 1986 contained three covers (by Little Junior Parker, Kris Kristofferson and the gospel hymn “Precious Memories”), plus three collaborations (with Tom Petty, Sam Shepard and Carole Bayer Sager), and two solo compositions by Dylan. One reviewer commented that “the record follows too many detours to be consistently compelling, and some of those detours wind down roads that are indisputably dead ends. By 1986, such uneven records weren’t entirely unexpected by Dylan, but that didn’t make them any less frustrating.” It was the first Dylan album since The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) to fail to make the Top 50. Since then, some critics have called the 11-minute epic that Dylan co-wrote with Sam Shepard, “Brownsville Girl”, a work of genius.
In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. Dylan also toured with the Grateful Dead in 1987, resulting in a live album Dylan & The Dead. This received negative reviews; AllMusic said it was “Quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead.”Dylan then initiated what came to be called the Never Ending Tour on June 7, 1988, performing with a back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. Dylan would continue to tour with a small, changing band for the next 30 years.
In 1987, Dylan starred in Richard Marquand’s movie Hearts of Fire, in which he played Billy Parker, a washed-up rock star turned chicken farmer whose teenage lover (Fiona) leaves him for a jaded English synth-pop sensation played by Rupert Everett. Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack—”Night After Night”, and “I Had a Dream About You, Baby”, as well as a cover of John Hiatt’s “The Usual”. The film was a critical and commercial flop.
Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1988, with Bruce Springsteen’s introduction declaring, “Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body. He showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual.”
The album Down in the Groove in May 1988 sold even more poorly than his previous studio album.[226] Michael Gray wrote: “The very title undercuts any idea that inspired work may lie within. Here was a further devaluing of the notion of a new Bob Dylan album as something significant.” The critical and commercial disappointment of that album was swiftly followed by the success of the Traveling Wilburys. Dylan co-founded the band with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty, and in late 1988 their multi-platinum Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 reached three on the US album chart, featuring songs that were described as Dylan’s most accessible compositions in years. Despite Orbison’s death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990 with the title Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.
Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with Oh Mercy produced by Daniel Lanois. Michael Gray wrote that the album was: “Attentively written, vocally distinctive, musically warm, and uncompromisingly professional, this cohesive whole is the nearest thing to a great Bob Dylan album in the 1980s.” The track “Most of the Time”, a lost love composition, was later prominently featured in the film High Fidelity, while “What Was It You Wanted?” has been interpreted both as a catechism and a wry comment on the expectations of critics and fans. The religious imagery of “Ring Them Bells” struck some critics as a re-affirmation of faith.
Dylan’s 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990), an about-face from the serious Oh Mercy. It contained several apparently simple songs, including “Under the Red Sky” and “Wiggle Wiggle”. The album was dedicated to “Gabby Goo Goo”, a nickname for the daughter of Dylan and Carolyn Dennis, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, who was four. Musicians on the album included George Harrison, Slash from Guns N’ Roses, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Elton John. The record received bad reviews and sold poorly.
In 1990 and 1991 Dylan was described by his biographers as drinking heavily, impairing his performances on stage. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan dismissed allegations that drinking was interfering with his music: “That’s completely inaccurate. I can drink or not drink. I don’t know why people would a*sociate drinking with anything I do, really.”
Defilement and remorse were themes Dylan addressed when he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from American actor Jack Nicholson in February 1991. The event coincided with the start of the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein and Dylan performed “Masters of War”. He then made a short speech: “My daddy once said to me, he said, ‘Son, it is possible for you to become so defiled in this world that your own mother and father will abandon you. If that happens, God will believe in your ability to mend your own ways.’” The sentiment was subsequently revealed to be a quote from 19th-century German Jewish intellectual Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
Over the next few years Dylan returned to his roots with two albums covering traditional folk and blues songs: Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), backed solely by his acoustic guitar. Many critics and fans commented on the quiet beauty of the song “Lone Pilgrim”, written by a 19th-century teacher. In November 1994 Dylan recorded two live shows for MTV Unplugged. He said his wish to perform traditional songs was overruled by Sony executives who insisted on hits. The album from it, MTV Unplugged, included “John Brown”, an unreleased 1962 song of how enthusiasm for war ends in mutilation and disillusionment.
With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed in on his Minnesota ranch, Dylan booked recording time with Daniel Lanois at Miami’s Criteria Studios in January 1997. The subsequent recording sessions were, by some accounts, fraught with musical tension.[246] Before the album’s release Dylan was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart infection, pericarditis, brought on by histoplasmosis. His scheduled European tour was cancelled, but Dylan made a speedy recovery and left the hospital saying, “I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon.” He was back on the road by mid-year, and performed before Pope John Paul II at the World Eucharistic Conference in Bologna, Italy. The Pope treated the audience of 200,000 people to a homily based on Dylan’s lyric “Blowin’ in the Wind”.
In September Dylan released the new Lanois-produced album, Time Out of Mind. With its bitter a*sessment of love and morbid ruminations, Dylan’s first collection of original songs in seven years was highly acclaimed. One critic wrote: “the songs themselves are uniformly powerful, adding up to Dylan’s best overall collection in years.” This collection of complex songs won him his first solo “Album of the Year” Grammy Award.
In December 1997, U.S. President Bill Clinton presented Dylan with a Kennedy Center Honor in the East Room of the White House, paying this tribute: “He probably had more impact on people of my generation than any other creative artist. His voice and lyrics haven’t always been easy on the ear, but throughout his career Bob Dylan has never aimed to please. He’s disturbed the peace and discomforted the powerful.”
Dylan commenced the 2000s by winning the Polar Music Prize in May 2000 and his first Oscar; his song “Things Have Changed”, written for the film Wonder Boys, won an Academy Award for Best Song in 2001. The Oscar, by some reports a facsimile, tours with him, presiding over shows atop an amplifier.
“Love and Theft” was released on September 11, 2001. Recorded with his touring band, Dylan produced the album himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost. The album was critically well received and earned nominations for several Grammy awards. Critics noted that Dylan was widening his musical palette to include rockabilly, Western swing, jazz, and even lounge ballads. “Love and Theft” generated controversy when The Wall Street Journal pointed out similarities between the album’s lyrics and Japanese author Junichi Saga’s book Confessions of a Yakuza.
In 2003, Dylan revisited the evangelical songs from his Christian period and participated in the CD project Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan. That year Dylan also released the film Masked & Anonymous, which he co-wrote with director Larry Charles under the alias Sergei Petrov.[261] Dylan played the central character in the film, Jack Fate, alongside a cast that included Jeff Bridges, Penélope Cruz and John Goodman. The film polarised critics: many dismissed it as an “incoherent mess”; a few treated it as a serious work of art.
In October 2004, Dylan published the first part of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One. Confounding expectations, Dylan devoted three chapters to his first year in New York City in 1961–1962, virtually ignoring the mid-1960s when his fame was at its height. He also devoted chapters to the albums New Morning (1970) and Oh Mercy (1989). The book reached number two on The New York Times’ Hardcover Non-Fiction best seller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award.[
No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed film biography of Dylan,[268] was first broadcast on September 26–27, 2005, on BBC Two in the UK and PBS in the US. The documentary focuses on the period from Dylan’s arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle crash in 1966, featuring interviews with Suze Rotolo, Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples and Dylan himself. The film received a Peabody Award in April 2006 and a Columbia-duPont Award in January 2007.[ The accompanying soundtrack featured unreleased songs from Dylan’s early career.
Dylan earned another distinction when a 2007 study of US legal opinions found his lyrics were quoted by judges and lawyers more than those of any other songwriter, 186 times versus 74 by the Beatles, who were second. Among those quoting Dylan were US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia, both conservatives. The most widely cited lines included “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” from “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose” from “Like a Rolling Stone”.
Dylan’s career as a radio presenter commenced on May 3, 2006, with his weekly radio program, Theme Time Radio Hour for XM Satellite Radio, with song selections on chosen themes. Dylan played classic and obscure records from the 1920s to the present day, including contemporary artists as diverse as Blur, Prince, L.L. Cool J and the Streets. The show was praised by fans and critics, as Dylan told stories and made eclectic references, commenting on his musical choices. In April 2009, Dylan broadcast the 100th show in his radio series; the theme was “Goodbye” and the final record played was Woody Guthrie’s “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh”.
Dylan resurrected his Theme Time Radio Hour format when he broadcast a two-hour special on the theme of “Whiskey” on Sirius Radio on September 21, 2020.
Dylan released his Modern Times album in August 2006. Despite some coarsening of Dylan’s voice (a critic for The Guardian characterised his singing on the album as “a catarrhal death rattle” ) most reviewers praised the album, and many described it as the final installment of a successful trilogy, embracing Time Out of Mind and “Love and Theft”. Modern Times entered the U.S. charts at number one, making it Dylan’s first album to reach that position since 1976’s Desire.[ The New York Times published an article exploring similarities between some of Dylan’s lyrics in Modern Times and the work of the Civil War poet Henry Timrod.
Nominated for three Grammy Awards, Modern Times won Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album and Bob Dylan also won Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for “Someday Baby.” Modern Times was named Album of the Year, 2006, by Rolling Stone magazine, and by Uncut in the UK. On the same day that Modern Times was released the iTunes Music Store released Bob Dylan: The Collection, a digital box set containing all of his albums (773 tracks in total), along with 42 rare and unreleased tracks.
In August 2007, the award-winning film biography of Dylan I’m Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes, was released—bearing the tagline “inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan.”[ The movie used six different actors to represent different aspects of Dylan’s life: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw. Dylan’s previously unreleased 1967 recording from which the film takes its name was released for the first time on the film’s original soundtrack; all other tracks are covers of Dylan songs, specially recorded for the movie by a diverse range of artists, including Sonic Youth, Eddie Vedder, Mason Jennings, Stephen Malkmus, Jeff Tweedy, Karen O, Willie Nelson, Cat Power, Richie Havens and Tom Verlaine.
On October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released the triple CD retrospective album Dylan, anthologising his entire career under the Dylan 07 logo. The sophistication of the Dylan 07 marketing campaign was a reminder that Dylan’s commercial profile had risen considerably since the 1990s. This became evident in 2004, when Dylan appeared in a TV advertisement for Victoria’s Secret lingerie. Three years later, in October 2007, he participated in a multi-media campaign for the 2008 Cadillac Escalade. Then, in 2009, he gave the highest profile endorsement of his career, appearing with rapper will.i.am in a Pepsi ad that debuted during the telecast of Super Bowl XLIII. The ad, broadcast to a record audience of 98 million viewers, opened with Dylan singing the first verse of “Forever Young” followed by will.i.am doing a hip hop version of the song’s third and final verse.
The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 – Tell Tale Signs was released in October 2008, as both a two-CD set and a three-CD version with a 150-page hardcover book. The set contains live performances and outtakes from selected studio albums from Oh Mercy to Modern Times, as well as soundtrack contributions and collaborations with David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley. The pricing of the album—the two-CD set went on sale for $18.99 and the three-CD version for $129.99—led to complaints about “rip-off packaging” from some fans and commentators. The release was widely acclaimed by critics. The abundance of alternative takes and unreleased material suggested to one reviewer that this volume of old outtakes “feels like a new Bob Dylan record, not only for the astonishing freshness of the material, but also for the incredible sound quality and organic feeling of everything here.”
Together Through Life and Christmas in the Heart
Bob Dylan released his album Together Through Life on April 28, 2009. In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, published on Dylan’s website, Dylan explained that the genesis of the record was when French film director Olivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his new road movie, My Own Love Song; initially only intending to record a single track, “Life Is Hard,” “the record sort of took its own direction.” Nine of the ten songs on the album are credited as co-written by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter. The album received largely favorable reviews, although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan’s canon of work.
