Breaking Down Bob Dylan's Harmonica Solos
Analysing 23 different harp solos from a peak Never Ending Tour era
Listening to today’s subscriber-requested show in Denver, October 21 2001 (thanks Charles!), inspired me to finish a project I started months ago before getting sidetracked.
Bob Dylan goes through periods where he plays a lot of harmonica, and periods where he plays little to none. For most of the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, he was in the latter mode; as I chronicled in my tour-harp report, most nights the best you could hope for was, maybe, a solo in “Every Grain of Sand.” But now the pendulum has swung back. As I’m writing this intro on October 11, last night he played harmonica on eight different songs. A Rough and Rowdy record, I think.
He was in that same harp-happy mode in Fall 2001, on a US tour with what some consider his greatest Never Ending Tour band: Larry Campbell, Charlie Sexton, David Kemper, and, of course, Tony Garnier. Over the course of those two months, he played harmonica on 23 different songs. I don’t mean he played it just 23 times; I mean he picked 23 different songs to play harp on. Some just once, some night after night.
Many tours, the designated “harp songs” are fairly well defined, like those Rough and Rowdy “Every Grain”s. But during this Fall-‘01 era, he was just whipping it out (the harmonica, that is) whenever inspiration struck, whatever song they happened to be playing at the time. They played “Visions of Johanna” nine times, but he only added a harp solo once. That’s nothing compared to “Like a Rolling Stone,” a song he played 34 times harp-less, but then, the 35th time: bam, harmonica.
So today I wanted to celebrate one of Dylan’s wildest harmonica tours by showcasing every different song he played it on over those two months in Fall 2001. He played it on fast songs, slow songs, new songs, old songs, acoustic songs, electric songs. No song was safe from an impromptu harmonica solo. (One thing they have in common though: In every case, he used the solo to conclude the song.)
Below find a brief overview of each song, with an embed of a sample solo. I’ve posted a download of the full songs at the end, if you want to hear the full performances rather than what sounds like a Dylan bootleg accidentally set to Whoops: All Harmonica mode. (Though, if you do want that energy, just wait ’til the medley…)
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