How Daniel Lanois really felt about recording with Bob Dylan
Take a deep dive with Daniel Lanois into the sessions for Oh Mercy and Time out of Mind, the music, the musicians and the gear.
When the invitation, or should I say the suggestion, came to work with Bob Dylan, I felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to him. I put a lot of thought into what the record-making process should be like. First and foremost, I wanted to see to it that I could build a classic for Bob and to serve a national treasure well. I thought that the album should be one that he could expand on and then move forward to the next one. That’s the responsibility I felt.
I’m not a career builder, I’m a record maker. I didn’t have visions of accolades or Grammy Awards or any of those things. I simply view myself as somebody who wants to do good work. With Bob, I wanted to make sure that his voice was captured powerfully, rendered with sincerity, and be viewed as great as it ever was. I knew that I wanted the center to be big. That was the challenge in the back of my mind.
He's a hard worker. There's not a lot of dilly-dallying in the world of Bob Dylan. He gets down to it. All he needs is a copying machine, a chair, a guitar and a piano. He understands that if it doesn't come from him, then it's not going to come from the people around him. I knew that I was only there to enhance what he did. I acted as a bodyguard to his music.
The thing you have to ask yourself is, 'What does a guy like Bob Dylan need?' Here's a man who has everything, who's done everything. Well, he needs a friend and a curator, a guy who will say, 'Bob, this one is better than that one. This one is really great - let's do it.' A friend is what he really wants from somebody who works with him. I was so happy to be that friend to him on two counts.
Bob is very neutral about his expectations. He doesn't really design the record he has in his mind. I think he wants to see what I might say.
Bob Dylan is a great musicologist with an incredible knowledge of music, mostly American music. I find it incredibly interesting to hang out with him and ask him things like, ‘What was that song about? What were you thinking when you wrote that? What was it like in the late ‘50s?’
You know, at first, he wasn’t writing songs. He would do other people’s material, and he’d borrow little bits here and there. I think that’s still the driving force behind him. He doesn’t claim to be an innovator. That comes from other people.
Before we did Oh Mercy, he visited me in New Orleans when I was making a record with the Neville Brothers.
The Neville Brothers live in New Orleans, and there we were, the Neville Brothers and me, in my new and bigger apartment. Still in the Quarter, but now an upstairs place with lots of steps—not a friend to Art Neville’s Hammond B-3 organ. The demos went well; Aaron Neville wanted to record a version of Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” which turned out great. Live off the floor, vocal and all, I mixed the song on my Hill mixer to a Sony cassette deck. I never bettered the mix, so I used the cassette as the master.
The Neville Brothers’ record was going well, the vibe was thick and significant. Bob Dylan happened to be touring in Louisiana, and my “agent” Bono had gotten me on the phone to arrange a rendezvous for Dylan and myself. Bono has a good instinct about him, and I believe he thought that this matchmaking was perfectly timed. Dylan, of course, had come up through the amazing cultural revolution of New York City. He was used to renegade behavior, having broken a few rules along the way himself.
Dylan walked into my studio and I knew he had an appetite for dedication. He had a vibe on him like a boxer who had fallen out of the limelight, looking to come back in to regain his throne. There was nothing to be discussed about the past. I knew he was a futurist, even if he was fighting for a position in the present.
Dylan was touring nonstop, and I can remember a few heads saying to me that it was too much. In retrospect, Dylan was right to stay on the road. No time to get fat, firmly devoted to his first love. A performer must have his audience.
I had created a vibe on Saint Charles, and Bob felt it when he walked in. The studio was built for speed; no shred of performance could escape me. My crew was eating and breathing the Neville Brothers. No distractions, no phone calls regarding other work, no disturbances, one thing at a time, celebrate the moment—just like the violin players of Quebec.
The renegade setup promoted commitment and, as usual, an appetite for innovation was at the forefront. Respect for tradition was unspoken.
I played Bob these two songs “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “With God on our Side,” sung by Aaron Neville. Aaron’s performance was riveting, and at the end of the playback, Bob was a bit quiet, he looked at me and said “that sounds like a record,” and that was a big compliment coming from Bob. I think he understood and recognised we were committed and it’s hard to come by, to be committed. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone but I’m very committed and I live and breathe my work and I think Bob really felt we had delivered something for the Neville Brothers. I wanted to build a masterpiece with them and Bob felt that when he came in.
I said I’d look after everything, I’ll get a building. I’ll put a nice little band together, all the equipment and instruments, just turn up with your songs. To have the chance work with one of the National Treasures of America was a big thrill for me as a Canadian kid.
After some philosophical exchange, we agreed to hook up in the spring and make his next album. Bob is no fool; he knew that something was going on here. The entire package appealed to him. All he needed to do was turn up on the doorstep, and Lanois would have everything ready to go. Perhaps Bono had been right about this matchmaking. Synchronicity was at play, and a Dylan-Lanois dark-night record was on the horizon.
I had been to Bob’s house somewhere between the initial meeting and the session and he had played me a few songs so I was a bit familiar with what he had. He didn’t play them all the way through. He played maybe four or five lines and he’d say, ‘What do you think? We got a song?” He sang some lines at me. He already had the song “Most of the Time.” Which I loved. A beautiful love song. When I heard those lyrics, I knew this was a very great and unusual angle at a love song. Not gushing, just appreciating. Recognizing somebody who’s in your life some of the day, but that would be the best part of the day. So I thought that was a very tender way of looking at love and missing somebody. So that was the beginning of it, and he had a few other songs.
He had a little rock ‘n’ roll song called “Everything is Broken.” And I thought, “so we’re onto something here.” My next move was over to Soniat Street, to a classic wooden house with a brick drive and enough privacy to accommodate Mr. Dylan for the making of his Oh Mercy album.
The house also had a swimming pool, and Jane Birkin was living up the street. The Neville Brothers just lived down the street, so at any time we could bring Mean Willie Green in on the drums and Cyril Neville to play the congas or sing backups.