In its first week of release, the album reached number one in the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S., making Bob Dylan (67 years of age) the oldest artist to ever debut at number one on that chart.[ It also reached number one on the UK album chart, 39 years after Dylan’s previous UK album chart topper New Morning. This meant that Dylan currently holds the record for the longest gap between solo number one albums in the UK chart.
Dylan’s album, Christmas in the Heart, was released in October 2009, comprising such Christmas standards as “Little Drummer Boy”, “Winter Wonderland” and “Here Comes Santa Claus.”[310] Critics pointed out that Dylan was “revisiting yuletide styles popularized by Nat King Cole, Mel Tormé, and the Ray Conniff Singers.” Dylan’s royalties from the sale of this album were donated to the charities Feeding America in the USA, Crisis in the UK, and the World Food Programme.
The album received generally favorable reviews. The New Yorker wrote that Dylan had welded a pre-rock musical sound to “some of his croakiest vocals in a while”, and speculated that his intentions might be ironic: “Dylan has a long and highly publicized history with Christianity; to claim there’s not a wink in the childish optimism of ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’ or ‘Winter Wonderland’ is to ignore a half-century of biting satire.” In an interview published in The Big Issue, journalist Bill Flanagan asked Dylan why he had performed the songs in a straightforward style, and Dylan responded: “There wasn’t any other way to play it. These songs are part of my life, just like folk songs. You have to play them straight too.”
Volume 9 of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, The Witmark Demos was issued in October 18, 2010. It comprised 47 demo recordings of songs taped between 1962 and 1964 for Dylan’s earliest music publishers: Leeds Music in 1962, and Witmark Music from 1962 to 1964. One reviewer described the set as “a hearty glimpse of young Bob Dylan changing the music business, and the world, one note at a time.”[316] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a Metascore of 86, indicating “universal acclaim.”[317] In the same week, Sony Legacy released Bob Dylan: The Original Mono Recordings, a box set that for the first time presented Dylan’s eight earliest albums, from Bob Dylan (1962) to John Wesley Harding (1967), in their original mono mix in the CD format. The CDs were housed in miniature facsimiles of the original album covers, replete with original liner notes. The set was accompanied by a booklet featuring an essay by music critic Greil Marcus.[318][319]
On April 12, 2011, Legacy Recordings released Bob Dylan in Concert – Brandeis University 1963, taped at Brandeis University on May 10, 1963, two weeks prior to the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The tape was discovered in the archive of music writer Ralph J. Gleason, and the recording carries liner notes by Michael Gray, who says it captures Dylan “from way back when Kennedy] was President and the Beatles hadn’t yet reached America. It reveals him not at any Big Moment but giving a performance like his folk club sets of the period… This is the last live performance we have of Bob Dylan before he becomes a star.”[320]
The extent to which his work was studied at an academic level was demonstrated on Dylan’s 70th birthday on May 24, 2011, when three universities organized symposia on his work. The University of Mainz,[321] the University of Vienna,[322] and the University of Bristol[323] invited literary critics and cultural historians to give papers on aspects of Dylan’s work. Other events, including tribute bands, discussions and simple singalongs, took place around the world, as reported in The Guardian: “From Moscow to Madrid, Norway to Northampton and Malaysia to his home state of Minnesota, self-confessed ‘Bobcats’ will gather today to celebrate the 70th birthday of a giant of popular music.”
On May 29, 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Dylan a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the White House. At the ceremony, Obama praised Dylan’s voice for its “unique gravelly power that redefined not just what music sounded like but the message it carried and how it made people feel.”[325]
Dylan’s 35th studio album, Tempest was released on September 11, 2012.[326] The album features a tribute to John Lennon, “Roll On John”, and the title track is a 14-minute song about the sinking of the Titanic.[327] Reviewing Tempest for Rolling Stone, Will Hermes gave the album five out of five stars, writing: “Lyrically, Dylan is at the top of his game, joking around, dropping wordplay and allegories that evade pat readings and quoting other folks’ words like a freestyle rapper on fire.”[328] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a score of 83 out of 100, indicating “universal acclaim.”[329]
Volume 10 of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Another Self Portrait (1969–1971), was released in August 2013.[330] The album contained 35 previously unreleased tracks, including alternative takes and demos from Dylan’s 1969–1971 recording sessions during the making of the Self Portrait and New Morning albums. The box set also included a live recording of Dylan’s performance with the Band at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969. Another Self Portrait received favorable reviews, earning a score of 81 on the critical aggregator, Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim.”[331] AllMusic critic Thom Jurek wrote, “For fans, this is more than a curiosity, it’s an indispensable addition to the catalog.”[332]
Columbia Records released a boxed set containing all 35 Dylan studio albums, six albums of live recordings, and a collection, entitled Sidetracks, of non-album material, Bob Dylan: Complete Album Collection: Vol. One, in November 2013.[333][334] To publicize the 35 album box set, an innovative video of the song “Like a Rolling Stone” was released on Dylan’s website. The interactive video, created by director Vania Heymann, allowed viewers to switch between 16 simulated TV channels, all featuring characters who are lip-synching the lyrics of the 48-year-old song.[335][336]
Dylan appeared in a commercial for the Chrysler 200 car which was screened during the 2014 Super Bowl American football game played on February 2, 2014. At the end of the commercial, Dylan says: “So let Germany brew your beer, let Switzerland make your watch, let Asia a*semble your phone. We will build your car.” Dylan’s Super Bowl commercial generated controversy and op-ed pieces discussing the protectionist implications of his words, and whether the singer had “sold out” to corporate interests.[337][338][339][340][341]
In 2013 and 2014, auction house sales demonstrated the high cultural value attached to Dylan’s mid-1960s work and the record prices that collectors were willing to pay for artefacts from this period. In December 2013, the Fender Stratocaster which Dylan had played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival fetched $965,000, the second highest price paid for a guitar.[342][343] In June 2014, Dylan’s hand-written lyrics of “Like a Rolling Stone”, his 1965 hit single, fetched $2 million dollars at auction, a record for a popular music manuscript.[344][345]
A massive 960 page, thirteen and a half pound edition of Dylan’s lyrics, The Lyrics: Since 1962 was published by Simon & Schuster in the fall of 2014. The book was edited by literary critic Christopher Ricks, Julie Nemrow and Lisa Nemrow, to offer variant versions of Dylan’s songs, sourced from out-takes and live performances. A limited edition of 50 books, signed by Dylan, was priced at $5,000. “It’s the biggest, most expensive book we’ve ever published, as far as I know,” said Jonathan Karp, Simon & Schuster’s president and publisher.[346][347]
A comprehensive edition of the Basement Tapes, songs recorded by Dylan and the Band in 1967, was released as The Basement Tapes Complete in November 2014. These 138 tracks in a six-CD box form Volume 11 of Dylan’s Bootleg Series. The 1975 album, The Basement Tapes, had contained just 24 tracks from the material which Dylan and the Band had recorded at their homes in Woodstock, New York in 1967. Subsequently, over 100 recordings and alternate takes had circulated on bootleg records. The sleeve notes for the new box set are by Sid Griffin, author of Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes.[348][349] The box set earned a score of 99 on the critical aggregator, Metacritic.
In February 2015, Dylan released Shadows in the Night, featuring ten songs written between 1923 and 1963,[351][352] which have been described as part of the Great American Songbook.[353] All the songs on the album were recorded by Frank Sinatra but both critics and Dylan himself cautioned against seeing the record as a collection of “Sinatra covers.”[351][354] Dylan explained, “I don’t see myself as covering these songs in any way. They’ve been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day.”[355] In an interview, Dylan said he had been thinking about making this record since hearing Willie Nelson’s 1978 album Stardust.[356] Dylan’s first foray into this material was in 2001 when he recorded Dean Martin’s “Return to Me” for the third season of The Sopranos.[357]
Shadows In the Night received favorable reviews, scoring 82 on the critical aggregator Metacritic, which indicates “universal acclaim”.[358] Critics praised the restrained instrumental backings and the quality of Dylan’s singing.[353][359] Bill Prince in GQ commented: “A performer who’s had to hear his influence in virtually every white pop recording made since he debuted his own self-titled album back in 1962 imagines himself into the songs of his pre-rock’n’roll early youth.”[354] The album debuted at number one in the UK Albums Chart in its first week of release.[360]
The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966, consisting of previously unreleased material from the three albums Dylan recorded between January 1965 and March 1966: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde was released in November 2015. The set was released in three formats: a 2-CD “Best Of” version, a 6-CD “Deluxe edition”, and an 18-CD “Collector’s Edition” in a limited edition of 5,000 units. On Dylan’s website the “Collector’s Edition” was described as containing “every single note recorded by Bob Dylan in the studio in 1965/1966.”[361][362] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded Cutting Edge a score of 99, indicating universal acclaim.[363] The Best of the Cutting Edge entered the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart at number one on November 18, based on its first-week sales.[364]
The sale of Dylan’s extensive archive of about 6,000 items of memorabilia to the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the University of Tulsa was announced on March 2, 2016. It was reported the sale price was “an estimated $15 million to $20 million”. The archive comprises notebooks, drafts of Dylan lyrics, recordings, and correspondence.[365] The archive will be housed at Helmerich Center for American Research, a facility at the Gilcrease Museum.[366]
Dylan released Fallen Angels—described as “a direct continuation of the work of ‘uncovering’ the Great Songbook that he began on last year’s Shadows In the Night”—in May.[367] The album contained twelve songs by classic songwriters such as Harold Arlen, Sammy Cahn and Johnny Mercer, eleven of which had been recorded by Sinatra.[367] Jim Farber wrote in Entertainment Weekly: “Tellingly, [Dylan] delivers these songs of love lost and cherished not with a burning passion but with the wistfulness of experience. They’re memory songs now, intoned with a present sense of commitment. Released just four days ahead of his 75th birthday, they couldn’t be more age-appropriate.”[368] The album received a score of 79 on critical aggregator website Metacritic, denoting “generally favorable reviews”.[369]
A massive 36-CD collection, The 1966 Live Recordings, including every known recording of Bob Dylan’s 1966 concert tour was released in November 2016.[370] The recordings commence with the concert in White Plains New York on February 5, 1966, and end with the Royal Albert Hall concert in London on May 27.[371][372] The New York Times reported most of the concerts had “never been heard in any form”, and described the set as “a monumental addition to the corpus”.[373]
Dylan released a triple album of a further 30 recordings of classic American songs, Triplicate, in March 2017. Dylan’s 38th studio album was recorded in Hollywood’s Capitol Studios and features his touring band.[374] Dylan posted a long interview on his website to promote the album, and was asked if this material was an exercise in nostalgia. “Nostalgic? No I wouldn’t say that. It’s not taking a trip down memory lane or longing and yearning for the good old days or fond memories of what’s no more. A song like “Sentimental Journey” is not a way back when song, it doesn’t emulate the past, it’s attainable and down to earth, it’s in the here and now.”[375] The album was awarded a score of 84 on critical aggregator website Metacritic, signifying “universal acclaim”. Critics praised the thoroughness of Dylan’s exploration of the great American songbook, though, in the opinion of Uncut: “For all its easy charms, Triplicate labours its point to the brink of overkill. After five albums’ worth of croon toons, this feels like a fat full stop on a fascinating chapter.”[376]
The next edition of Dylan’s Bootleg Series revisited Dylan’s “Born Again” Christian period of 1979 to 1981, which was described by Rolling Stone as “an intense, wildly controversial time that produced three albums and some of the most confrontational concerts of his long career”.[377] Reviewing the box set, The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981, comprising 8 CDs and 1 DVD.[377] in The New York Times, Jon Pareles wrote, “Decades later, what comes through these recordings above all is Mr. Dylan’s unmistakable fervor, his sense of mission. The studio albums are subdued, even tentative, compared with what the songs became on the road. Mr. Dylan’s voice is clear, cutting and ever improvisational; working the crowds, he was emphatic, committed, sometimes teasingly combative. And the band tears into the music.”[378] Trouble No More includes a DVD of a film directed by Jennifer Lebeau consisting of live footage of Dylan’s gospel performances interspersed with sermons delivered by actor Michael Shannon. The box set album received an aggregate score of 84 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[379]
Dylan made a contribution to the compilation EP Universal Love, a collection of reimagined wedding songs for the LGBT community in April 2018.[380] The album was funded by MGM Resorts International and the songs are intended to function as “wedding anthems for same-sex couples”.[381] Dylan recorded the 1929 song “She’s Funny That Way”, changing the gender pronoun to “He’s Funny That Way”. The song has previously been recorded by Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra.[381][382]
Also in April 2018, The New York Times announced that Dylan was launching Heaven’s Door, a range of three whiskeys: a straight rye, a straight bourbon and a “double-barreled” whiskey. Dylan has been involved in both the creation and the marketing of the range. The Times described the venture as “Mr. Dylan’s entry into the booming celebrity-branded spirits market, the latest career twist for an artist who has spent five decades confounding expectations.”[383]
On November 2, 2018, Dylan released More Blood, More Tracks as Volume 14 in the Bootleg Series. The set comprises all Dylan’s recordings for his 1975 album Blood On the Tracks, and was issued as a single CD and also as a six-CD Deluxe Edition.[384] The box set album received an aggregate score of 93 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[385]
Netflix released the movie Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese on June 12, 2019, describing the film as “Part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream”.[386][187] The Scorsese film received an aggregate score of 88 on critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[387] The film sparked controversy because of the way it deliberately mixed documentary footage filmed during the Rolling Thunder Revue in the fall of 1975 with fictitious characters and invented stories.[388]
Coinciding with the film release, a box set of 14 CDs, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, was released by Columbia Records. The set comprises five full Dylan performances from the tour and recently discovered tapes from Dylan’s tour rehearsals.[389] The box set received an aggregate score of 89 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[390]
The next instalment of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Bob Dylan (featuring Johnny Cash) – Travelin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15, was released on November 1. The 3-CD set comprises outtakes from Dylan’s albums John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, and songs that Dylan recorded with Johnny Cash in Nashville in 1969 and with Earl Scruggs in 1970.[391][392] Travelin’ Thru received an aggregate score of 88 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.
