Bob Dylan Desire Lyrics

[Merlino Riviere]

Thatprovided me the opportunity to go to rehearsals for this gig, which was fucking incredible. I wanna say we spent about two weeks at SIR downtown. The way they set it up was, each day we would have an artist in the morning and an artist in the afternoon. They would essentially just do their song then fuck off, and, that afternoon, somebody else will come in.

Then here comes the gig. During the gig, we had a holding area on the stage where the artists would come up 15 minutes before their performance. It was kind of a long time to be waiting on stage, but Bobfest was being paid for by a really early HD television broadcaster in Japan. Because of that, our feet were being held to the fire to stay on time. A really tight clock. My job was to make sure the artists got there in time.

There's only one set of stairs coming onto that stage, heavily guarded by security. She's now there with her whole little entourage. She's crying, I think she might have thrown up into the trash can. She was just verklempt, and understandably. But she's blocking the stairs up to the stage. People are trying to squeeze by her.

This was set up as one of those festivals where instead of having a rotating stage, they're doing two stages. While one act is performing, next to them they're setting up the other act. As an audience member, you go back and forth.

It turns out what had thrown Lou, poor guy, was there was, like at many of these festivals, a separate second stage. So he wasn't hearing the crew for Primus getting ready; he was hearing these other bands out in the woods or in the parking lot an eighth of a mile away. But he was complaining about us. I'm a fan of him musically, but he could be a real jerk. Mind you, I've had friends that worked for him who would walk through fire for him. I think he was one of those people that was very loyal to his people. If you weren't in his circle, you're screwed.

Yeah. It was a big road case full of tapes. I think they're now digitally recording, but during that era, it was all DAT tapes. These are not the tapes that are being archived for any front-of-house recordings. These are just being kept for Bob's use during soundchecks and rehearsals. You record the shows, you label them, you put them in the box. You might never see them again or you might be asked for them in a week.

Most of the people wanted to hear Bob. That was the most important thing. Unlike a lot of bands, where most members wanna hear themselves. These guys wanna hear some aspect of Bob's playing, and maybe a hi-hat or a kick drum for rhythm. It was mostly about his vocal and piano. He never played a guitar when I was there; he played that organ, the piano and the harp. I have a couple of harmonicas in my drawer from Bob that I keep as a memento for myself. Al would give those away to very close friends or luminaries. They've got their little B-flat white gaffer's tape on them so we can see them in the dark.

Bob was from the school that he wants to hear what's coming back from the room. I think a lot of folk musicians come up hearing the PA bounce back at them in smaller venues. That's what they're used to and get acclimated to over years of performing at smaller things. Tracy Chapman was the same. Monitors weren't a big thing when Bob was starting; they became a thing in the late '70s and '80s, and one could argue that they weren't even that good then.

Bob certainly became more comfortable with me over time. I will say this about me, I'm not the best monitor guy that's out there. There's a lot of better monitor guys than me. My strength as a monitor guy was the mental game, the relationship with the musician. Because if a musician has confidence in you, that you're gonna give them what they need, that's the best thing for a monitor guy to be. If they look at you during the gig, and you're reading a book or looking off stage, that's not good.

Another time that Bob talked to me, July 2014, we were headed towards Pori Jazz Festival in Finland, where we were gonna finish the tour. The gig before Pori was an outside gig in Scandinavia somewhere. It's a rainy, misty day. We set up, we soundcheck, Bob's gonna arrive anytime. I'm up on stage.

The lyric sheets. There were these laminated song sheets that weren't the whole song necessarily, but just the key lines in case he wanted to remember how to start it or whatever. It was the monitor guy's responsibility to keep those in that same road case where the tapes were. You'd get a set list a little bit before the show, and you'd go pull all of the lyric sheets that you had lyrics for.

I think it was Tony who would report the setlist to Al; Al would print it out and distribute it. Then Al would come collect it after the show, because the monitor guy's job was to actually correct the set list. If a song was omitted, scratch it out. If the song was added, write it in. Then Al would come get it.

Like every organization, everything comes from the top. Mood and temperament and flavor, for lack of a better word. When your leader is, essentially to all of us on the team, pretty non-communicative, it can be stressful. And specifically in my case, a monitor mixer would usually actually talk to the person you're working for. And that's just not the case there.