Dylan turned up as planned with a set of songs. A few of them I had already heard on the piano back at his place. One of my favorites, called “Most of the Time,” was still haunting me. I had already designed the bass line in my head, and in fact that’s the line I played, and the one that made the finish line. The Oh Mercy studio was essentially a kitchen. Bob and I sat like two guys on a porch.
He played on my nice 1952 butterscotch Telecaster that I plugged into an early sixties Fender Concert amp tucked around the corner, five feet from Bob, with moving blankets around the mic to avoid vocal spill.
When Bob moved on to the acoustic guitar, he played my Gibson Country Western model (circa late fifties).
I used a Lawrence clip-on pickup, and ran the acoustic through the same Fender Concert; so Bob’s guitar sound was always coming out of the same amp, electric or acoustic.
As for myself, I mostly played my steel-bodied Dobro from the twenties, its neck as thick as an oar, through a Fender blackface Twin head that was powering a Champ speaker, pretty low volume.
That was the rig; we never changed it. My red Peavey bass from Mississippi was plugged in DI, and at the end of the night if we had a take, I would overdub the bass part.
Malcolm Burn, who was engineering, had a couple of keyboards at the console, and he was always welcome to play along.
I had my Vox AC30 amplifier in a cubbyhole for louder parts, as can be heard on “Most of the Time”—distant distorted guitars, like a chamber orchestra of Les Paul Juniors. Now I overdubbed a quartet on that, what would normally be a string quartet. I did it with four Les Pauls, single note performances that I played. Almost playing the role of a cello, let's say. Then the next one, I'll play the role of the viola. Next one, I'll be the violin, and then maybe the contrabass. And so what you hear in the background as a texture.
The Vox and Les Paul rig, turned all the way up to 10. Bob sang into one of my Sony C-37As, acquired in Canada when they were refurbishing the sound system at Massey Hall.
Nobody knew much about Sony tube mics back then, and I believe I singlehandedly drove up the price of these Sony’s by bragging about them in interviews. I still have my original, the same mic I would later use on Bob’s voice for Time Out of Mind.
Bob was private and punctual, never wasted any time, still one of the most focused people I’ve ever worked with. I had a little coffee machine that he would wander up to, as he stood touching up his lyrics.
A drum kit was set up to my right, Bob sat to my left, and if we needed a drummer, I’d call in Willie Green, drummer for the Neville’s and one of New Orleans’s funkiest. Willie lived in the next neighborhood. How cool is that?—“Mean Willie Green,” one fast phone call away. I thanked the gods for having dropped me down into this rich musical environment.
We experimented with a few guest musicians, including Rockin’ Dopsie’s band, to back us up. Dopsie was a great zydeco artist, one of the last remaining old-school rock ’n’ rollers of America. I say “was” because he passed away in 1993. His band sounded fantastic, great rhythm section and a great sax player named Johnny Hart.
I loved Johnny’s playing—full-bodied, fat sexy sound, lots of air and feeling. Clearly he had not been touched by the unfortunate evolution of the saxophone tone, that terrible squeaky sound that contemporary sax players have generally adopted. Uptown memories—me standing looking in the window of an old storefront, Dopsie’s drummer sitting in the window, the place goin’ crazy—Saturday night at the Maple Leaf Lounge.
Dopsie’s band offered a strange Lafayette dance-hall feeling to the Dylan record, as heard on the track called “Shooting Star.”
The Dopsie sessions were cut short when we realized that Dopsie could play in only two keys, D or G. The button accordion is a great but limited instrument. I still have a few rolls of two-inch tape of Dopsie’s band demonstrating the various Lafayette grooves that could have been on Bob’s record.
“Ring Them Bells” is one of my favorites from the Oh Mercy album, a fantastic live vocal and piano performance from the man himself. There’s something special about the cohesion of a one-point source, when the piano and the vocal are done simultaneously.
Bob performed “Ring Them Bells” at my rented Steinway B, which I later purchased and years later sold to John Cusack. John loves “Ring Them Bells,” and so now he has my piano at his place in Chicago.
The sessions started later and later every day, and we were soon working only at night. Bob trusted the night as the record became more dark and mysterious. It got to a point where Bob was suspicious of any work done in the daytime; only night time work was allowed. I’ve heard it said that different tempos and rhythms are pleasing to our bodies relative to the time of day. Night time pushes the tempos slower, and tonalities are likely to be deeper and more profound after dark.
The song “Man in a Long Black Coat” was born in and inspired by the nights of New Orleans, a view of a life without adventure that sees a chance for a new beginning, a sort of run-away-and-join-the-circus story. It’s got a very strong tonality to it. There’s something that resonates in that song something that lurks in the shadows that keeps a listener interested.
Bob was inspired, and I was proud of our progress, though I know that part of him was pining for more of a full-band setup, which had served him well in the past. Bob was used to having a band around him so everything happened quickly. I didn’t want to have a band around him because I wanted to hear Bob not a band.
So I invited him to sit in a chair. He’s got his guitar in hand and and I’ve got one in mine a couple of amps and a big ass wedge in front of stage monitor and everything was cut to a Roland 808. So I had fixed time, which meant I could add in Mean Willie Green on afterwards because I didn’t want mean Willie Green in the room with Bob, I wanted him after we’ve gotten the vocal. So for me it was about getting your centre together. The centre of the picture, nice big and full. And with a lot of spirit and a lot of soul, meaning once you’ve got that you could frame it any way you like. A little bamboo, a little grass, should we put a little starlit night behind Bob. Let’s blue screen everything. You can do whatever you want when you’ve got the centre. If you haven’t got the centre and you’ve got a big frame, you’ve got a big problem. So that was my philosophy. And it took Bob a little while to wrap his head around that. That it was Going to be two guys on a porch. But once I got the centre of it, everything made sense and it’s a beautiful high fidelity record. I stand by to this day.