On March 26, 2020, Dylan released a seventeen-minute track “Murder Most Foul” on his YouTube channel, revolving around the a*sassination of President Kennedy.[394] Dylan posted a statement: “This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.”[395] Billboard reported on April 8 that “Murder Most Foul” had topped the Billboard Rock Digital Song Sales Chart. This was the first time that Dylan had scored a number one song on a pop chart under his own name.[396] Three weeks later, on April 17, 2020, Dylan released another new song, “I Contain Multitudes”.[397][398] The title is a quote from Section 51 of Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself”.[399] On May 7, Dylan released a third single, “False Prophet”, accompanied by the news that “Murder Most Foul”, “I Contain Multitudes” and “False Prophet” would all appear on a forthcoming double album.
Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan’s 39th studio album and his first album of original material since 2012, was released on June 19 to favorable reviews.[400] Alexis Petridis wrote in The Guardian, “For all its bleakness, Rough and Rowdy Ways might well be Bob Dylan’s most consistently brilliant set of songs in years: the die-hards can spend months unravelling the knottier lyrics, but you don’t need a PhD in Dylanology to appreciate its singular quality and power.”[401] Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield wrote: “While the world keeps trying to celebrate him as an institution, pin him down, cast him in the Nobel Prize canon, embalm his past, this drifter always keeps on making his next escape. On Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan is exploring terrain nobody else has reached before—yet he just keeps pushing on into the future.”[402] Critical aggregator Metacritic gave the album a score of 95, indicating “universal acclaim”.[400] In its first week of release Rough and Rowdy Ways reached number one on the U.K. album chart, making Dylan “the oldest artist to score a No. 1 of new, original material”.[403]
To accompany the album, Dylan gave a rare interview to historian Douglas Brinkley, published in The New York Times on June 12. Dylan commented on the killing of George Floyd: “It was beyond ugly. Let’s hope that justice comes swift for the Floyd family and for the nation.” He said of the COVID-19 pandemic, “Maybe we are on the eve of destruction. There are numerous ways you can think about this virus. I think you just have to let it run its course.”
The Never Ending Tour commenced on June 7, 1988,[405] and Dylan has played roughly 100 dates a year for the entirety of the 1990s and 2000s—a heavier schedule than most performers who started out in the 1960s.[406] By April 2019, Dylan and his band had played more than 3,000 shows,[407] anchored by long-time bassist Tony Garnier, multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron and guitarist Charlie Sexton.[408] In October 2019, drummer Matt Chamberlain joined the band.[408] To the dismay of some of his audience,[409] Dylan’s performances remain unpredictable as he alters his arrangements and changes his vocal approach night after night.[410] Critical opinion about Dylan’s shows remains divided. Critics such as Richard Williams and Andy Gill have argued that Dylan has found a successful way to present his rich legacy of material.[411][412] Others have criticized his live performances for mangling and spitting out “the greatest lyrics ever written so that they are effectively unrecognisable”, and giving so little to the audience that “it is difficult to understand what he is doing on stage at all.”[413]
Dylan’s performances in China in April 2011 generated controversy. Some criticised him for not making any explicit comment on the political situation in China, and for, allegedly, allowing the Chinese authorities to censor his set list.[414][415] Others defended Dylan’s performances, arguing that such criticism represented a misunderstanding of Dylan’s art, and that no evidence for the censorship of Dylan’s set list existed.[416][417] In response to these allegations, Dylan posted a statement on his website: “As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There’s no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.”[418]
In 2019, Dylan undertook two tours in Europe. The first commenced in Düsseldorf, Germany, on March 31, and ended in Valencia, Spain, on May 7. He played his 3000th show of the Never Ending Tour on April 19, 2019, in Innsbruck, Austria.[419] Dylan’s second tour began in Bergen, Norway, on June 21, and ended in Kilkenny, Ireland, on July 14.[420][421] In the fall of 2019 Dylan toured the USA, commencing in Irvine, California on October 11 and ending in Washington D.C. on December 8.[422]
In October 2019, Dylan’s touring company indicated that he would play 14 concerts in Japan in April 2020.[423] However, on March 12, 2020, it was announced that these scheduled shows had been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The cover of Dylan’s album Self Portrait (1970) is a reproduction of a painting of a face by Dylan.[425] Another of his paintings is reproduced on the cover of the 1974 album Planet Waves. In 1994 Random House published Drawn Blank, a book of Dylan’s drawings.[426] In 2007, the first public exhibition of Dylan’s paintings, The Drawn Blank Series, opened at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany;[427] it showcased more than 200 watercolors and gouaches made from the original drawings. The exhibition coincided with the publication of Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series.[427][428] From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, The Brazil Series.[429]
In July 2011, a leading contemporary art gallery, Gagosian Gallery, announced their representation of Dylan’s paintings.[430] An exhibition of Dylan’s art, The Asia Series, opened at the Gagosian Madison Avenue Gallery on September 20, displaying Dylan’s paintings of scenes in China and the Far East.[431] The New York Times reported that “some fans and Dylanologists have raised questions about whether some of these paintings are based on the singer’s own experiences and observations, or on photographs that are widely available and were not taken by Mr. Dylan.” The Times pointed to close resemblances between Dylan’s paintings and historic photos of Japan and China, and photos taken by Dmitri Kessel and Henri Cartier-Bresson.[432] Art critic Blake Gopnik has defended Dylan’s artistic practice, arguing: “Ever since the birth of photography, painters have used it as the basis for their works: Edgar Degas and Edouard Vuillard and other favorite artists—even Edvard Munch—all took or used photos as sources for their art, sometimes barely altering them.”[433] The Magnum photo agency confirmed that Dylan had licensed the reproduction rights of these photographs.[434]
Dylan’s second show at the Gagosian Gallery, Revisionist Art, opened in November 2012. The show consisted of thirty paintings, transforming and satirizing popular magazines, including Playboy and Babytalk.[435][436] In February 2013, Dylan exhibited the New Orleans Series of paintings at the Palazzo Reale in Milan.[437] In August 2013, Britain’s National Portrait Gallery in London hosted Dylan’s first major UK exhibition, Face Value, featuring twelve pastel portraits.[438]
In November 2013, the Halcyon Gallery in London mounted Mood Swings, an exhibition in which Dylan displayed seven wrought iron gates he had made. In a statement released by the gallery, Dylan said, “I’ve been around iron all my life ever since I was a kid. I was born and raised in iron ore country, where you could breathe it and smell it every day. Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.”[439][440]
In November 2016, the Halcyon Gallery featured a collection of drawings, watercolors and acrylic works by Dylan. The exhibition, The Beaten Path, depicted American landscapes and urban scenes, inspired by Dylan’s travels across the USA.[441] The show was reviewed by Vanity Fair and Asia Times Online.[442][443][444] In October 2018, the Halcyon Gallery mounted an exhibition of Dylan’s drawings, Mondo Scripto. The works consisted of Dylan hand-written lyrics of his songs, with each song illustrated by a drawing.[445]
Since 1994, Dylan has published eight books of paintings and drawings.
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
5 7 7 7 -6b 5 -5
There’s two things I know for sure.
-5 -5 7 7 -6b 7 -7
She was sent here from hea-ven,
-5 -5 8 -7 8 -7 8
and she’s dad-dy’s lit-tle girl.
-5 -5 -8 -8 -8 8 -7 7 -7 -6b -5
As I drop to my knees by her bed at night,
-8 -8 -8 8 -7 -6b 7 -7 8 -7
she talks to Je-sus, and I close my eyes.
7 -6 -6b -6 7 -7 8 -8 9 8 7 -6b
And I thank God for all of the joy in my life
7 -6 -6b -5 -5
Oh, but most of all,
(CHORUS)
-5 -8 -8 -8 8 -7 -5 -5 -7 -7 8
For But-ter-fly kis-ses af-ter bed-time prayer
-5 -5 -8 -8 -8 8 -7
Stick-in lit-tle white flow-ers
-7 -7 7 -7 8
all up in her hair
-6b -6 7 -7 7 -6
Walk be-side the po-ny
-6b -5 -5 -5 8 8
dad-dy it’s my first ride
-5 -6b -6 7 -7 7 -6 -6b -5
I know the cake looks fun-ny, dad-dy,
-5 -5 9 8
but I sure tried.
7 -6 -6b -6b -6 7 -7
Oh, with all that I’ve done wrong,
-5 -5 -6b 7 8 9 -9
I must have done some-thing right
-6b -6 7 -6 -6b -6b -6 7 7
To de-serve a hug ev-ry morn-ing,
-5 -8 -8 -8 8 7 7 7
and but-ter-fly kis-ses at night.
VERSE 2
7 7 -6b 5 -5
Sweet six-teen to-day,
-5 7 -6b 7 -6b 7 -7
She’s look-ing like her ma-ma
-5 7 -7 8 -7 7 7
a lit-tle more ev-ry day.