It just goes to show you how close to the bone he keeps things. You just don't know anything about him. Nobody in the crew knows what's going on in Bob's life. I don't even know if those were really his kids. It could have been a ruse.

I found this a really interesting interview. Great stuff. The part about the DAT tapes, the playing of the recordings of old songs for Bob, the sound Bob and the band hearing, 'The Press Conference' mics, lots of good stuff, told in a cool way. Thanks to you both!.

As regular readers know, in addition to the musicians Dylan\u2019s played with, I love talking to behind-the-scenes people on Bob tours. True, their jobs usually don\u2019t involve as much direct interaction with the man himself, but I\u2019m always fascinated to learn how putting on a Dylan show works. Some of the process is just Touring 101\u2014obvious to those who work in the industry, perhaps, but opaque to those of us don\u2019t. Some of the process is, as with anything related to Dylan, idiosyncratic.

Behind-the-scenes people often never been interviewed before, so they have never-told stories to share. I\u2019ve collected some touring-personnel interviews I\u2019m going to roll out over the next few months, starting with this one with Matt Haasch. Haasch was part of the team working the monitors (that is, controlling the sound Dylan and the band heard onstage) from 2010 until mid-2014. He also helped out more informally on a few of the earliest Never Ending Tour shows in the late \u201880s and, notably, at the 30th Anniversary concert aka BobFest.

We talk about all of that, with plenty of detours into touring-life stories about Eddie Vedder, Lou Reed, Jeff Tweedy, and more. As well as just a look at a day in the life of a crew guy on tour with Dylan in the 2010s. Fair warning: This one goes pretty in the weeds into how the whole touring operation works. I love nerding out on this stuff, but if you\u2019re only here for stories of intimate Bob Dylan interactions, this might not be the one for you. (There is a book I might recommend, however\u2026)

I remember once, they were rehearsing in the Montana rehearsal spaces in the city. UltraSound East [sound vendor] had provided the gear to that rehearsal, and I was going down at the end of the day to grab all my gear, then they're gonna go off on tour. Bob is in the rehearsal space, maybe with a tour manager. Keith [Dircks, a sound guy then] is like, \u201CJesus Christ, it's midnight, I gotta go to bed, we're flying in the morning.\u201D He says, \u201CDo me a favor. Go in there and just get a mic cable out of my tech box. That'll flush Bob out.\u201D \u201CReally?\u201D \u201CYeah, if he sees you come in and he doesn't know you, he'll flip up the hood and out he'll go.\u201D Sure enough, I went in, I took out a couple of cables, and two minutes later out comes Bob with his hood up.

Yeah. See if it works or if it doesn't work, \u201CMaybe I'll try and find the right one somewhere.\u201D That's one thing you gotta say about Bob is he knows how to own a mistake, you know what I mean? He knows how to make it work. Not always, but often. I feel almost unworthy to criticize or comment. That being said, I would say that, musically, 2010 to 2014 was on the whole infinitely better than my experience in the brief time I was out there in the late \u201880s. Everything was kind of a mess then.

I also did the Bobfest at the Garden. I was tasked with being the talent stage manager. I was there as a representative of the production to kind of be G.E\u2019.s assistant, whatever he needed, and then also to interface with any visiting talent's requests. So if they wanted something special at the venue, I'd relay that to Al [Santos] and/or Ken [Graham], the stage manager. \u201CSo-and-so's asking for their own special amp\u201D or whatever.

The day that Eddie [Vedder] and Mike McCready came, the only two members of Pearl Jam that actually performed, they came in before Neil Young at SIR. As they're finishing up their rehearsal, in comes Neil Young's longtime guitar tech Larry Craig. He was loading Neil's equipment into the rehearsal space after Eddie and Mike had finished. One of them came up to me and said, \u201CHey, that looks like Neil Young's stuff.\u201D I\u2019m like, \u201CYeah, Neil's after you.\u201D

This is 1992. Pearl Jam's not a new thing\u2014they've been invited to this gig obviously\u2014but they're not the top of the heap that they came to be in just a few years. So they're like, \u201CThis is incredible, I can't believe Neil Young's here! Oh my God, oh my God.\u201D

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