There were moments of insecurity regarding our back-porch-kitchen-with-two-chairs approach, but we had a great vocal sound, and I felt that our nucleus was intact. A certain kind of communication exists at the small table, two people keeps it tight, a safeguard against boardroom opinion. Small tables are not boardroom tables. Eno once said to me, “I’ll agree with whatever you say if you agree with whatever I say.” There’s nothing worse than an outside opinion if it contradicts the direction of the record I’m interested in. A table for two—one pair of eyes stares into the other on a handshake, no other opinions are considered. The world loves a record that is specific in its stance. I will gladly embrace dictatorship if it creates a better chance for potent directed work.
The setting for Oh Mercy promoted a “staring eyes” feeling—one pair of eyes staring into another, or out into the darkness of New Orleans. The chance encounter of Dylan and I had established a secret and mysterious tone; like a train passing through a station without making a stop. We were on our own, we could do whatever we wanted. Sometimes freedom is frightening.
Oh Mercy has been a constant source of compliments, from people who listen to records. A record may be bought, but will a record be played? Oh Mercy lives on in the playlists of those who listen.
Mark Howard and I had acquired some cool old Harley Davidsons that Dylan liked, and so Mark found Bob a real beauty. He rode that bike around New Orleans, and I can imagine the freedom he felt, not only from the bike experience but a freedom away from the usual duties at more familiar turf.
The record took shape, material took a direction, and a few songs fell by the wayside. One of my personal favourites, called “Series of Dreams,” later turned up on a bootleg, but was not on the official record.
“Although Lanois liked the song, he liked the bridge better, wanted the whole song to be like that. I knew what he meant, but it just couldn't be done. Though I thought about it for a second, thinking that I could probably start with the bridge as the main part and use the main part as the bridge...the idea didn't amount to much and thinking about the song this way wasn't healthy. I felt like it was fine the way it was — didn't want to lose myself in thinking too much about changing it."
Bob Dylan, Chronicles Vol 1
“Series of Dreams” had frailty in it and testimony, and as I hear it now, Bob might have been right to leave it off Oh Mercy. Maybe it should have existed on Time Out of Mind. The shame about being expert and knowledgeable is that when you are in the depths of your work, you have the least amount of objectivity. If a button could be pushed to fully cleanse the palate and beam you back into the situation with a full sense of awareness, that’s the button I’d pay any amount of money for. Leaving off “Series of Dreams” might have been the right decision, but it might have been the wrong one.
I’ve always been a fan of Dylan’s paintings and drawings. I love his painting, used by the Band on their LP cover for Music from Big Pink. I also love Dylan’s painting for his own album Self Portrait. Before we parted, I asked Bob if he could do a charcoal drawing of me, and he did. But he did not sign it. Later that night, in a heavy rain, the doorbell rang; it was Bob, soaking wet at the gate. He had come back to sign the little drawing. I was touched. We spoke a bit about dreams, and I felt that I had not only made a good record for Bob, but that I had opened a door for him to look through with a view of the future. Ten years later we would meet again.
My first record, Acadie, was finished in the Soniat house with the ghost of Bob Dylan at the coffee machine. The setup stayed the same, and I regard my record as stage three of the New Orleans trilogy: Yellow Moon first, Oh Mercy second, and then my Acadie.
I believe my time with Bob inspired me to look at my own life stories.
Bob Dylan read me the lyrics to Time Out of Mind in a hotel room in New York City. They had a lot in them, they were deep, they were dark, they’d come from living a number of lives which I believe Bob has. They had regret and hope, beauty and optimism. A lot of life experience. They were so complex. He asked if I thought we had a record, and I said yes. I hadn’t heard a note or any melody, but an overwhelming sensation came over me. I was stunned by the power of the lyrics. Bob had written from a perspective that few had seen. Decades of life experience and testimony lay on the pages in front of me.
The myth that rock ’n’ roll belonged only to youth was about to be shattered by the steel blue eyes of the man himself. The darkness of the lyric was even darker than me. I left with inspiration and a list of records that Bob recommended as good rock ’n’ roll references: Charlie Patton, Little Walter, Arthur Alexander, and others. I listened to these records and I understood. I understood that the technology that existed in the forties and fifties was not meant to handle rock ’n’ roll.
The preamplifiers of that era were built for distant miking, for symphonic or big-band applications. When rock ’n’ roll arrived, it over-drove those preamps, pushing the gear beyond the manufacturer’s recommended use. The birth of this great new medium called rock ’n’ roll was afforded the luxury of overdrive. Bob wanted that sound, and I felt I knew how to get it. You’re not gonna rewrite the same book, but you’re gonna be smart enough to at least read through it. Relevance is content measured up against the past. Bob wanted relevance, and I vowed to give it to him.
I had a little Gretsch Gadabout amplifier that I used to process Bob Dylan’s vocals on Time Out of Mind. This processing was an extension of the same philosophy—take a sound that you already have and build a new dimension. In the case of Time Out of Mind, we wanted Bob’s vocals to sound as great as the vocals on the rock ’n’ roll records of the fifties. Other dimensions were added to his vocals by using some of my tried-and-true echoes à la Lee “Scratch” Perry (no reverb, only ever echo). Dimension on a song relates to “depth of field.”
As human beings we find comfort in depth: something that sounds far away is not an immediate danger; we are programmed to relax when prey is at a distance. Close sounds can be quiet and comforting, like the whispering of sweet nothings. A sweet nothing will still communicate over thunder, as long as the thunder is in the distance.
The Gretsch Gadabout worked on Dylan’s voice for Time Out of Mind, but those formulas may not apply to other projects.
Bob knew what he wanted to say and I knew what records he loved,” he explained, “And I referenced those records, mostly old blues and rock ‘n’ roll records. I understood what he loved about them – they had a sense of discovery and urgency. I like the sound of the limited technology of the thirties, forties and fifties, and I made sure Bob got that sound.”
He turned up with pieces of paper and we got on with the record. He was really curious about getting everything right. I felt like that record really had a powerful identity. Bob knew what he wanted to say and I knew what records he loved, and I referenced those records, mostly old blues and rock ’n’ roll records. I understood what he loved about them—they had a sense of discovery and urgency. I like the sound of the limited technology of the thirties, forties and fifties, and I made sure Bob got that sound. I found that by having fewer microphones and things happening live in a room, you got an automatic depth of feel—something about the natural geographical space between the players. So we approached it that way and got great natural depth of feel, and a sense of urgency.