-8 -8 8 7 7 -7 -6b -6b -5
One part wo-man, the oth-er part girl.
-5 -8 -8 -8 8 7 -6b 7 -7 8 -7
To per-fume and make-up, from rib-bons and curls
-6b -6 7 -7 8 8 -8 9 8 -6b
Try-in her wings out in a great big world.
-5 7 -6 -6b -5
But I re-mem-ber
(CHORUS)
7 -7 8 -8 9 -7 -7 8 -8
All the pre-cious time Oh Like the wind,
-8 8 -6b -5
the years go by
7 -7 8 -8 8 -8 -8 -7 7 -6
Pre-cious but-ter-fly spread your wings and fly
VERSE 3 plays same as 1
She’ll change her name today.
She’ll make a promise
and I’ll give her away.
Standing in the bride room
just staring at her,
She asked me what I’m thinking,
and I said “I’m not sure,
I just feel like I’m losing my baby girl.”
Then she leaned over… and gave Me…
THIS CHORUS PLAYS SAME AS OTHERS!
Butterfly kisses, with her mama there
sticking little white flowers all up in her hair
“Walk me down the aisle, daddy, it’s just about time”
“Does my wedding gown look pretty, daddy?”
“Daddy, don’t cry.”
Oh, with all that I’ve done wrong,
I must have done something right
To deserve her love every morning,
and butterfly kisses at night
I couldn’t ask God for more. Man, this is what love is.
I know I’ve gotta let her go, but I’ll always remember
Every hug in the morning, and butterfly kisses
ENJOY!!!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
(SPOKEN)
I don’t understand, why
See it’ s burning me to hold onto this
I know this is something I gotta do
But that don’t mean I want to
What I’m trying to say is that I-love-you I just
I feel like this, is coming to an end
And it’s better for me to,
let it go now than hold on and hurt you
I gotta let it burn
[Verse 1]
4 4 5 -4 -4 4 -4 4
It’s gon’ burn for me to say this
4 5 -4 -4 4 -4
it’s com-in from my heart
-3b -3b -3b -3 4 -4 4
It’s been a long time com-in
-3b -3b -3 5 -4 4 -4
But we done been fell a-part
4 4 4 5 5 -5 4 -4
I real-ly wan-na work this out
-3b -3b -3 4 -3 4 -3 -4
But I don’t think your gon-na change
5 4 -3 5 4
I do but you don’t
5 5 -3 4 -4 -4 -4 4 -4
Think it’s best we go our sep-‘rate ways
4 -5 -5 5 -5
Tell me why I should
7 -6 -6b -6 -6b -5 -5
stay in this re-la-tion-ship
-6 -6b -3b 4 5 -5 -6 -6b -6b 4 5 -5
When I’m hurt-in’ ba-by, I ain’t hap-py ba-by
-6 -6b -6b -6b 4 5 -5 7
plus there’s so man-y oth-er things
-6 -6b -6 -6b -5
I got-ta deal with
-5 -5 -5b 5 -4 4 -4 -4
I think that you should let it burn
[Chorus]
4 -3b -4 -4 -4 4 4 4
When the feel-ing ain’t the same in
5 4 4 -3b -4 4
your bod-y don’t want to
-2b -2b 4 -3 -3b -3 -2 4
But you know, got-ta let it go
4 5 4 4 4 -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 5
‘Cause the par-ty ain’t jump-in’ like it used to
-6 -6 -6 -6 7 -6 -4
E-ven though this might bruise you
5 -5 5 -4 4 -4
Let it burn Let it burn
4 4 4 4 -4
Got-ta let it burn
5 -4 4 4 4 4
Deep down you know it’s best
4 4 4 -4 5
for you ‘cept but you
5 5 4 4 4 4 4
Hate the thought of her be-ing
4 4 4 4
with some-one else
-4 5 -5 -5b 5 -5 5
But you know that it’s o-ver
-6 -6b -5 5 -5
You know that it’s through
5 -5 5 -4 4 -4
Let it burn Let it burn
4 4 4 4 -4
Got-ta let it burn
[Verse 2]
-5 -5b 5 4 -4 4 -4 4
Send-in’ pa-ges I ain’t s’posed to
-2b -3b 4 4 4 -3b -2 -5 5
Got some-bod-y here but I want you
-2b -2b 4 4 4 4 -3b
Cause the feel-in ain’t the same
-3b -3b -3b
Find my-self
-3b -3b 4 4 -3b
Call-in’her your name
-3b -3b -3b -3b -3b 4 -3 -3b -3b
La-dies tell me do you un-der-stand
-3b -3b -3b -3b -3b -3b 4 -3 -3b -3b
now all my fel-las do you feel my pain
-5 -5b 5 4 -4
It’s the way I feel
-3b -3b -3 -3 4 -4 5
I knew I made a mis-take
-3 4 -4 5
Now it’s too late
-3b -3b -3 4 -4 -4 4
I know she ain’t com-in back
4 4 4 4 4 -3b
What I got-ta do now
-3b -3b -3b -3 -3 -3b
To get my shor-ty back
-5 -5b 5 -3b
Ooo ooo ooo ooooh
-3b -3b -3b -3b -3b -3b -3b -3b -3b
Man I don’t know what I’m gon-na do
-5 -5 5 -3b
With-out my boo
4 4 5 5 5 5
You been gone for too long
4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
It’s been fif-ty ‘lev-en days, ump-teen hours
5 5 5 5 4 4 -4 5 -5
I’m’a be burn-in’ till you re-turn
[Chorus]
[Bridge]
5 -4 4 -3b 5 -4 4 4
I’m twist-ed ’cause one side of me’s
-3 -3b 4 -3 -3b 4 -3 4 5
Tell-in’ me that I need to move on
-3b -3b -3b -3 4
On the oth-er side
5 -3n -3b -3b -3 4 5 -5
I wan-na break down and cry (ooooh)
(REPEAT)
-5 -5b 5 -6b -5 5 -6b -5 5
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
-5 5 5 5 -5 5 5 5
So man-y days, so man-y hours
-5 5 5 5 4 -4 5 -6b
I’m still burn-in’ till you re-turn
(Chorus To END)
ENJOY!!!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
Weezer – Buddy Holly
5 -5 5 -7-6 5 -4 4 5
Whats with these homies dissing my girl?
5 -5 5 -7 -6 5-44
Why do they gotta front?
5 -5 5 -7-6 5 -4 4 5
What did we ever do to these guys
5 -5 5 -7 -6 5 4
that made them so violent?
7 -6
Oooo Oooo!
-6 -5 6 -6 4
But ya know I’m yours,
7 -6
Oooo Oooo!
-6-5 6 -6 4
And I know your mine.
7 -6
Oooo Oooo!
-6 7 6 7 -8 8
And that’s why-i-i-i!
4 -6 6 5 4 -4 5 -4 4 -3”-2
Ooo wee ooo, I look just like Buddy Holly,
-6 6 5 4 -4 5 -4 4 -4
Oh oh, and you’re Mary Tyler Moore.
-3”-3 4 5 5 -3”-3”-2 -2 -3”-34
I don’t care what they say about us anyway.
4 -6 6 5 4
I don’t care about that.
Don’t you ever fear, I’m always there,
I know that you need help.
Your tongue is twisted, your eyes are slit,
8 -8 7 6 -6 5 -4 4
You need a Guardian.
Oooo Oooo!
And you know I’m yours,
Oooo Oooo!
And I know your mine.
Oooo Oooo!
And that’s why-i-i-i!
Ooo wee ooo, I look just like Buddy Holly,
Oh oh, and you’re Mary Tyler Moore.
I don’t care what they say about us anyway.
I don’t care about that.
I don’t care about that.
4 4 4 4 4 4
Bang Bang! Knocking on the door.
4 4 4 -4 5 -4 4
Another bang bang get down on the floor.
4 4 4 4 4 4
Oh no, what do we do?
4 4 4 4 -4 5 -4 4
Don’t look now, but I lost my shoe.
4 4 4 4 4 4 4
I can’t run and I can’t kick.
4 4 4 4 -4 5 -4 4
Wussa matta babe? Are you feeling sick?
4 4 4 4 4 4 4
Wussa matta wussa matta wussa matta you?
4 4 4 -4 5 -5 6 -6
Wussa matta babe? Are you feeling blue!
-7-66-55-54
Oh-ohhhh.
Ooo wee ooo, I look just like Buddy Holly,
Oh oh, and you’re Mary Tyler Moore.
I don’t care what they say about us anyway.
I don’t care about that.
I don’t care about that.
I don’t care about that.
I don’t care about that.
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
-6* -6* 7* -7* -8 -8 -7* -8 -7* 7*
I feel so bad I’ve gotta worr-ied mi nd.
-6* 7* -7* -8 -7* 7* -7* 7* -6* 7* -7* -8 -7* 7* -7* 7* -6*
I’m so lonesome all the ti-me. Since I left my ba-by be-hind on
-8 -8 7* -6*
blue ba-y—ou.
-6* 7* -7* -8 -7* -8 -7* 7* -6* 7* -7* -8 -7* 7* 7*
Saving nickels, saving di-mes, work-ing ’till the sun don’t shine.
-6* 7* -7* -8 -7* -7*7*-7* 7* -6* -6* -8 -8 7* -6*
Look-ing forward to happier times on blue ba-yo-u—u.
-12 -12-12 -12 -11* -11* -12 -11* -11* 11* -11* 11* -10*
I’m go in’ back some day come what may to blue ba—you.
11* -11* -12 -11* -11* 11* -11* -12 -11* -11* 11* -11* 11* -10*
Where you sleep all day and the cat-fish play on blue bay–ou.
-11* -11 12 -12 -12 -11* -12 12 -12-12 -12 12 -12 11* 10 -9
All those fish-ing boats with their sails a-float if I could on–ly
-6 – 10* -10*11* -10* 11* -10* -10* 11* -11* 11* -10* -9* 9* -8 -8 -8
see that fam–il-iar sun–rise through sleep-y ey—es, how happy I’d be.
