Tag: The Times They Are A Changin’

Bob Dylan’s 1964 Quest

Dylan 1964
In 1964 on the Toronto television show Quest, 23-year-old Bob Dylan performed several of his now-classic songs. At the time, he was promoting his latest album, The Times They Are a-Changin’ (1964). Quest was a regular series, initially called Q for Quest, that featured various artists and ran on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) network during 1961-1964.

In 1964, Robert Whitehead hosted the series. But for Dylan’s segment, the producers offered Dylan the entire 30 minutes for his music with no interviews. So Dylan performed throughout the show in a rustic cabin-like setting with various actors in the background. The music, though, is fantastic.

In the entire 30-minute program, Dylan performed “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “Talkin’ World War III Blues,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” “Girl from the North Country,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” and “Restless Farewell.” The version of “Girl from the North Country” from this show appears on the DVD release of Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home (2005). [Update: The video of the entire show is no longer available, so below is the opening song of the show, “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”]

According to the TV Talkin’ website about Dylan’s early recorded performances, this Quest show is the earliest video of a full Dylan performance available. The TV Talkin’ website lists the date of the show as January 2, 1964, although that may be the date of the recording instead of the broadcast. Another website, Queens’ Film and Media, lists the date of the Dylan show as March 10, 1964, which is probably the broadcast date.

The audio for the show is available on the 10-CD Man on the Street bootleg (Thanks to one of our readers for this information!).  It appears on the eighth CD under ” Quest Canada CBC-TV (Feb. 1, ’64).”  So it puts the date somewhere between the January and March dates listed above.

Dylan’s special TV episode was the last one executive producer Daryl Duke did for Quest before leaving the show. He went on to produce The Steve Allen Show, where Dylan would appear on February 25, 1964.

Reportedly, prior to these TV appearances, Dylan had appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in summer or late 1963. But no video survives of that appearance and nobody seems even to know what Dylan sang then. Fortunately, though, this Quest performance from the same period survives.

What is your favorite song in the segment? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    When Bob Dylan’s Ship Comes In

    Dylan When the Ship Comes In

    no vacancyDuring the summer of 1963, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were driving on a trip to perform together. During the trip, an incident occurred that would inspire one of Dylan’s great songs, “When the Ship Comes In.”

    A Hotel Stop

    On the road, Dylan and Baez were in ragged clothes when they stopped at a hotel for the night. At this point in their careers, Joan Baez was the more famous of the two nationally.  Dylan, however, still was highly regarded in the folk community, had recorded two albums, and had his songs covered by several artists.

    The motel clerk recognized Baez and gave her a room, even though she was not wearing any shoes. But the clerk refused a room to Dylan because of his scraggly appearance. Baez was angry and stepped in on Dylan’s behalf, persuading the clerk to give a room to her unkempt companion.

    It must have been difficult for Dylan to face the rejection and then have to be saved by Baez.  His embarrassment must have been magnified because he was just starting — or hoping to start — a relationship with her.

    When the Ship Comes In

    For someone with Dylan’s talents, though, the best revenge was his music. That night, in his hotel room, in his anger and humiliation, Bob Dylan sat down and began writing the following words:

    A song will lift
    As the mainsail shifts,
    And the boat drifts on to the shoreline;
    And the sun will respect
    Every face on the deck,
    The hour that the ship comes in.

    When the Ship Comes In (live) – Bob Dylan (press play)

    His new song, “When the Ship Comes In,” was a song of revolution that came out of a personal slight that evening. And Dylan was not in a forgiving mood.  He sang about the forthcoming change where chains will bust and fall to “be buried at the bottom of the ocean,” elevating his slight into something Biblical:

    Then they’ll raise their hands,
    Sayin’ we’ll meet all your demands;
    But we’ll shout from the bow “your days are numbered,”
    And like Pharaoh’s tribe,
    They’ll be drowned in the tide;
    And like Goliath, they’ll be conquered.

    The March on Washington

    Not many weeks after the motel incident, Dylan and Baez performed “When the Ship Comes In” at the March on Washington in August of 1963. So the song born out of pique at a hotel clerk took stage alongside Martin Luther King Jr. when he gave his “I Have a Dream” Speech.

    Thus, Dylan’s song framed MLK’s speech with the warning, “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”

    Revolution

    Revolutions are often borne out of personal slights. But personal slights are often symbols of the system, so there is nothing wrong with such a genesis.

    One instigation for the American Revolution was a tax on tea, but the tax was symbolic of something deeper. The Occupy Wall Street movement was fueled partly by people fed up with a system that had slighted them individually. Similarly, one can look at recent protests around the world to see movements that started small and grew into something unfathomable.

    The year after Dylan wrote “When the Ship Comes In,” the song appeared on Dylan’s The Times They Are A-‘Changin’ (1964) album, his first album of all original songs. Some of the themes of “When the Ship Comes In” are echoed in the title song of the album: “There’s a battle outside ragin’;/It’ll soon shake your windows/And rattle your walls.”

    Maybe the battle does not rage in the U.S. like it did in the 1960s, but it still continues here and around the world.

    And that’s the story behind the song.

    Bonus Source Information: In Martin Scorsese’s documentary No Direction Home, Baez tells the story about the hotel and the “devastating” song, not Dylan. So he may have a different perspective on the night. In Keys to the Rain, Oliver Trager, who calls the Live Aid version above “botched,” notes that Dylan once explained that “When the Ship Comes In” was less about sitting down and writing a song than being a type of song “[t]hey’re just in you so they’ve got to come out.” A better live version of the song was recorded at Carnegie Hall on October 26, 1963, two months after the March on Washington performance. It is included on the soundtrack to the Martin Scorsese documentary on No Direction Home: The Soundtrack (The Bootleg Series Vol. 7).

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