He’s completely committed to his lyric. Just coffee and work, there’s no meanderings. The studio is not a place of ‘Let’s play pinball in the green room while somebody does a guitar overdub’. None of that for Bob. He’s someone who made a big impression on me as I was growing up, and I was happy to be able to return the favour. But the bigger the artist, the harder they’re looking for truth. Bob, like other great artists, has a pretty effective bullshit-o-meter.”
Bob and I had gone the distance back in ’88 on his record Oh Mercy, and his description of it all in his book Chronicles Vol I is pretty accurate. I couldn’t disagree with any of it; perhaps the chronology was different than I remembered. That was New Orleans, and we were different people back then. They say that every cell in the body regenerates every seven years. The racehorse that I used to be was now a workhorse. My guitar playing, and for that matter, my understanding of the blues, had come a long way.
Oh Mercy was built on a chance encounter; I wasn’t supposed to make a record with Bob Dylan. I was just pushing my thing around, like a big ball of soft snow. Bob came around and hooked in; he didn’t know what I was about, but he knew I wasn’t about to let him down, because I cared. There is a difference between admiring something from a distance and being in it. Every now and again, something rises out of the ground overnight, like a mushroom, or like a vine growing on a concrete bridge. Bob had been that vine before, I knew he could be again. I didn’t mind tropical nights, storms, whatever Louisiana had to offer was fine by me.
Bob had been wearing a hood for a long time, like a boxer keeping warm before the first round. I liked watching his face, that hood flapping in the midnight New Orleans air. I wasn’t gonna be there for long, but what I was about to do was gonna be there after I was gone. But that was Oh Mercy, it was the past, and now we were about to make Time out of Mind.
I took the suggestions that Bob made regarding old blues and rock ’n’ roll records very seriously. My buddy Pretty Tony Mangurian had a little studio in Manhattan at the time, and he and I got together and checked out some of the records Bob wanted me to hear. I was already familiar with these records, but had not heard them in a while. Bob was right. They were vibrant and had a sense of urgency rising up from their sounds. Tony and I played along—we closed our eyes and transported ourselves to the Charlie Patton orchestra, fast and furious. Tony and I listened back to our jams, and selected the best, inspired group of bars—say eight-bar sections. We then deleted the source inspirations and just listened to our performances—they had a vibe. Even in the absence of the sources, there was a vibe. This was good. Tony and I had two or three sessions like this, and I left the Manhattan studio with fifteen or so grooves that might work for Time out of Mind.
At this point, Bob was rolling down to my own studio regularly. This was the one in Oxnard, California, the old Mexican theater known as the Teatro. I wanted to make the record at the Teatro because the place had the very best vibe.
The place had been abandoned for a long time. My engineer buddy Mark Howard and I found stacks of old Mexican movie posters in the projector booth. They were fantastic, from a time when you had to leave your house for entertainment. I believe that Bob also has a regard for art of this kind, as is evident in his current adverts when he tours. The Mexican poster display set a nice tone, and I believe Bob had a good time turning up at the Teatro. It was always just Bob, Howard, and me. Pretty Tony later came in for a stretch of demos, as I wanted him to be around to help out with the technology, especially regarding the loops that we had already built in New York.
Bob is a roaring piano player with a great left hand, and he made my old Steinway sound like a barrelhouse full of birds. The vocals he sang at the piano were full-bodied and deep. Tony and I monitored the prepared Manhattan loops in our headphones (as we were the timekeepers) and Bob played and sang along with us. The loop could then be heard in the overall blend for playbacks and mixes. We had stumbled upon a magic formula.
We had found the sound for Time out of Mind. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. Bob had written powerful lyrics, and I felt that we were on the verge of something great. We had found a way to embrace the sound of old American records, and my mind started to race. This could be the greatest record ever. Bob was at a lyrical peak, and as for myself, I saw the potential for a new level of sonics on the horizon. I became obsessed with the idea of making a heartfelt, dangerous, and monumental record. Bob’s visits became more frequent. We had no schedule. He turned up like a ghost whenever he wanted. Bob paid more visits, and the recordings became greasier and more strange and displaced-sounding. Things were going well with Bob, and I was the most excited I had been regarding production in a long time.
Then came the crushing phone call; he wanted to leave the Teatro. He explained to me that it had become evident to him that we needed to assemble a band and make the record in Miami. Bob wasn’t really interested in experimentation – he just wanted a rawness to come from a band.
The Miami part of the call has always mystified me, but I couldn’t disagree with his suggestion about assembling a band. Bob had put some thought into this, and when he described the power of Jim Dickinson’s piano playing to me, I was left speechless. Bob said if we could get Dickinson, we might not even need anyone else in the building. Dickinson had been a force who Bob was clearly curious about. Tony Garnier, who was already playing bass in Bob’s road band, was invited to play on the record. This was a suggestion I liked, as I was aware of Tony’s reputation as a rock-solid player with Louisiana values. He could play any style, and it was comforting to me that he had spent a lot of time in the hidden parts of Louisiana, where some of the only remaining American rock ’n’ roll exists. Garnier is a pillar of a man, always there with a big-brotherly embrace and the musical knowledge to back it all up.
Bob suggested other players—Cindy Cashdollar; Bucky Baxter, Bob’s pedal steel player; Duke Robillard; Robert Britt; and Augie Meyers.
I was familiar with Augie’s reputation—he had played on many great Tex-Mex recordings and was regarded as a force on the Vox combo organ, pretty much a shuffle player. This was good, as a few of Bob’s songs had gone up that street.