Go to see my baby again
And to be with some of my friends
Maybe I’d be happy then on blue bayou
I’m going back some day, gonna stay on blue bayou
Where the folks are fine and the world is mine on blue bayou
Oh, that girl of mine by my side the silver moon and the evening tide
Oh, some sweet day gonna take away this hurtin’ inside
I’ll never be blue, my dreams come true on blue bayou
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
By: Brian Bowers
John Denver
Key: G
6 6 6 6 6 6 5
I saw a berke-ley wom-an
-5 -5 -5 -5 6 -6 6
Sit-tin in her rock-in chair
3 5 6 6 6 6 6
A dul-ci-mer in her lap
4 4 -4 -44 3 -4
A feath-er in her hair
5 6 7 6 -6 6 5-44
Her breasts swayed free-ly
5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 6 -6 6
With the rhy-thm of the rock-in chair
5 5 -5 -5 -5 6 6 -6 6 5 5-4
She was sing-in and strum-min and sway-in
4 -4 -4 -45 -4 4 4
Her cheeks were red I de-clare
6 6 6 6 6
Twas hard to be-lieve
5 -5 -5 6 -6 6
What my eyes showed me then
3 5 6 6 6 6
The col-or in her cheeks
4 4 -4 -4 4 3 -4
Was just her nat-u-ral skin
5 6 6 6-6 6 5-44
She wore no make-up
-5 -5 -5 6 -6 6
To make her look that way
-5 -5 -5 6 6 -6 6 6
She was a nat-u-ral ma-ma
5 5 5-4 3
with the red cheeks
-4 -4 -45 -44 4
What more can I say
Well I finally realised
There was hunger in my stare
In my mind I was swayin
With the woman in the rockin chair
But the lady I was livin with
Was standin right by my side
She saw my stare and she saw my hunger
And lord it made her cry
So with anger on her face
Yes and the hurt in her eyes
She scratched me and she clawed me
She screamed and she cried
oh you dont give me near
All the lovin that you should
Yet youre ready to go and lay with her
Youre just no damn good
Well I guess shes probably right
Oh I guess Im probably wrong
I guess shes not too far away
She hasnt been gone very long
And I guess we could get together
And try it one more time
But I know that wanderlust would come again
Shed only wind up a-cryin
Well now youve heard my story
Plain as the light of day
Its hard to feel guilty for lovin the ladies
Thats all I gotta say
cept a woman is the sweetest fruit
That God ever put on the vine
Id no more love just one kinda woman
Than drink only one kinda wine
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
(SPOKEN)
Come ‘ere baby
You know you drive me up the wall
The way you make good for all
the nasty tricks you pull
Seems like we’re makin’ up
more than we’re makin’ love
And it always seems you’ve got
someone on your mind other than me
Girl, you gotta change your crazy ways
you hear me
5 -4 5 -4 5 -4
Say you’re leav-in’ on a
5 -4 5 -4 5
sev-en thir-ty train
-4 5 5 5 5 5 -4 5 5 4
And that you’re head-in out to Hol-ly-wood
5 5 -4 5 -4 5
Girl, you been giv-in’ me
-4 5 -4 5 -4 5
that line so man-y times
-4 5 -4 5 -4 5 -4
It kin-da gets that feel-in’
5 5 -4
bad looks good, yeah
6 6 6 -6 7 7 7 -8
That kin-da lov-in’ turns a man
-7 -7 -7
to a slave
6 6 6 -6 7 7 7 -8
That kin-da lov-in’ sends a man
7 7 -6 7
right to his grave
(CHORUS)
-6 7 -8 8 -7 -6 6 -5 6 -5 5 5
I go cra-zy, cra-zy, ba-by, I go cra-zy
5 6 -7 7 -6 7 -8
You turn it on then you’re gone
7 -8 8 -8 -8 8 -7 -6
Yeah you drive me cra-zy, cra-zy
6 -5 6 -5 5 5
Cra-zy for you ba-by
-6 -7 -7 7 -8 -8
What can I do, hon-ey
5 7 8 7 -7 7 -6
I feel like the col-or blue
VERSE 2 SAME AS 1
7
You’re packin’ up your stuff
And and talkin’ like it’s tough
And tryin’ to tell me
That it’s time to go, yeah!
But I know you ain’t wearin’
nothin’ underneath that
Overcoat and that it’s all a show, yeah!
That kin-da lov-in’ makes me wan-na
pull down the shade, yeah
That kin-da lov-in’ yeah, now I’m
Nev-er gon-na be the same
(CHORUS)
5 5 6 7 -7
I’m los-ing my mind
-6 -7 -8 7 -7 8 7
Girl, ’cause I’m go-in’ cra-zy
-7 7 6 -6 -8 -8 9
I need your love, hon-ey, yeah
-7 -7 6 -6
I need your love
ENJOY!!
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
By: Andreas Carlsson, Desmond Child, Chris Braide
Diana DeGarmo
Key: Am
4 3 4 -5
Dreams are just dreams
5 -5 6 -6 6 5 -3
When they’re stuck in-side your head
3 3 4 4 3 3 3 -5 -5 3 4
And all it takes is a lit-tle help from you
3 4 -5 5 -5 5 3 5 -5
You know it’s true that dreams are for real
5 -5 6 -6 6 5
When you see what I see
-6 6 7 6 -5
And you feel it too
-5 7 -8 -8 -8 8
We took the long-est road
-5 5 -5 5 -5 5
Just to make it hard-er
-5 -8 -8 -8 -8 8
Let’s do it all a-gain
-8 -8 -7 -7 -7 -7 -8
It on-ly makes us strong-er
8 7 8 -9 8 -8 -7 8
Dreams, I guess we’re just made of dreams
8 -9 8 -8 7 -8 -7 -7 7 7
Noth-ing mat-ters as long as we be-lieve
-5 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 7 8
I’m look-ing at you and I see my life
8 -9 8 -8 -7 8
Pass-ing be-fore my eyes
9 -10 -10 -10 10 10 -9
And then the jour-ney’s o-ver
8 -9 -9 10 9 -7
And all my dreams come true
8 8 -8 8
I dream of you
What do you see
when you look inside your heart
a little thought can walk a thousand miles
and change your life
when dreams lead the way
the impossible is suddenly in sight
and ev-ry step we take
just brings us all together
you gotta keep the faith
when all seems lost forever
8 7 8 -9 8 -8 -7 8
Dreams, I guess we’re just made of dreams
8 -9 8 -8 7 -8 -7 -7 7 7
Noth-ing mat-ters as long as we be-lieve
-5 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 7 8
I’m look-ing at you and I see my life
8 -9 8 -8 -7 8
Pass-ing be-fore my eyes
9 -10 -10 -10 10 10 -9
And then the jour-ney’s o-ver
8 -9 -9 10 9 -7
And all my dreams come true
8 8 -8 8
I dream of you
-7 -7 -7 -7 -8 8 -9 9 7
You’re the one that keeps my hope a-live
7 -9 9 7
My vis-ion clear
7 -9 9 -9 -7* -7*
I’ll spend my life with you
-9 9 9 7 10 -9 -9
Con-quer fear we’ll make it through
9 9 -8 8 8 8 -8 8
I dream of you I dream of you
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
Monday morning wake up knowing that you’ve gotta go to school
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
Tell your mum what to expect, she says it’s right out of the blue
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
Do you want to work in Debenham’s, ’cause that’s what they expect
-4 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ -4 5 -5 4
Start in Lingerie, and Doris is your supervisor
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
And the head said that you always were a queer one from the start
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
For careers you say you wanna be remembered for your art
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
Your obsessions get you known throughout the school for being strange
-4 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 6
Making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
In the queue for lunch they take a piss, you’ve got no appetite
-4 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
And the rumour is you never go with boys and you are tight
-4 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
So they jab you with a fork, you drop the tray and go berserk
-4 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 6
While you’re cleaning up the mess the teacher’s looking up your skirt
6 5 -5 6
Hey you’ve been used
5 -5 6 5 -5 6
Are you calm? Settle down
5 -5 6 5 5 -5 6
Write a song, I’ll sing along
6 -5 5 -4 4 -4 5 5
Soon you will know that you are sane
-4 5 -5 5 4 -6 6 -8 7
You’re on top of the world a-gain
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
Monday morning wake up knowing that you’ve gotta go to school
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
Tell your mum what to expect, she says it’s right out of the blue
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
Do you wanna work in C&A—, ’cause that’s what they expect
-4 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ -4 5 -5 4
Move to Lingerie and take a feel off Joe the Storeman
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
Tell Veronica- the secret of the boy you never kissed
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
She’s got everything to gain ’cause she’s a fat girl with a lisp
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
She sticks up for you when you get aggravation from the snobs
-4 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 6
‘Cause you can’t afford a blazer girl you’re always wearing clogs
5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
At the interval you lock yourself a–way inside a room
-4 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 -4 5 -5
5
Head of English gets you, asks you, “What the Hell do you think you’re
doing?”
-4 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5 5
“Do you think you’re better then the other kids? Well get outside.”
5 -4 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 4 -3″ 4 -4 5 -5
6
You’ve got permission, but you’ve got to make the bastard think he’s
right
6 5 -5 6
Hey you’ve been used
5 -5 6 5 5 -5 6
Write a song, I’ll sing along
5 -5 6 5 -5 6
Are you calm? Settle down
6 -5 5 -4 4 -4 5 5
Soon you will know that you are sane
-4 5 -5 5 4 -6 6 -8 7
You’re on top of the world a-gain
5 5 6 5 5 -5 -5
And you’re cool and you know
5 -5 6 5 -5 6
You’re a star, you’ll go far
5 5 -5 6 5 5 -5 6
Please think of me- as a friend
6 -5 5 -4 4 -4 5 5
Not just the boy who played guitar
-4 5 -5 5 4 -6 6 -5 -8 7
You’re on top of the world a–gain.
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
8 9 8 -8 7 -8 7
If I leave here tomorrow
-8 -8 7 7 7 -6 6
would you still remember me
8 8 8 9 8 -8 -8 7
For I must be travl’ling on now
-8 -8 -8 8 -8 7 7 7 -6 6
there’s too many places I gotta see
8 8 9 8 -8 7 -8 7
And if I stay here with you girl
-8 -8 -8 7 7 -6 6
things just wouldn’t be the same
8 8 9 8 -8 7 -8 7
For I’m as free as a bird now
-9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 9
and this bird you cannot change
-9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 9
and the bird you cannot change
-9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 9 -9 9
and the bird you cannot change* *
-9 -9 -9 -9 9 -9 9
Lord knows I can’t change * *
8 8 8 8 -8 -8 7
Bye bye it’s been a sweet love
-8 -8 7 7 7 -6 6
though this feeling I can’t change
8 9 8 -8 7 -8 7
Please don’t take it so badly
-8 7 7 -6 6
Lord knows I must play
8 8 9 8 -8 7 -8 7
And if I stay here with you girl
-8 -8 7 7 7 -6 6
things just couldn’t be the same
8 8 9 8 -8 7 -8 7
For I’m as free as a bird now
-9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 9
and this bird you cannot change
-9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 9
and the bird you cannot change
-9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 9 -9 9
and the bird you cannot change* *
-9 -9 -9 -9 9 -9 9
Lord knows I can’t change* *
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
8 8 8 8 8 8 7 -8 -8 7
I solve my problems and I see the light
8 8 7 -8 7 -8 7 7 7 -8 -7 -7-6 6
We got a lovin` thing We gotta feed it right
-9 -9 -9 8 8 8 7 -8 -8 7
There ain`t no danger we can go too far
7 8 8 -8 -8 7 7 7 7 -8 -7 -6 6
We start believin` now that we can be who we are
8 -8 7 -8 7-6
Grease is the word
1.
8 8 8 8 8 8 7 -8-8 7
They think our love is just a growin` pain
8 8 7 -8 7 -8 7 7 -8 -7-7
Why don`t they understand it`s just a cryin`
-7-6 6
shame
-9 -9 -9 8 8 8 7 -8 -8 7
Their lips are lying Only real is real
7 8 8 -8 -8 7 7 7 7 -8 -7
We stop the fight right now We got to be what
-6 6
we feel
CHORUS
8 -8 7 -8 7-6 -6 -6 -6 -8 7
Grease is the word~~~ it`s got a groove it`s
-6 -6 -8 8-8 7 -6 7 8 -8 7 8
got a meaning~~~~ Grease is the time is the
-8 7 8 -8 7 -8 7 -6 -8 7 -6
place is the motion Grease is the way we are
-8 7
feeling
2.
We take the pressure and we throw away
Conventionality belongs to yesterday
There is a chance we can make it so far
We start believin` now that we can be who we are.
