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Good as I Been to You (1992)

Where the lyrics of Good as I Been to You take you, and where it was really made.

This album contains no original songs. The full-band covers session recorded for it in Chicago was shelved, and the record was made later at Dylan's home garage studio.

Key places

Garage studio sessions in Malibu (1992)

Recording site Bob Dylan's garage studio (Malibu) — All songs for the album were recorded later at Dylan's garage studio at his home in Malibu, in sessions believed to have run from late July to early August 1992. The point marks the Malibu city centre, not the exact address. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• Good as I Been to You: 28th studio album by Bob Dylan
• Released 3 November 1992 by Columbia Records
• Made up entirely of traditional folk songs and covers
• Dylan's first all-solo acoustic album since Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964
• Title taken from the eleventh track, 'You're Gonna Quit Me'

Background

• After the Never Ending Tour began in June 1988, traditional covers became a regular feature of Dylan's concerts, often in acoustic sets
• After Under the Red Sky in 1990, Dylan released no original song until 1997
• Dylan called these covers 'the music that's true for me'

Recording

• Studio time booked at Chicago's Acme Studios in early June 1992, with David Bromberg as producer
• A full-band set of covers was recorded there, but Dylan scrapped its release for reasons unknown
• Two songs from those sessions were later released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs
• All songs for the album were recorded later at Dylan's garage studio at his home in Malibu
• Sessions believed to have run from late July to early August 1992
• Debbie Gold credited as producer; Micajah Ryan credited with engineering and mixing

Cover

• Front cover photography by Jimmy Wachtel

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Formation

• Born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota; raised in Hibbing, Minnesota.
• Moved to New York City in January 1961 to pursue a music career.
• Signed to Columbia Records after playing harmonica on Carolyn Hester's album; debut album Bob Dylan released in 1962.

Members

• Solo artist; backed over the years by bands including the Hawks/the Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and his touring band led by bassist Tony Garnier.

Career

• Breakthrough with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963); protest songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements.
• Went electric with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966), provoking controversy among folk fans.
• Motorcycle accident in 1966 led to nearly eight years without touring; Basement Tapes recorded with the Band.
• Converted to Christianity in the late 1970s and released gospel albums; won Album of the Year Grammy for Time Out of Mind (1997).
• Has toured since 1988 on the Never Ending Tour; won an Academy Award and ten Grammy Awards; awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• Response described as surprisingly positive, especially for an album with very modest ambitions
• Critics compared it with the acoustic sets of Dylan's Never Ending Tour and praised his interpretive skill
• Several critics noted that Dylan's voice was physically ravaged, but attention often went to his phrasing
• Rolling Stone: four out of five stars; critic David Wild praised the stripped-down intensity and called it passionate, at times almost ragged
• David Sexton of The Sunday Telegraph described Dylan's voice as sounding like a powerful ghost
• NJArts: Jay Lustig called it a solid but not exactly essential addition to Dylan's catalog and picked 'You're Gonna Quit Me' as the highlight

Reappraisal

• Helped restore Dylan's critical standing after the disappointing Under the Red Sky
• David Bowie was a fan of this album and World Gone Wrong; in a 1997 interview he said Dylan's albums have a great class to them
• Spectrum Culture included 'Jim Jones' and 'Froggie Went a Courtin'' on its 2020 list of Dylan's 20 best songs of the 1990s

Records

• United States: No. 51
• United Kingdom: No. 18
• Norway: No. 11, the album's highest chart position worldwide

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• The title comes from the eleventh track, 'You're Gonna Quit Me'.
• Dylan's version of 'You Belong to Me' from these sessions later appeared in Oliver Stone's 1994 film Natural Born Killers and on its soundtrack album.
• In a 2021 Stereogum feature for Dylan's 80th birthday, The Strokes' Albert Hammond Jr. chose 'You Belong to Me' as his favourite Dylan song.
• Two songs from the scrapped Bromberg sessions, 'Duncan and Brady' and 'Miss the Mississippi', were later released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

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