Bob and I talked about Miami. Perhaps we could find a theater or banquet hall with a stage, which sounded exciting to me, especially as Howard and I had the gear and the know-how to pull something like this off. Jeff Kramer, Bob’s manager, did his best to find us such a location. But in the end it didn’t pan out and, as the start date of the record was creeping up on us, we opted for a more conventional studio, which turned out to be Criteria Sound. Howard and I chose a selection of my favourite equipment from the Teatro. Two small sidecar Neve consoles would act as the preamp stations (for all the microphones to plug into). We had a simple and strict rule—keep the main console constantly in mix-and-listening mode, which would enable us to lay down a mix anytime, even in the middle of a band-track day. Experience has taught me that you never know when you are going to get a mix; leaving ourselves open to every possibility has always been ingrained in my work technique, and so the philosophy continues.
There were other pieces of equipment, like the Sony C-37A microphone that I had used on Bob’s voice back in ’89, some LA-2A compressors and Sennheiser 409 mics that are great on guitar amps, and many other pieces of processing gear that I won’t go into—I don’t want to give away all my secrets.
The equipment was put in a truck with a couple of motorcycles, and Howard drove it from California to Florida. When I arrived in Miami, Howard had already been there for a few days, and like he always does, he had the room completely set up. There was one problem, though—the room didn’t sound any good. The drums sounded crap and the room was dead. My heart sank and I began to pine for the Teatro. My amazing turn-of-the-century Steinway grand piano was collecting dust in California as I stared into the mouth of a generic Yamaha monster. The studio manager could obviously feel my disappointment and suggested that there might be a possibility of us moving into the orchestra room down the hall. The problem was, the orchestra room had already been booked by someone else.
After a few days of negotiation, we were allowed to switch rooms. The move cheered me up considerably, as the dimensions of our new digs fit into my way of looking at Time Out of Mind. My way of looking at Time Out of Mind was about “depth of field.” Given that Bob wanted a large group of people in the band, I treated it as an opportunity to chase my dream of great natural depth of field on a record. The new room proved to be much better than the initial dead room. There was enough space for our many road cases and we went as far as setting up a little workshop for guitar repairs and wiring up the different kinds of adapters that I always seem to need.
Bob had not arrived yet, so I spent time with the band refining our setup. I chose to position Bob at the grand piano over to one side of the studio, with my rig about five feet from him so I could read his facial cues and then conduct the rest of the band accordingly.
We rented a pump organ for Dickinson, and Augie had his organ rig behind a sliding-glass door, but he wasn’t too far away. The drummer Bob had invited (David Kemper) did not work out, and I had to do what I’ve hardly ever done, send him home and call in some heavyweights.
Brian Blade is a southern drummer, and in my experience southern drummers have always had the best feel for blues, funk, and shuffles, the kinds of grooves we were about to investigate. Blade learned to play in his father’s church, and so he had those authentic church grooves down and was used to serving singers. The subtleties of a drummer’s strokes are important to me on records. Perhaps live you can get away with a few rough turns in the bend of a song, but there is no forgiveness on a recording, and I was not about to accept a risk in this touchy territory. There have been songs that have changed the way I see drums working on records, like the way Sly and the Family Stone used a drum kit and a rhythm box on “In Time,” one of the great marriages of technology and human playing and definitely one of the funkiest tracks ever. And on the Supremes’ version of “You Keep Me Hanging On” there are two acoustic drummers. In one speaker you have the more conventional kit, and in the other, a second kit plays a sort of percussion part, it’s a great sound.
The twin-drummer idea has always appealed to me and, given that Bob had invited a larger group to play, I rolled the dice and also invited Jim Keltner. Jim is a seasoned, accomplished, and unusual drummer. Brian would be the engine, as he is the master of the sock cymbal (high-hat), and Jim would be the percussionist, the secret passage to unknown surprises. The idea worked; Brian was there with his deep soul, the church in him dripping from every stroke, the sound of a long history of dedication flowing through this young man. Jim had played with Bob before, and beyond his ability to fit in with Mr. Blade, he brought with him a certain kind of wisdom; later in the project he would also be a shoulder for me to cry on when things got tough. The two drummers sat close together and I felt I had made the right decision.
Tony Mangurian had also arrived. I wasn’t trying to have these three drummers play all at once; I wanted Tony there as the gatekeeper of the technology we had prepared early on in Manhattan for the project. On “Million Miles” and “Highlands,” for example, the grooves that we had built were the mood-setting foundations, essentially dictators of feel. We piped the prepared grooves into the headphones of the drummers, and no matter what happened around the room, they were there as beacons of time and vibe. This technique was particularly helpful in “Highlands.” This song is very long, and part of its beauty is that it never budges in tempo, like a long walk under a starlit sky, a constant canopy embracing the ever-evolving story that Bob wanted to tell.
Bob had once told me that you “can’t buy feel,” and I agree with him. You might be in the best studio with the best people and intentions, and you may not get it on that day; this is all part of the ongoing mystery of the studio. Waiting for the magic is not a comfortable place to be, because it can wear people out and I could not afford days like that, and so the Lanois/Mangurian New York City preparations were my insurance policy. I knew I could trust the feel of these preps, and they could be an instant remedy to a troubled day. After all, this was a Bob Dylan record, and we would have his attention for only so long.
Bob Dylan likes to move fast. And I admire that. In the case of Time out of Mind I was his music director so I had all of the songs figured out, the charts, and make sure that all the musicians had an understanding of what the song was about before Bob arrived so we’re not wasting the man’s time. He might decide on a different key or a different time signature that’s okay that’s not changing the song that’s just changing a couple of things about it and so by being knowledgeable on the material and guiding the band in such a way that we don’t have any train wrecks or not playing too much.
In regards to specifically Time Out of Mind, I did clarify to the musicians, we have a nice band in this room. We don’t want any familiar components to be applied to this record, so riffs that you’ve learned along the way, leave them out. Leave them out and think of yourselves as characters or components in a panoramic scene, and Bob is a train. So Bob’s the slow train. He’s the center, and you know, maybe there’s a cactus there, and there’s a little coal mine over there, and there’s a bird, there’s an eagle, there’s this, there’s a rainbow. The train comes upon these components to complete the picture, but they are not the train running. Bob’s the train running, and I explained that to the orchestra, and I said, “Do not play anything familiar.” Make a contribution to the picture.