REPEAT CHORUS
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
(Melody) x2
8, 8 10 9, 8 10 9, 8 10 -8, -7 -7 7
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
(Verse 1)
6 6 6 6 -5 5 -4 5
Woke up in London yesterday
5 5 5 5 5 5 -4 5 5 -5 5 -4
Found myself in the city near Piccadilly
-4 -4 -4 -4 -4 6 -4 4 -4
Don’t really know how I got here
6 6 6 6 6 -6 5 -4 5
I got some pictures on my phone
6 6 5 6 6 5 -6 5 -4 5
New names and numbers that I don’t know
6 6 5 6 6 5 -6 5 -4 5
Address to places like Abbey Road
5 5 5 5, 5 5 5 -4 -4 -4 5 -4
Day turns to night, night turns to whatever we want
4 -4 -4 5 4 4
We’re young enough to say
(Chorus)
7, 6 6 -8 8 8 6 -8 8
Oh, this has gotta be the good life
6 6 -8 8 8 6 -8 8
This has gotta be the good life
6 6 -8 8 8 6 -8 -7, -7 -7 7
This could really be a good life, good life
7 7, 6 6 -8 8 8 6 -8 8
Say oh, got this feeling that you can’t fight
6 6 -8 8 6 6 -8 8 -6
Like this city is on fire tonight
6 6 -8 8 8 6 -8 -7
This could really be a good life
-7 -7, -7 7
A good, good life
(Melody) x2
(Verse 2)
To my friends in New York, I say hello
My friends in L.A. they don’t know
Where I’ve been for the past few years or so
From Paris to China to Colorado
Sometimes there’s airplanes I can’t jump out
Sometimes there’s bullshit that don’t work now
We all got our stories but please tell me
What there is to complain about
6 6 6 -6 7 -6 -8
When you’re happy like a fool
6 -6 7 -6 -8 9
Let it take you over
6 6 -6 7 -6 -8
When everything is out
-7 -7 -7 -7 -7 7
You gotta take it in
(Chorus)
(Melody) x2
(Bridge)
-6 6 6
Hopelessly
5 5 -4 4 -4 4 5 4 4 6 5
I feel like there might be something that I’ll miss
-6 6 6
Hopelessly
5 5 -4 4 -4 4 5 4 4 6 5
I feel like the window closes oh so quick
-6 -7 7
Hopelessly
6 6 -5 5 -5 5 -5 5 -4 4 5
I’m taking a mental picture of you now
4 -6 6 6
‘Cause hopelessly
5 5 -4 5 -4 -4 -4 -4 -4 -4 4 4
The hope is we have so much to feel good about
(Chorus)
(Melody) x2
(Verse 2)
(Melody) x2
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
Tab notations:
none = blow – = draw * = button in
Bright Hoedown feel
8 8 6* -5 -5 -5
Nah nah honey, I’m good
-4* -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -4* 4 -5 -5 6* 6*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
8 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5
I got some-bod-y at home
-5 -5 -5
(Home, home, home.)
-5 -5 -5 6* 8 -8* -5 -5 -6 6* 6*
It’s been a long night here, and a long night there
-5 -5 6* 8 -8* -5 -5 -5 -6 -5 -5
And these long long legs are damn near ev’rywhere
6* -6 -5
(hold up now)
6* 8 -8* -5 -6 6* 6*
You look good, I will not lie
-5 6* 8 -8* -5 -5 -6 6* 6*
But if you ask where I’m stayin’ to-night
-5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 4 4 -5 4 4 -5 -5 -5 4 -5 4 4
I gotta be like oh, baby, no, baby, you got me all wrong, baby
-5 4 4 -5 4 4 4 -6 -6 6* 6*
My baby’s al-ready got all of my love
-5 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5
So nah nah honey, I’m good
-4* -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -4* 4 -5 -5 6* 6*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
8 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5
I got some-bod-y at home,
-5 -4* -5 -5 -4* -5 -5 -7 6* 6*
And if I stay I might not leave a-lone
8 6* -5 -5 -5
No, honey, I’m good
-4* -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -4* 4 -5 -5 6* 6*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
8 8 +8 6* -5 -5 -5
I gotta bid you a-dieu
4 -5 -5 4 -5 4 -7 6*
To a-noth-er I will stay true
-9 -9 8 10* 10 -9 8 -9 8
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
-5 4 6* -5
I will stay true
-9 -9 8 10* 10* -9 8 -9 8
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
-5 4 6* -5
I will stay true
-9 -9 8 10* 10* -9 8 -9 8
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
-9 -9 8 10* 10*
ooh ooh ooh ooh oh
[Verse 2:]
-5 6* 8 -8* -5 -6 6* 6*
Now better men, than me have failed
-5 6* 8 -5 -5 -6 6* 6*
Drinking from that un-hol-y grail
-5 -5 -5 -5
(Now check it out)
6* 8 -8* -5 -6 6* 6*
I got her, and she got me
-5 -5 6* 8 -8* -5 -6 -5 -5
And you’ve got that a*s, but I kindly
-5 -5 -5 -5 -5 4 4 -5 4 4 -5 -5 -5 4 -5 4 4
Gotta be like oh, baby, no, baby, you got me all wrong, baby
-5 4 4 -5 4 4 4 -6 -6 6* 6*
My baby’s al-ready got all of my love
[Chorus:]
-5 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5
So nah nah honey, I’m good
-4* -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -4* 4 -5 -5 6* 6*< I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not 8 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5 I got some-bod-y at home, -5 -4* -5 -5 -4* -5 -5 -7 6* 6* And if I stay I might not leave a-lone 8 6* -5 -5 -5 No, honey, I’m good -4* -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -4* 4 -5 -5 6* 6* I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not 8 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5 I gotta bid you a-dieu 4 5 -5 4 -5 4 -7 6* To a-noth-er I will stay true -9 -9 8 10* 10* -9 8 -9 8 ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh -5 4 6* -5 I will stay true -9 -9 8 10* 10* -9 8 -9 8 ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh -5 4 6* -5 I will stay true -9 -9 8 10* 10* -9 8 -9 8 ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh -9 -9 8 10* 10* ooh ooh ooh ooh oh [Bridge:] 8 8 -8* -9 -8* -9 8 10* -10 -9 -8* 8 -7 6* Oh, I’m sure ya, sure ya will make some-bod-y’s ni-i-ight6* 8 8 8 -8* -9 8 -8* -9 8 10* -10 -9 -8* 8 -7 6* But, oh, I as-sure ya, as-sure ya, it sure as hell's not mi-i-ine 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5 Oh, no, honey, I’m good -4* -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -4* 4 -5 -5 6* 6* I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not 8 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5 I got some-bod-y at home -5 -4* -5 -5 -4* -5 -5 -9 -9 -9 And if I stay I might not leave a-lone 8 6* -5 -5 -5 No, honey, I’m good -4* -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -4* 4 -5 -5 6* 6* I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not 8 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5 I gotta bid you a-dieu 4 -5 -5 4 -5 4 -7 To a-noth-er I will stay [Chorus:] 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5 No, no, honey, I’m good -4* -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -4* 4 -5 -5 6* 6* I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not8 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5 I got some-bod-y at home -5 -4* -5 -5 -4* -5 -5 -7 6* 6* And if I stay I might not leave a-lone 8 6* -5 -5 -5 No, honey, I’m good -4* -5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -4* 4 -5 -5 6* 6* I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not 8 8 8 6* -5 -5 -5 I gotta bid you a-dieu 4 -5 -5 4 -5 4 -7 6* To a-noth-er I will stay true [4x] -5 4 6* -5 I will stay true [4x] -5 -5 -5 -5 6* 8 6* -8* 8 6* 6* -7 6* (Sing it now) Oh, wo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oah, -5 4 -5 4 I will stay true
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
Tab notations:
none = blow – = draw * = button in
Bright Hoedown feel
6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
Nah nah honey, I’m good
-2* -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2* 2 -3 -3 4* 4*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
I got some-bod-y at home
-3 -3 -3
(Home, home, home.)
-3 -3 -3 4* 6 -6* -3 -3 -4 4* 4*
It’s been a long night here, and a long night there
-3 -3 4* 6 -6* -3 -3 -3 -4 -3 -3
And these long long legs are damn near ev’rywhere
4* -4 -3
(hold up now)
4* 6 -6* -3 -4 4* 4*
You look good, I will not lie
-3 4* 6 -6* -3 -3 -4 4* 4*
But if you ask where I’m staying to-night
-3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 2 2 -3 2 2 -3 -3 -3 2 -3 2 2
I gotta be like oh, baby, no, baby, you got me all wrong, baby
-3 2 2 -3 2 2 2 -4 -4 4* 4*
My baby’s al-ready got all of my love
-3 6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
So nah nah honey, I’m good
-2* -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2* 2 -3 -3 4* 4*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
I got somebody at home,
-3 -2* -3 -3 -2* -3 -3 -5 4* 4*
And if I stay I might not leave a-lone
6 4* -3 -3 -3
No, honey, I’m good
-2* -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2* 2 -3 -3 4* 4*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
I gotta bid you a-dieu
2 -3 -3 2 -3 2 -5 4*
To a-noth-er I will stay true
-7 -7 6 8* 8* -7 6 -7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
-3 2 4* -3
I will stay true
-7 -7 6 8* 8* -7 6 -7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
-3 2 4* -3
I will stay true
-7 -7 6 8* 8* -7 6 -7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
-7 -7 6 8* 8*
ooh ooh ooh ooh oh
[Verse 2:]
-3 4* 6 -6* -3 -4 4* 4*
Now better men, than me have failed
-3 4* 6 -3 -3 -4 4* 4*
Drinking from that un-hol-y grail
-3 -3 -3 -3
(Now check it out)
4* 6 -6* -3 -4 4* 4*
I got her, and she got me
-3 -3 4* 6 -6* -3 -4 -3 -3
And you’ve got that a*s, but I kindly
-3 -3 -3 -3 -3 2 2 -3 2 2 -3 -3 -3 2 -3 2 2
Gotta be like oh, baby, no, baby, you got me all wrong, baby
-3 2 2 -3 2 2 2 -4 -4 4* 4*
My baby’s al-ready got all of my love
[Chorus:]
-3 6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
So nah nah honey, I’m good
-2* -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2* 2 -3 -3 4* 4*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
I got some-bod-y at home,
-3 -2* -3 -3 -2* -3 -3 -5 4* 4*
And if I stay I might not leave a-lone
6 4* -3 -3 -3
No, honey, I’m good
-2* -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2* 2 -3 -3 4* 4*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
I gotta bid you a-dieu
2 -3 -3 2 -3 2 -5 4*
To a-nother I will stay true
-7 -7 6 8* 8* -7 6 -7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
-3 2 4* -3
I will stay true
-7 -7 6 8* 8* -7 6 -7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
-3 2 4* -3
I will stay true
-7 -7 6 8* 8* -7 6 -7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
-7 -7 6 8* 8*
ooh ooh ooh ooh oh
[Bridge:]
6 6 -6* -7 -6* -7 6 8* -8 -7 -6* 6 -5 4*
Oh, I’m sure ya, sure ya will make some-bod-y’s ni-i-ight
4* 6 6 6 -6* -7 6 -6* -7 6 8* -8 -7 -6* 6 -5 4*
But, oh, I a*sure ya, a*sure ya, it sure as hell’s not mi-i-ine
6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
Oh, no, honey, I’m good
-2* -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2* 2 -3 -3 4* 4*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
I got some-bod-y at home
-3 -2* -3 -3 -2* -3 -3 -7 -7 -7
And if I stay I might not leave a-lone
6 4* -3 -3 -3
No, honey, I’m good
-2* -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2* 2 -3 -3 4* 4*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
I gotta bid you a-dieu
2 -3 -3 2 -3 2 -5
To a-noth-er I will stay
[Chorus:]
6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
No, no, honey, I’m good
-2* -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2* 2 -3 -3 4* 4*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
I got some-bod-y at home
-3 -2* -3 -3 -2* -3 -3 -5 4* 4*
And if I stay I might not leave a-lone
6 4* -3 -3 -3
No, honey, I’m good
-2* -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2* 2 -3 -3 4* 4*
I could have a-noth-er but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 4* -3 -3 -3
I gotta bid you a-dieu
2 -3 -3 2 -3 2 -5 4*
To a-noth-er I will stay true
3 -7 -7 6 8* 8* -7 6 -7 6 4*
(True) o-o-o-o-oo-o-o-o-o-o,
[4x]
-3 2 4* -3
I will stay true
[4x]
-3 -3 -3 -3 4* 6 4* -6* 6 4* 4* -5 4*
(Sing it now) Oh, wo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oah,
-3 2 -3 2
I will stay true
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
Tab notations:
none = blow – = draw ” = full step bend
Bright Hoedown feel
6 6 5 4 4 4
Nah nah honey, I’m good
-3” 4 4 4 4 4 -3” 3 4 4 5 5
I could have another but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 5 4 4 4
I got somebody at home
4 4 4
(Home, home, home.)
