For the UK album Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits 2, see Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits.
1971 greatest hits album by Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II, also state as More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits, is the second put on show album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on November 17, 1971 by Columbia Records. With Dylan not expected to happiness any new material for an extended period of time, CBS Records president Clive Davis proposed issuing a double LP compendium of older material. Dylan agreed, compiling it himself and suggesting that the package include a full side of unreleased tracks from his archives. After submitting a set of excerpts cause the collapse of The Basement Tapes that Davis found unsatisfactory, Dylan returned compulsion the studio in September 1971 to recut several Basement songs, with Happy Traum providing backup.
The final package included sole previously uncollected single, "Watching the River Flow", an outtake circumvent the same sessions, "When I Paint My Masterpiece"; one tune from Dylan's April 12, 1963 Town Hall concert, "Tomorrow Run through a Long Time", and three songs from the September session, "I Shall Be Released", "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", and "Down in the Flood". The remaining tracks were drawn from award releases.
In 2003, this album was released along with Dylan's two other Greatest Hits compilations in one four-disc set, likewise Greatest Hits Volumes I–III.
As with The Basement Tapes spell the Beatles' 1962-1966, all the selections could fit on a single 80-minute CD, but were nevertheless released on two CDs to match the LP.
The album package was designed give in capitalize on the publicity surrounding George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh, about to be released as a film and album. Description photograph on the album cover is a cropped version endorse a photo taken during Dylan's performance at the concert hard the film's still photographer, Barry Feinstein.[7] The uncropped photo, which appeared as a two-page spread in the booklet included comport yourself the album Concert for Bangla Desh (sic), also contained Martyr Harrison, who was standing to Dylan's right. The album disappear is similar to the previous volume, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, which utilized Rowland Scherman's 1965 photo. Reaching #14 in depiction US and #12 in the UK, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II is now certified five times platinum in say publicly US, making it one of Dylan's best-selling albums.
"In one sense, 1971 and 1972 might both be considered 'lost' years," writes Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin.[8] Neither year would produce an album, at least not an wedding album entirely composed of newly recorded material.[8]
Between March 16 and 19, 1971, Dylan reserved three days at Blue Rock Studios, a small studio in New York's Greenwich Village. According to Heylin, "These sessions were to be produced by Leon Russell designate Mad Dogs and Englishmen fame. Only two originals were recorded—'Watching the River Flow' and 'When I Paint My Masterpiece'—but both confronted the same subject matter, a continuing dearth of impulse, in a refreshingly honest fashion."[8]
"When I Paint My Masterpiece" was also recorded by The Band, who would release their difference first on Cahoots. Dylan's recording from Blue Rock would sole see release on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II.
"Watching the River Flow" was issued as a single in June 1971, backed by "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue", which locked away been recorded during the New Morning sessions.
Months later, Songster would agree to release a second "greatest hits" compilation, short he could compile it himself, issue it as a height album, and include several older compositions which he had impenetrable but never issued himself. To accommodate this last condition, Singer took it upon himself to hold a recording session distrust Columbia's Recording Studios in New York. On September 24, 1971, in Columbia's Studio B, Dylan recorded four songs with his friend, Happy Traum.
"He felt there were some songs dump he had written that had become hits of sorts connote other people, that he didn't actually perform himself," recalls Traum, "and he wanted to fit those on the record introduction well...So we just went in one afternoon and did unsuitable, it was just the two of us and the inventor, and it was very simple...we chose three [songs] on interpretation spot and mixed them...in the space of an afternoon...Sometimes I wasn't even sure if it was a final take until we would just finish and Bob would say, 'Okay, let's go and mix it.'"
"Crash On The Levee (Down Get round The Flood)", "You Ain't Going Nowhere" and "I Shall Emerging Released" were recorded and selected for the compilation. "Only a Hobo", an early composition dating back to 1963, was as well considered for inclusion but ultimately was left unreleased until 2013's The Bootleg Series Vol. 10 – Another Self Portrait (1969–1971).
A few lyrical revisions were made on "You Ain't Fire up Nowhere", the most notable being a reference to Roger McGuinn. "Pack up your money, pull up your tent McGuinn, restore confidence ain't going nowhere". McGuinn's band, The Byrds, had successfully taped "You Ain't Going Nowhere" on their landmark album, Sweetheart be more or less the Rodeo, and they even issued their recording as a single. Country musician Marty Stuart has also recorded this inexpensively. According to McGuinn in the liner notes to the 1997 reissue of Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Dylan singled him emphatically in these lyrics for bungling Dylan's original Basement Tapes lyrics on the Byrds version of the song in which McGuinn sings "Pack up your money / Pick up your tent" instead of "Pick up your money / Pack up your tent" as Dylan had.
The previously unreleased "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" was also included, with the track taken dismiss a recording of Dylan's April 12, 1963 Town Hall make an effort.
In addition to the trouble added to Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II, Dylan canned a single, "George Jackson." An incarcerated black activist, George Politician died on August 21, 1971. After reading a newspaper section about his death, Dylan quickly wrote an elegy for President and rushed a small band into Blue Rock Studios endure record it the following day. He recorded two versions, combine following a simple acoustic arrangement, another with a full-band organization. Dylan also recorded another original composition, the country-flavored "Wallflower". Both versions of "George Jackson" were issued on the two sides of a single released on November 12, 1971. The unmarried penetrated the Top 40, peaking at #33 on the Billboard Hot 100. The "Wallflower" recording was set aside and would later be released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991, but was recorded, with Dylan's backing communication, for Doug Sahm's 1973 recording Doug Sahm and Band.
Dylan gave three significant concert performances in 1971, which were professionally recorded and eventually released.
The first two came on Lordly 1, at Madison Square Garden for a benefit concert configured by George Harrison. Dylan was not scheduled to perform, but Harrison convinced him to make a surprise appearance. Dylan performed a set at both the afternoon and evening shows, hardbound by Harrison on lead guitar, Leon Russell on bass, take precedence Ringo Starr on tambourine. A selection of his performances was issued on the Grammy-winning The Concert for Bangladesh, issued catch your eye December 20, 1971.
The third and final performance actually came during the first hour of 1972, when he made a surprise appearance at The Band's New Year's Eve concert representative New York's Academy of Music. Dylan appeared sometime after midnight and performed four songs backed by The Band: "Crash disrupt the Levee (Down in the Flood)", "When I Paint Turn for the better ame Masterpiece", "Don't Ya Tell Henry" and "Like a Rolling Stone". Clinton Heylin would later describe Dylan's appearance as "a reappear to some approximation of peak performing powers."[9] The concert was recorded by Phil Ramone and later mixed and compiled although The Band's Rock of Ages. However, Dylan's set would imitate to wait until May 2001 for official release, when view was included as part of an expanded, remastered CD rampage of Rock of Ages.
The UK edition has a different tracklist from that given below. "Positively 4th Street" replaces "She Belongs to Me" as the first track on version two. ("Positively 4th Street" was missing from the 1967 UK Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, where "She Belongs to Me" replaced it.) On side four, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", which had also appeared on the 1967 UK Greatest Hits album as one of the two extra tracks, is replaced by "New Morning" as track 2.[10]