Bob changes lyrics all the time. He moves fast and fresh, and the minutes you have him for could be minutes of genius unfolding. I didn’t want to waste them. Other producers had wasted those precious Dylan moments, by not noticing them flying by, those molecular pieces looking for congregation. That was it, we were a congregation, our denomination could not be described, it would disintegrate before anyone knew anything about it.
We would already have left Miami by the time anyone would even hear about it. Vaporized outside of memory, like Time out of Mind had never happened. Even the musicians involved would be mystified by the finished work, even on the stage of the Grammys. Even when we were holding the Grammy for Best Album of the Year, Tony Gamier said to me that he couldn’t remember how it all had happened.
Technological challenges are fine, as years of experience allowed me to land on at any challenge. But psychological challenges are the slippery ones. Questions like “Why are you doing this?” would come up, and I wasn’t doing it for the money.
If it takes a fight, you gotta fight, I am not there to be a nice guy and make it go nice and smooth. I don’t do medium records. If it’s not a masterpiece, it’s gonna be a fight. If it’s not a fucking masterpiece, get the fuck out of my face.
One of the reasons I accepted the invitation to make Time out of Mind with Bob is that I wanted my sonics to be challenged by a level of lyric that only Bob could write. Bob has always seen the studio as a place of documentation. Who could argue with the idea of documentation? But is every snapshot in the end a portrait? It takes a lot of care and curiosity to see the possibilities in that portrait.
I wanted the shadows to hold hidden secrets, for the details to pique the curiosity of a viewer, time and time again. I wanted the sunlight in the portrait to outlive us all, and be blazing with premonition, hope, and redemption, to be the ultimate piece of documentation of ’97—the documentation of the dedicated minds of Time out of Mind.
My years with Eno had provided me with an appetite for innovation, and so my time in Miami was all about providing Bob with a futuristic way of looking at his work. It might be mysterious to some why Time out of Mind drips blood, lyrically but also sonically. It’s because the forefathers of the art form were all there, at least in my mind: Eno, Lee “Scratch” Perry, even Arthur Alexander and Hendrix.
Bob had his own set of concerns, I’m sure; suddenly a room full and Lanois running around like a worried hen. My brother Bob Lanois had been invited on my recommendation to film the recording process, so he was there too, and perhaps this was not a great idea, as Dylan was not really in a filming frame of mind. My brother was asked to go home and nothing ever happened with the footage he shot. If I remember right, at least half of the Miami session was filmed, but all that footage was handed on to Dylan’s camp. The Time out of Mind chapter was still very much a chapter of privacy and mystery for Bob. He went much more public after that album. He wrote Chronicles Vol 1 and released a documentary film with Martin Scorsese’s help, and then to everyone’s surprise, hosted a fantastic satellite radio show called Theme Time Radio Hour.
What goes on in somebody’s head cannot be measured by any system. Imagine becoming a master of the pen or a master of the word without anybody pushing you around. The misspent or well spent youth of Bob Dylan allowed him to reach the level of PhD outside of any guidelines and become a national treasure of lyricism. Every mother should hope that her child reaches such a position of independence. I cherish my time spent with the man himself.
I had pretty much memorised all of Bob’s songs, given that I had been through the demo-making process.
As I listen to Time out of Mind, I hear my angry Goldtop Les Paul, circa 1956, with a Vox AC30 amplifier, circa 1962) charging through the tapestry of our invited guitar players. I also had my mando-guitar, which turns up on “Standing in the Doorway,” playing the hook leading up to Bob’s vocal, an innocent heart in the presence of lost love. It plays the role of hope, reminding you of the reasons you got into all this to begin with. [Bob would mimic that high mando sound Lanois found, on the early live versions in 2000]
Bob likes strong hooks, as I do, and I can remember he and I both plugged into my Vox amp, playing the riff to “Love Sick” as an overdub. This was a nice reminder of how musical two instruments in one amp can be. It’s the same philosophy as sending a few different sources of sound to one summing amplifier, the way I’ve heard they worked on early Beatles recordings, lots of instruments stacked up on a few tracks. There is a musical result to be had from a one-point source, two guitar players in one amp or four singers on one mic. As technology has evolved, we’ve gotten further away from this idea.
I felt a darkness spreading like an ether. Everything I ever fought against was spilling down the walls like blood in a horror movie. Cliches are like scabs, you can only shake them off after healing. My past had a lot of scabs. Years of record making back in Canada with studio musicians. What an idea: studio musicians.
It was all too close to the jingle-making factories for my taste. We were walking a tightrope. How can you get “soul” out of musicians who have done too much? I had to remind myself of why I had gotten into all of this to begin with, which was probably the same reason that everybody else in the room got into it. We love music.
Cindy Cashdollar is beautiful, and I wanted her to play beautifully. Without direction, musicians can go on autopilot. I wanted the playing to have a sense of purpose, no filler, every note living in harmony with the vocal. When the singer sings, you might do best to play nothing or the sound of nothing, just a breeze, that’s okay. Like a Nelson Riddle arrangement: wait for the singer to be finished and then play with harmonious relevance, or just stab the hook, like the “slam slam” of “Love Sick.”
Rambling responses might have had a moment in Nashville somewhere in the time of bluegrass, at a time when fast-flash guitar picking might have attracted regard, but this was not a tourist attraction. That had all been done before. I was very happy to have the souls of our invited guitar players be simply hanging in the wind, just to be trembling leaves. No Nashville flash pickin’, no hee-haw, no straw, just characters in the landscape: shadows, dew on the meadow, rough-cut pine, barbed wire, open fields, or a herringbone motif disappearing into infinity, however Bob’s storytelling dictates what you might play. This was an atmosphere.
You had to leave your clothes at the door to step into the future. The large orchestra room accommodated the little workshop that I mentioned earlier, plus a little private area curtained off from the rest of the studio where Bob liked to have his meal. He had a friend with him and they’d have some time to talk in privacy during the eating hour. There was a parking lot right outside the studio-loading door where Bob and I would slip out and discuss our approach to the next song.
