Bob Dylan decided not to renew his contract with Columbia, the record company that had supported him since his debut in 1961. Not only had the clauses of his contract been altered to his detriment, but the songwriter was annoyed with the lack of interest that the management of CBS expressed in his music. “[I] suspected they (CBS) were doing more talk than action. Just released ’em and that’s all. Got a feeling they didn’t care whether I stayed there or not.”101
At the end of the summer of 1973, a few months after moving to Malibu, California, with his family, Dylan signed an agreement with Asylum Records. David Geffen, the charismatic founder of the company, managed to convince him to jump ship. “Come with me. I’ll show you what you can really do. I’ll sell records you never dreamed you could sell.”101
Also, Geffen promised to release the first record at the same time as Dylan’s tour with the Band, which was planned for January 1974. But on the recommendation of the songwriter’s lawyer David Braun, the new contract only dealt with a single studio record.
Dylan was contemplating a new tour after hearing the Band at the Summer Jam Festival in Watkins Glen, New York, on July 28, 1973. At the same time, he also decided to record his first official album with the Band with Asylum. He told journalist Maureen Orth, “What I do is direct contact between me and the people who hear the songs… It doesn’t need a translator.”66 While that was true, in order to establish this contact with the public, Dylan needed support for Planet Waves. This support was none other than the Band, who had worked with Dylan for years.
First titled Love Songs, then Ceremonies of the Horse-men, and finally Planet Waves, Bob Dylan’s fourteenth studio record was produced quickly, without anything fancy, in what appeared to be the group’s desire to get down to the essentials. Yet Dylan’s poetic analysis of themes was still deep. There were love songs, or rather songs about love, including “On a Night Like This” and “Wedding Song,” but, more often than not, a quite dark philosophy. “Going, Going, Gone” seemed to deal with the question of suicide, and “Dirge” was certainly about self-hatred, while other songs, from “Hazel” to “Never Say Goodbye” (by way of “Something There Is About You”), evoked bittersweet nostalgia for the songwriter’s childhood in Minnesota. As for “Forever Young,” one of Dylan’s most famous songs, it was addressed to parents, urging them to guide their children on the way to truth. As Dylan scholar Paul Williams wrote, “Planet Waves marks Dylan’s return as a committed artist, the first time since John Wesley Harding.”102
The cover was designed by Dylan himself. It shows three faces painted in black, with the caption “cast-iron songs & torch ballads” on the right, which could be a description of the album, and on the left, “Moonglow.” Also, as for some of his preceding albums, his name is not mentioned. On the back of the cover there is text written by Dylan, including some passages that were deemed to be obscene. Consequently, when it was released in early 1974, the album was sheathed in a sleeve for the sake of sensitivity.
In June 1973, Dylan recorded a demo of “Forever Young,” “Nobody ’Cept You,” and “Never Say Goodbye” in the offices of the editors of Ram’s Horn Music in New York City. He got down to business five months later, when the Band joined the songwriter at the Village Recorder studio, 1616 Butler Avenue in Los Angeles. The sound engineer was Rob Fraboni, who had just recorded “Sail On, Sailor” by the Beach Boys. His assistant was Nat Jeffrey. The recordings seemed to spread over six sessions, but the dates do not coincide with the different sources indicated on the album cover. However, the most logical dates are those provided by Michael Krogsgaard, who accessed the archives of Sony: November 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 14, 1973. The recording was done almost live, with both Dylan and the Band preferring spontaneity. No one assumed the producer role. Rob Fraboni confirmed this in 1974: “There was no producer on this record. Everybody was the producer.”103 The musicians knew each other well, from tours and recordings, and they had been playing together for years. The results were extremely efficient. Rob Fraboni added: “The record was really a performance, as far as I’m concerned. It wasn’t like we were ‘making a record’… and Bob wanted it to sound right, to come across… Bob would just run it down, and they’d play it once. Then they’d come in to the control room and listen. That’s another thing that really astounded me. Nobody was saying, ‘You ought to be doing this,’ or ‘You ought to be playing that.’ They just all came in and listened to hear what they should do, and then they’d go out into the studio.”104
Eagerly awaited, since the last real album by the songwriter went back to October 1970, Planet Waves came out in record stores on January 17, 1974, fifteen days after the beginning of Dylan’s tour with the Band. Exclusively made up of original songs, this fourteenth studio album was generally well received by the press. It contained personal and introspective work, and, as Ellen Willis noted in the New Yorker, “Planet Waves is unlike all other Dylan albums: it is openly personal… I think the subject of Planet Waves is what it appears to be—Dylan’s aesthetic and practical dilemma, and his immense emotional debt to Sara.” However, it was only a moderate success commercially: some 600,000 fans preordered the record, granted, but in a whole year, it only sold 100,000 more copies. By comparison, the tour with the Band was estimated to generate $92 million. This was no doubt one of the reasons why Bob Dylan did not stay with Asylum.
After the session at the Blue Rock Studio in New York (1971), it was the second time in his career that the songwriter had left Columbia Recording Studios. Beyond Dylan’s breakup with the major New York company, Rob Fraboni explained why Dylan and the Band chose the Village Recorder: “One thing, the room was right for them. As far as the size, they really liked that. And as far as the control room is concerned, they just wanted something that sounded good. It could have been done at a number of places, but we had a combination of things: the room, the security, and the location. They liked the idea of being out of town (the Village Recorder is situated in West Los Angeles, about ten miles from Hollywood). When we actually got down to the mixing, Robbie was comfortable with what he was hearing, and that was the really important thing.” Fraboni, who in 1975 assumed the responsibility of remixing The Basement Tapes for their official release, proposed that he should be the sound engineer, considering himself to be familiar with the work of Dylan and the Band. He used approximately twenty-eight mics for all the takes, including a Sennheiser 421 for Dylan’s voice. The singer caused problems for the sound engineers from the start because he refused to use a windscreen (he made an exception in “Dirge”).
Because Robbie Robertson insisted that there be no overdubs, the musicians mainly recorded without using headphones, occasionally using Sennheiser 414s. Robertson mixed the record with Rob Fraboni, with advice from Dylan. It took them three or four days to complete it. They could be considered the three real producers of the album.
The Band played many instruments, including a Hammond A100 organ by Leslie, a Lowrey organ, a clavinet, a pianet, and an accordion, among others.
Nobody was sure about Dylan’s acoustic guitars. He may have used his Martin 0-18 or his D-28, the one he had in 1971 during the Concert for Bangladesh, or even another Martin, the 00-21, the one he played at the end of January 1974 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. As far as electric guitars go, he seemed to play his Fender Telecaster Butterscotch Blonde, as can be seen on the inside cover of the CD. Finally, he played harmonicas in different keys: C, D, E, F, and G.