4 4 4 5 6 -6 4 4 -4 5 5
It’s been a long night here, and a long night there
4 4 5 6 -6 4 4 4 -4 4 4
And these long long legs are damn near ev’rywhere
5 -4 4
(hold up now)
5 6 -6 4 -4 5 5
You look good, I will not lie
4 5 6 -6 4 4 -4 5 5
But if you ask where I’m staying tonight
4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 4 3 3 4 4 4 3 4 3 3
I gotta be like oh, baby, no, baby, you got me all wrong, baby
4 3 3 4 3 3 3 -4 -4 5 5
My baby’s al-ready got all of my love
4 6 6 5 4 4 4
So nah nah honey, I’m good
-3” 4 4 4 4 4 -3” 3 4 4 5 5
I could have another but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 5 4 4 4
I got somebody at home,
4 -3” 4 4 -3” 4 4 -5 5 5
And if I stay I might not leave alone
6 5 4 4 4
No, honey, I’m good
-3” 4 4 4 4 4 -3” 3 4 4 5 5
I could have another but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 5 4 4 4
I gotta bid you a-dieu
3 4 4 3 4 3 -5 5
To another I will stay true
7 7 6 8 8 7 6 7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
4 3 5 4
I will stay true
7 7 6 8 8 7 6 7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
4 3 5 4
I will stay true
7 7 6 8 8 7 6 7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
7 7 6 8 8
ooh ooh ooh ooh oh
[Verse 2:]
4 5 6 -6 4 -4 5 5
Now better men, than me have failed
4 5 6 4 4 -4 5 5
Drinking from that unholy grail
4 4 4 4
(Now check it out)
5 6 -6 4 -4 5 5
I got her, and she got me
4 4 5 6 -6 4 -4 4 4
And you’ve got that a*s, but I kindly
4 4 4 4 4 3 3 4 3 3 4 4 4 3 4 3 3
Gotta be like oh, baby, no, baby, you got me all wrong, baby
4 3 3 4 3 3 3 -4 -4 5 5
My baby’s already got all of my love
[Chorus:]
4 6 6 5 4 4 4
So nah nah honey, I’m good
-3” 4 4 4 4 4 -3” 3 4 4 5 5
I could have another but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 5 4 4 4
I got somebody at home,
4 -3” 4 4 -3” 4 4 -5 5 5
And if I stay I might not leave alone
6 5 4 4 4
No, honey, I’m good
-3” 4 4 4 4 4 -3” 3 4 4 5 5
I could have another but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 5 4 4 4
I gotta bid you adieu
3 4 4 3 4 3 -5 5
To another I will stay true
7 7 6 8 8 7 6 7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
4 3 5 4
I will stay true
7 7 6 8 8 7 6 7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
4 3 5 4
I will stay true
7 7 6 8 8 7 6 7 6
ooh ooh ooh ooh ooooooh
7 7 6 8 8
ooh ooh ooh ooh oh
[Bridge:]
6 6 -6 7 -6 7 6 8 -8 7 -6 6 -5 5
Oh, I’m sure ya, sure ya will make somebody’s ni-i-ight
5 6 6 6 -6 7 6 -6 7 6 8 -8 7 -6 6 -5 5
But, oh, I a*sure ya, a*sure ya, it sure as hell’s not mi-i-ine
6 6 5 4 4 4
Oh, no, honey, I’m good
-3” 4 4 4 4 4 -3” 3 4 4 5 5
I could have another but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 5 4 4 4
I got somebody at home
4 -3” 4 4 -3” 4 4 7 7 7
And if I stay I might not leave a-lone
6 5 4 4 4
No, honey, I’m good
-3” 4 4 4 4 4 -3” 3 4 4 5 5
I could have another but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 5 4 4 4
I gotta bid you a-dieu
3 4 4 3 4 3 -5
To another I will stay
[Chorus:]
6 6 5 4 4 4
No, no, honey, I’m good
-3” 4 4 4 4 4 -3” 3 4 4 5 5
I could have another but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 5 4 4 4
I got somebody at home
4 -3” 4 4 -3” 4 4 -5 5 5
And if I stay I might not leave alone
6 5 4 4 4
No, honey, I’m good
-3” 4 4 4 4 4 -3” 3 4 4 5 5
I could have another but I prob-‘ly should not
6 6 6 5 4 4 4
I gotta bid you a-dieu
3 4 4 3 4 3 -5 5
To another I will stay true
4 7 7 6 8 8 7 6 7 6 5
(True) o-o-o-o-oo-o-o-o-o-o,
[4x]
4 3 5 4
I will stay true
[4x]
4 4 4 4 5 6 5 -6 6 5 5 -5 5
(Sing it now) Oh, wo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oah,
4 3 4 3
I will stay true
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
(SPOKEN)
Hi – we’re your weather girls.
And have we got news for you?
You’ve gotta listen:
Get ready all you lonely girls
and leave those umbrellas at home.
4 4 4 4 4 4
Hu-mid-i-ty’s ris-ing
4 5 5 -4 4 -4 4
Ba-rom-e-ter’s get-tin’ low
4 4 4 4 4 4 4
Ac-cord-ing to all sour-ces
-4 5 5 6 5 -4
The street’s the place to go
5 5 -6b -6b -6b 7 -6b
Cause to-night for the first time
7 -7 -7 -7 -7 7 7
At just a-bout half past ten
7 7 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6
For the first time in his-to-ry
-6 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6
It’s gon-na start rain-in’ men
CHORUS
5 -6b -6b 7 7 7 7 -6
It’s rain-in men, hal-le-lu-jah
-6 -6 -6 -6 7 7
It’s rain-in men, a-men
5 -6b -6b 7 7 7 7 -6
It’s rain-in men, hal-le-lu-jah
-6 -6 -6 -6 7 7
It’s rain-in men, a-men
5 -6b -6b 7 7 7 7 -6
It’s rain-in men, hal-le-lu-jah
-6 -6 -6 -6 7 7
It’s rain-in men, a-men
-4 -4 4 -4 -4 -4 -4 4 -4 4 5 5
I’m gon-na go out, I’m gon-na let my-self get
5 5 6 6 -6 -6 -7
Ab-so-lute-ly soak-ing wet
5 -6b -6b 7 7 7 7 -6
It’s rain-in’ men, hal-le-lu-jah
-6 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6 7 -6 -6b
It’s rain-in’ men, ev-‘ry spe-ci-men
-4
Tall
-4
Blond
-4 4 5
Dark and mean
5 5 6 6 -6 6 -7
Rough and tough and strong and lean
7 7 7 7 7 -6
God bless moth-er na-ture
-6 -6b -6 -6b 7 -6 -6b
She’s a sin-gle wo-man too
7 7 7 7 7 -6
She took on a hea-ven
-6 -6b -6 -6 -6b 7 -6 -6b
And she did what she had to do.
7 7 7 7 7 -6
She taught ev-‘ry an-gel
8 8 8 8 8 -7
To re-a-range the sky
-6b -6 7 -6b 7 -6b 7 -6b
So that each and ev-‘ry wo-man
-6b 8 8 8 8 8
Could find the per-fect guy
5 -6b -6b 7
It’s rain-in men
Go get yourself wet (SPOKEN)
I know you want to (SPOKEN)
BRIDGE
4 4 4 -4 5 6 -6b 7 -7
I feel storm-y weath-er mov-in in
4 -4 -4 4 -4
a-bout to be-gin
4 4 4 -4 5 6 -6b 7 -7
Hear the thun-der don’t you lose your head
5 5 5 6 6 -6 -6 -7
Rip off the roof and stay in bed.
5 -6b -6b 7 7 7 7 -6
It’s rain-in’ men, hal-le-leu-jah
-6 -6 -6 -6 7 7
It’s rain-in men, a-men
5 -6b -6b 7 7 7 7 -6
It’s rain-in men, hal-le-lu-jah
-6 -6 -6 -6 7 7
It’s rain-in men, a-men
5 -6b -6b 7
It’s rain-in men
5 6 -6b -6b
It’s rain-in men
5 -6b -6b 7
It’s rain-in men
5 6 -6b -6b
It’s rain-in men
-7 -7 -7 -7
It’s rain-in men
5 6 -6b -6b
It’s rain-in men
ENJOY!!