When you have a large group in a room, instructions must be Shakespearean. There’s no room for too much fat or indecision. Bob took me aside. The parking lot was our “war room.” Angles and choices of grooves were private matters. We had two of the best drummers in the world waiting in the orchestra room. I wanted the groove to drive this record. Atmospheres are like mist, beautiful only when viewed against the mountain range, but take away the mountain and you may just drive by and not know the mist. Keltner and Blade, my mountain range.
Memories of “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” a waltz groove from Bob’s past, came to mind, a fertile mountain that might be just the bedrock for Bob’s “Standing in the Doorway.” Bob listened. His songs can go so many ways. I’ve been in the room when there was the sudden surprise of a change in time signature, or suddenly a different key. I never knew if he was doing this to keep the musicians on their toes, after all, we are only cats landing on our feet. The shifting of the time signature, maybe that’s good. It might just add a little more punch, and knock the predictability out of a pose. I was playing my little mandolin, and a hook started building in my head
The pre-Sad Eyed Lady version of “Standing in the Doorway.”
Tradition, tradition, tradition—Bob and I both had plenty of it under our belts. How could this generic parking lot have become my office, with a chain-link fence blocking out the badlands—the same kind of fence that my tongue had stuck on when I gambled and licked it, on the edge of some junk yard by a frozen lake in Canada. But here I didn’t want to keep the badlands out. We were in the badlands, and everybody wanted to know what was going on in the bad man’s head.
All the waltzes that I had ever known flashed in front of my face like it was my last minute. That was it—the waltz. My Keltner/Blade mountain range. The rest of us were mist and smoke machines, we only needed to provide a little atmosphere so Bob could be “sufferin’ like a fool.” My little mandolin floated on top, like the old dozen roses. We just needed another three weeks perhaps the fence was there to keep the animals in, rather than the badlands out. Decision made, Bob and I walked back in and went public. “Standing in the Doorway” was now a waltz.
My mando-guitar was overdubbed as soon as we had the track. Bob was very supportive of my little melodic invention, as it qualified as a riff. We had reached a harmonious place, and Howard provided us with the most inspired playbacks. They sounded so great that Howard and I took careful notes of our settings, as they would likely have to be replicated later.
Bob’s vocals were penetrating and had that sound that would frighten a young child. Perhaps Neil Young’s theory could apply here—if it sounds dangerous, you’re on the right track. Howard and I had introduced Bob to a treated vocal sound that inspired him. We sent his vocal back into a little Gretsch guitar amplifier.
It was a little tube amp from the sixties, and it seemed to automatically give the vocal that sound of the old records Bob had recommended I listen to. I made sure that this vocal sound was heard on all playbacks, as it is always a good idea to juice people up around the room, and I wanted Bob to know that we had unlocked the secret of those old Charlie Patton records. The little Gretsch amp was my secret weapon to recapturing that overdrive sound. Bob was pleased with the device, and there were times on mixes where the amp sound was as loud as the clean signal straight from the mic. Different bands have come out since using that sound, and in fact it was pretty much the same sound I had used on Bono’s vocal in the early nineties on a song called “It’s No Secret” on Achtung Baby.
Everything was moving along well, and we cranked out the tracks, sometimes two a day. The vibe was good and I could sense that Bob was appreciative of Brian Blade’s presence. He was the unlikely inclusion, and we all knew that he had brought in a feeling of truth and dedication. This was not a hired gun, not a man who was jaded by having done too many sessions. He came in with a pure heart, with virtuosity in every stroke, and I felt he had found a friend in Jim Keltner.
They made a fine team and I was a proud papa. Bob continued to tear me apart with the lyrics; his constant amendments seemed to improve the songs at every turn. He even wrote a song on the spot called “Make You Feel My Love.”
Built on top of a classic chord sequence, the vocal is fat with emotional delivery. I was even able to forgive the second-rate piano that I’d been forced to use. Bob was flying high, as I was.
Perhaps this is the right time to explain what a searching person I am. It gets covered up with work. Bob is the opposite—very sure of himself, and pointed in a specific direction. I love that about him. So there I was in Miami, the kid from a steel town wondering what the hell it was all about, banging into brick walls, hoping to find a way to make it all work. I was not about to be a casualty of mediocrity. Innovation is costly—it eats away at your life, your time.
Mangurian was sent home when things took a dark turn. I had wanted a “hit” for Bob. A “hit” means a great song, a rendition that touches people’s hearts in a universal manner. I felt that Bob’s song “Can’t Wait” held that chance. We had it on the demo—a roaring vocal delivery, Bob at the piano, me on the Les Paul, and Mangurian on the kit.
We were now rerecording the song, and I felt that its potential as a hit was disintegrating in front of my eyes. I begged Bob to reconsider the feel of the demo. I even sent Mangurian out there for a take, but Bob didn’t have the desire and Tony was sent home. “Can’t Wait” has a convincing feel on the record, but it did not become a hit. “Can’t Wait” had been my ace, and now my arms had been paralyzed and I couldn’t move to play my card. Bob is a sort of jazzman, he likes to deliver what he feels at the moment, and who can argue with that? But I was asking him to study not only Charlie Patton, but his own demo successes. I wanted to make sure the groove was right. Build and maximize. If I could align myself with some of the hip-hop greats, get your groove first and then build your song. Bob didn’t go for it and that was pretty much the end of Miami. I never got him a hit. I got him a Grammy, but not a hit. Time out of Mind will remain a great American classic, but I didn’t get him a hit, and I could have.
The Miami sessions came to a close. Howard packed everything up and drove back to California. We would soon huddle up back at the Teatro, where it had all started. Bob had reviewed the recordings, as I had, and there was definitely something there.
He started turning up at the Teatro with lyrical amendments and entirely new stanzas that Howard and I worked in, couplets floating from song to song till they found their most potent home. We had to technologically mimic the leakage in Bob’s vocal to ensure that his insertions were flawlessly made to fit.
Bob’s wish to change some of the chords, long after the band had gone home, meant that I replayed all the harmonic instruments, punching into Tony’s bass track, sitting at the piano, punching in minor where there had been majors and so on. I didn’t mind all this, it was all part of the same philosophy that had always driven me—feel first, and everything else will follow.
In the case of Dylan, if he wanted to repair a vocal line I'd pipe the track into two huge Altec Lansing speakers set at just the right volume to mimic the presence of the band around Bob. [Bob would try this technique again on future recordings with Chris Shaw.]
The thing about Bob's vocal is that he puts out a lot of mid-range. The microphones are friendly to this quality. Any mic on Bob sounds good. Time Out Of Mind features a vocal reprocessing through a small guitar amp that we mic'd and put back in the mix. Bob wanted his vocal to sound like rock and roll recordings of the 50s. There was definitely overdrive happening on those records. Preamps have gotten a lot cleaner since and so the vocal into a guitar amp was my way of getting to the sound of the old days.
Bob asked if I had a camera, and would I take a photograph of him. I said I would. In fact, I take good pictures even though I wouldn’t be regarded as a professional. I shot one roll of 35mm black and white on my old Nikon military-grade camera. There was little light in the Teatro, and so I held the camera on a guitar case for stability and gave the film a three-second exposure as Bob sat in the middle of the fantastically equipped theater, holding my baby Stella acoustic guitar.
The contact sheet came back and Bob chose his favorite of the shots taken. I organized a nice large print to be made as the master, but in the end Bob preferred the vibe of the contact sheet, and that became the record cover. When Bob went home after his vocal repairs, Howard and I worked on mixes.
The Miami mixes sure had a sound, and it took a while for us to get back to that sweaty Florida feel. My console was the same brand as the Miami console, but a different model. They had a Neve 8078 and mine was an 8068, same era and all. The 8078 had four-band equalizers and mine had three bands. The three-band isn’t a lesser animal than the four-band; it’s just a little different. Probably the biggest difference was that we were in a different place in time.
I rode my motorcycle to deliver my mixes to Bob’s hotel, where someone greeted me with gentleness but suspicion. They recognized that I was not a president killer, took the tapes, and I rode off into the night. Gradually the record was completed. I have to say that Bob’s attention to mix in details at this point was impressive. He would scrutinize the mixes, and report back to the Teatro with razor-sharp observations.
He also went on to overdub a few electric guitar parts; in fact, some of the solos are his. The naive spirit and stabbing bravado of Bob’s playing has always appealed to me.
The events around this time are a bit of a blur, but I know that Bob got really sick, some peculiar infection around his heart. We talked about it some, and he told me that it had been more pain than he had ever felt.
Months later I saw Bob on the Pacific Coast Highway, wearing a cowboy hat and driving a nice old El Dorado. We pulled over, had a coffee, and talked about life.
I felt relieved when the ultimate conclusion to our work turned up on television. “Love Sick” had become the theme for the new Victoria’s Secret sexy women’s underwear campaign.
The penetrating sound of my Goldtop Les Paul and Bob’s Telecaster had reached the masses. I felt it had all been worthwhile—Bob and I had had our hit.
Bob has gone on to make records since Time out of Mind in my absence, and from the bottom of my heart, I wish him the best and I feel our lives crossed for reasons beyond our practical understanding. I think we could safely say that both Bob and I are eccentric people. Our eccentricities maybe running in two different directions, but they are definitely running.
Bob called me in the middle of the night. I said, “Bob, what time is it?” He said, “It’s dark out” I said, “Where are you?” He said, “I’m drifting.”
The last Bob Dylan visit was in 2017, just before he released Triplicate. Bob came to my place in L.A., and he played me all that material — 21 songs, two records’ worth of songs. He stood two feet back from the microphone, like Sinatra did, and it’s really great. It’s a pretty humbling place to put yourself in, as a proficient songwriter, that you’re not going to write one song but pay respect to what you’ve come up with.
We stood in my multi-coloured kitchen and verdant yard for hours, talking about cultural shifts and the allure of mystery. Dylan mentioned the possibility of working together once more. I told him I wasn’t sure I could go there again. But then I had a coffee with an old friend who was reading The Philosophy Of Modern Song – and she told me that Dylan might yet need me again, that we still had something left to say together. I think I could make the very best record Bob has ever made, but it wouldn’t have much to do with traditional chord sequences or music Bob has heard or even considered. We’d have to go into the unknown again – but deeper.
Sources
Lanois, D. (2011) Soul Mining: A Musical Life. London: Faber and Faber.
CBC Music (2012) Daniel Lanois on ‘The Making of Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy’. CBC Music.
Greene, A. (2020) ‘Inside Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind Sessions’, Rolling Stone, 30 March. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20200805012137/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/inside-bob-dylans-time-out-of-mind-sessions-200926/
Will, J. (2007) ‘Daniel Lanois’, NUVO Magazine, Winter 2007. Available at: https://nuvomagazine.com/magazine/winter-2007/daniel-lanois
Carroll, J. (2015) ‘Daniel Lanois: “That’s a Better Headline… F*** the Little Twerps, Especially the Ones from Dublin”’, The Irish Times, 4 April. Available at: http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/daniel-lanois-that-s-a-better-headline-f-the-little-twerps-especially-the-ones-from-dublin-1.2169887
Bosso, J. (2011) ‘Daniel Lanois Reflects on Producing Bob Dylan’, MusicRadar, 22 June. Available at: https://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/daniel-lanois-reflects-on-producing-bob-dylan-451823
Beato, R. (2023) Daniel Lanois Interview. The Rick Beato YouTube Channel. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/@RickBeato
Maron, M. (2022) Episode 1318: Daniel Lanois. WTF with Marc Maron Podcast.
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Mind blowing. This is a fine, full-bodied documentary by Lanois whose written words are rich with intelligence and sensitivity. Throughout, my mind wandered back to Chronicles and reading Dylan‘s writings about this era. I’ll be listening to these albums again. Thanks 🙏
What a sublime Sunday read. Thank You so much for creating this, an account worthy of the craft & art that it records. I know that i will be re-reading this many times ahead.