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
4 4 -3 -3” -3”3-3”
In my hour of need
-3 -3 -3 -3” -3”
Ha no, you’re not there
6 -6 -5 6 -5 -5 -5
And though I reached out for you
5 -4 -4 5 -4
Wouldn’t lend a hand
-6 6 -6 -6 -6 6 -6
Through the darkest hour
6 -6 -6 6 -6 6 5
The grace did not shine on me
-6 6 -7 -7 -6 -6 -7
Feels so cold, very cold
-6 6 -6 6 5 -7
No one cares for me
5 -4 5 5 -4 -3” 4 5 -4
Did you ever think I get lonely
-3” 4 5 5 -4 -3” 4 -4 -4 -4
Did you ever think that I needed love
-3” 4 5 5 -4 -3” 4 5 -4
Did you ever think to stop thinking
-3” 4 -4-4 -4 -3” 4 5 5 5
You’re the only one that I’m thinking of
-6 -6 6 -6 -6 -6 6 -7
You’ll never know how hard I tried
6 7 -7 -6-7 -7 7 7 7 -7 -7 -6
To find my space and satisfy you too
-6 -6 6 -66-6 -66-6 6 -6 -6 6 7
Things will be better (better) when I’m dead and gone
5 -4 4 5 5 5 5 -4 4-4 5 -4 4 5
Don’t try to understand, knowing you I’m prob’ly wrong
-3” 5 -6 -6 -6 6 -6 6 -6
But oh how I lived my life for you
5 -6 -6 6 -6
Still you’d turn away
-6 -6 6 -6 6 -6
Now as I die for you
-6 7 -7 -6-7 -6 6 -6 6 -6
My flesh still crawls as I breathe your name
6 -6 6 -6 -6 -6 6 -6
All these years thought I was wrong
-6 -6 7 -7 -6 6
Now I know it was you
6 6 7-7 6 6 -8 6 -8 7
Raise your head raise your face your eyes
-6 -6 7 -6 7 -6 7
Tell me who you think you are
Spoken: I walk, I walk alone /Into the promised land /There’s a better place for me /But it’s far, far away
5 5 5 -4 5 -1 2
Everlasting life for me
-4 -4 5 6 -6
In a perfect world
5 -4 5 5 5 -3
But I gotta die first
7 -7 -6 7 -7 -7 -7 -7 -6
Please God send me on my way
-6 -6 6 -6 -6 -6 6 -6
Time has a way of taking time
-7 -7 -6 -7 7 -7 -6 -7 7 7
Loneliness is not only felt by fools
-4 5 5 5 6 5 5 5
Alone I call to ease the pain
-6 -6 -6 -6 7 -7 -7 -7 7 -6 -6 8 -8 -8
Yearning to be held by you. Alone, so alone, I’m lost
-6 7 7 7 -6
Consumed by the pain
-6 7 -6 7 -6 7
The pain, the pain, the pain
-6 -6 8 -8 -8 -8 -8
Won’t you hold me again
-8 7 7 -6 6 6
You just laughed, ha, ha, bitch
6 -6 7 -6 6 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6
My whole life is work built on the past
-6 -6 8 -8 -8 -8 -6 7 -8 7 7
But the time has come when all things shall pass
-6 8 -8 -8 7 -8
This good thing passed away
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
(5, 4 Count Intro)
-4 7* 7* 7* -6* -6* 6 6
I gotta take a little time
-4 -6* 7* -7 -7 -6* 6 7* 7* (Pause)
A little time to think things over
-4 7* 7* 7* -6* -6* 6 6
I better read between the lines
6 -6* 7* -7 7* -6* 6 7* -6* 6
In case I need it when I’m older
(4, 4 Count Pause)
-4 7* 7* -6* -6* 6 6
Now this mountain I must climb
6 -6* 7* -7 7* -6* 6 7* 7*
Feels like a world upon my shoulders
7* 7* 7* -6* -6* 6 6
Through the clouds I see love shine
6 -6* 7* -7 7* -6* 6 7* -6* 6
It keeps me warm as life grows colder
9* 10 -10* 10 9* 9* 9* 11* -10*10 -9* 9*
In my life ther’s been heartache and pain
9* 10 -10* 10 9* 9* 9* 9* 11* -10* 10 -9* -9* 9*
I don’t know if I can face it again
11* -10* -10* 10 9* 11*-10*10 -9* 9*
Can’t stop now, I’ve traveled so far
-7 10 11* -11 11* -10*-8 9* -9* 9* -8
To change this lonely life
11* 11*11*11* 10 10 -10*
I wanna know what love is
9* -11 11* 11* 11*-10* -10*
I want you to show me
11* 11*11* 11* 10 10 -10*
I wanna feel what love is
9* -11 11* 11* 11* -10*
I know you can show me
(Repeat Last 3 Verses)
(Repeat Last Verse, Short Pause)
(Repeat Last Verse 2X)
I’m gonna take a little time
A little time to look around me
I’ve got nowhere left to hide
It looks like love has finally found me
In my life there’s been heartache and pain
I don’t know if I can face it again
I can’t stop now, I’ve traveled so far
To change this lonely life
I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me
I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
And I wanna feel, I want to feel what love is
And I know, I know you can show me
Let’s talk about love
I wanna know what love is, the love that you feel inside
I want you to show me, and I’m feeling so much love
I wanna feel what love is, no, you just cannot hide
I know you can show me, yeah
I wanna know what love is, let’s talk about love
I want you to show me, I wanna feel it too
I wanna feel what love is, I want to feel it too
And I know and I know, I know you can show me
Show me love is real, yeah
I wanna know what love is
This song plays with karaoke music run time 4:48.
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
1.
3 5 5 5 -4 -4 4 4
I`ve gotta take a little time
3 -4 5 -5 -5 -4 4 5 5
A little time to think things over
3 5 5 5 -4 -4 4 4
I better read between the lines
4 -4 5 -5 5 -4 4 5-4 4
In case I need it when I`m older
2.
3 5 5 -4 -4 4 4
Now this mountain I must climb
4 -4 5 -5 5 -4 4 5 5
Feels like the world up-on my shoulders
5 5 5 -4 -4 4 4
Through the clouds I see love shine
3 -4 5 -5 5 -4 4 5-4 4
It keeps me warm as life grows colder
CHORUS
-6 7 -8 7-6 -6 -6 8 -8 7 -7-6
In my life there`s been heart-ache and pain
-6 7 -8 7-6 -6 -6 -6 8-8 7 -7-6
I don`t know if I can face it again
8 -8 -8 7 -6 8 -8 7 -7-6 -5 7
Can`t stop now I`ve travelled so far to change
8 -9 8 7 6-6 8 8 8 8 7 7 -8
this lonely life I Want To Know What Love Is
-6 -9 8 8 8-8 8 8 8 8 8 7 7 -8
I want you to show me I want to feel what love is
-6 -9 8 8 8-8 -8
I know you can show me
3.(Follow Verse 2.)
I`m gonna take a little time
A little time to look around me
I`ve got nowhere left to hide
It looks like love has fin`lly found me
(Repeat Chorus)
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
Feeder – Just a Day
Here are some different ways to play the song
Intro
-3” -3” -2 -2
-3” -3” -2 -1
-3” -3” -2 -2
-3 -3” -2 2
-6 -6 -6 6 6
Waking up at twelve
-6 -6 -6 6 -4
in my clothes again
-6 -6 -6 6 6
Feel my head explode
-7 -7 -6 6 -6 6 5
from a night of gin
-6 -6 -6 6 -4
another night out late
-3”-3”-3” 3 3
I don’t wanna drink
-3” -3” -3” 3 -1
don’t wanna be a clown
-3”-3”-3” 3 3
Gotta get my feet
-3 -3” 3 -3” -3 3
back on the ground
-3” -3” -3” 3 -1
before it pulls me in
-2 -2 -2 -2 -2’ 2 -1 -1
How come it ended up like this
-2 -2 -2 -2 -2‘ 2 -1
And who’s gonna catch me
-2 -2‘ 2 -1
when I’m coming down
2 -2 -2’ -2 -3” -3
to hit the ground again
-2 -3” -3 2
All by myself
-3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -3” -3”
cause I don’t wanna drag you down
-3 –3“ -3” 3
hold you down
-3 4 -3 3
Cause you’re a friend
6 -6 -7 5 -4 4
I blame myself
-7 -7 -7 -7 -6 -6
I guess you think it’s funny now
-7 -6 -6 6 (7 -7 6)
funny now
On the underground
with the freaks and frowns
Looking at the world
through silver clouds
but then it all came down
I gotta rise above
the emotional flood
Gotta cut these ropes
around my hands
pull myself around
How come it ended up like this
And who’s gonna be there
When I’ve lost control
I’m heading to crashland
All by myself cause
I don’t wanna drag you down
hold you down
Cause you’re a friend
I blame myself
I guess you think it’s funny now
funny now
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
this is my first tab, i also found this song while surfing the net so
practically everyone will not know it but still…
3 2 3 3 2 3 3 1
I knew looking back on the tears
3 2 3 4 3 2 3 1
would make me laugh and make me smile
3 3 2 3 4 3 3 4 4 3 4
but I never knew looking back at the laughs
3 2 3 2 2 3 2 1
would make me frown and make me cry
3 3 4 3 2
and i say to you
3 3 4 3 2
just Be who you are
3 3 2 3
say what you feel
3 4 3 3
AND SPEAK YOUR MIND
3 4 3 3 4
because those who mind
2 3 3 3 4
don’t really matter
3 4 3 3 4
and those who matter
2 3 3 4
don’t really mind
2 2 3 2 2 3
well life is just a game
3 2 3 4 3 4 3
Don’t take it seriously
3 2 3 3 4
You’ll never escape
3 3 4 3 4
alive anyway
3 2 2 3 4
When Push Comes to shove
3 2 3 4 3 4 3
you gotta get a movin’
3 2 3
step by step
4 3 2 3 4
‘n’ now your groovin’
3 4 4 3 2 3 4
oh yea ‘n’ now your provin’
3 4 3-4 3 4
when the going gets tough
3 4 4 3 4
the tough get going
3 4 3 4 3 4 3 2 3
Look at ya now your Rock ‘n’ Rollin’
2 3 2 3 3 2
it’s amazing because
3 3 3 2 2 1 2 3 3 2
when you’re a kid you see the life you want
3 2 3 3 3 2 2 1
but it never crosses your mind
2 2 3 1 1 2 2 3 1
that it ain’t gonna turn out that way.
Key: C
Genre: General
Harp Type: Diatonic
I have a tough time with these Janis tabs. I gotta piece it together
from here and there, guess at half of it, make up this, change
that…
This song was written by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rogers, copyrighted
in 1935.
Verse 1:
4 4 -3′ -3
Sit there, hmm
4 -4 5 5 -4
Count your fin- gers
-4 -3 4
What else
-3′ 4 -3′ 4 4 6 -6 6
What else is there to do?
-6′ 6 -6′ -6′ 6 6 -5 -5 -5 6
Oh, Ho-ney I know how you feel
-4 -5 5 6 -5
I know you feel
-6 -6 5 6 -5
That you’re through
6 -5 -5 5 4 -4 4 5
Oh, while I
5 -4 4 -3′ -3 -4 -5
I sit there, hmm, count
5 -5 5 -5 5 -5 6 -5
Oh, count your lit-tle fin-gers,
-4 -4 5 -4 -3′ 4
My un-hap- py,
-4 5 -4 4 -4 -3′
Oh, lit-tle girl
-3′ -3′ -3′ -3′ 4 4 -4 5 -4 4
Lit-tle girl blue, you. Yeah
Verse 2:
-6 -7′ 6 -5 4 4
Oh Sit there
4 -4 5 5 -4
Count those rain-drops
-3′ 4 -3′ 4 4 6 -6 6
Oh, feel ’em fal-ling down
-6 6 -6 6 -6 6 -6 6 5 -4 4
Oh, ho-ney, all a-round you
-6′ 6 -6′ -6′ 6 6 -5 6
Ho-ney don’t you know it’s time
-4 -5 -5 5
I feel it’s time
6 -5 6 -6 6 -5 6 -5
Some-bo-dy told you
6 -5 6 -5 6
‘Cause you got to know
6 6 6 6 -5 -5 -5 5
That all you e-ver gon-na have
4 -4 4 5
To count on
4 -4 4 -4 4 -4 4
Or gon-na wan-na lean on
-3 -3′ -3′ -3 -4 -5
It’s gon-na feel just like
5 -5 5 5 -5 5 -5 6 -5
Those rain-drops do
-4 -4 5 -4 -4 -3′ 4
When they’re fall-ing down
-4 -4 5 -4 -3′ -3′ 4 -4 5 -4
Ho-ney, all a-round you
Verse 3:
6 6 -5 6 -5 6 -5 4
Sit there
6 6 6 6
Go on, go on
-5 6 -5 6 -5 6 -5 4
And count your fin- gers
4 4 4 -3′ -3′ -3
I don’t know what else
-4 -4
What else
-5 6 -5 6 -5 6 -5 5
You’ve got to do
6 6 -6 6 6 6 -6 6
And I know how you feel
6 6 6 6 6 6 -6 6 -6 5 4
And when you’re feel-in’ so blue
-6 6 -6 6 -6 5 4
Wan-na sit a- round ’till dawn
4 4 4 -5
Go on, and count
6 -6 6 -5
Count your fin-gers
6 6 -6 6 -5 6 -6 6 -5
Ah my un-hap-py, my un-luck-y
4 4 4 5
Lit-tle girl blue
6 6 6 -6 6
I know you’re lone-ly
9 -9 7 7 9 -9 -9 -9 8
Ooh, and I know how you feel
7 -8 8 -8 7 -8 7
I know just how you feel
