Plus Robillard is a friend of Tony Garnier, Dylan’s longtime bassist, who also played on Time Out of Mind.įor the sessions, “I brought only my electric Gibson L-5 and a Telecaster,” says Robillard, “but on my first morning in Miami I went to a vintage guitar shop I’d heard about and picked up a Les Paul, too. Robillard’s versatile, lush-toned playing first caught Dylan’s ear after Robillard replaced Jimmie Vaughan in the Fabulous Thunderbirds and they opened for Dylan. “The timing was never right,” Robillard says, “and I had other things going on in my own career.” Robillard, whose career started in the late 1960s when he founded jump blues big band Roomful of Blues, had been asked to audition for Dylan’s group before. He said, ‘I’m gonna have to buy more of your CDs so I can learn to play like that.’” Dylan was very complimentary of my playing. Then Lanois would come back into the control room and tell me to go back into the studio and play. “I would be playing or going over a tune, and Lanois would come in from the control room and say, ‘I want you to sit this one out.’ I’d say, ‘Okay,’ and about 15 minutes later he and Bob would go into a corner and argue. “Thus began a really strange battle,” Robillard continues. The only problem, and I didn’t realize this until after I arrived, was that I was replacing Daniel Lanois in his role as guitar player. I flew down the day after I got the call. “I guess they had been recording a day or two before Bob told his manager to give me a call,” Robillard says.
I sat maybe five or six feet from him for the whole session, so to me, there was nothing Lanois could have done, other than send me home, that would have wrecked the experience for me.”Īs it was, Dylan and Lanois bumped heads over Robillard repeatedly. “He was very communicative with me, and I really enjoyed it and worked hard. “Working with Bob Dylan was a great experience,” Robillard says a decade later. Typically there were a dozen musicians, including three drummers, playing live on each take. Dylan brought in Jim Keltner, one of the greatest rock drummers on the planet, Texas organist Augie Meyers (of the Sir Douglas Quintet), Memphis music giant Jim Dickinson on piano, Nashville guitarist Bob Britt, and blues six-string master Duke Robillard-a far brawnier crew with a long history grounded in roots rock and R&B. Lanois aimed to play guitar himself and brought in his regulars Cindy Cashdollar on slide and drummer Brian Blade. Lanois was already well established as a smooth conceptualist who blurred lines between instruments to create a warm sonic landscape.Īnd then there were the musicians. Holly’s stripped down primal rock and roll beat is nearly the antithesis of Lanois’ textural approach. In later interviews, Dylan said he’d been listening to Buddy Holly records to psyche himself up for the sessions. Dylan and Lanois, whose production credits by then ranged from U2 to Emmylou Harris, had conflicting visions for the album that would become Time Out of Mind. That disc had been Dylan’s most recent commercial success, peaking at 30 on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart and at number six in the U.K. He even demo’d some of them in the studio-a departure from his usual modus operandi of springing just lyric sheets or bare-boned chords on his session musicians to preserve spontaneity.ĭylan booked time at Miami’s Criteria Studios and contacted producer Daniel Lanois, with whom he’d made 1989’s sonically intriguing Oh Mercy. Dylan began writing a string of fresh numbers.
Then in 1996 a deep snow fell on his Minnesota farm, and with it came inspiration. He’d followed up with two CDs of folk covers, but was shying away from revealing new songs, even in concert. Dylan’s most recent studio album of new material was 1990’s Under the Red Sky, which was generally slagged by critics and fans. Although his place as one of the greatest songwriters and personalities in rock and roll was already cemented, his career as a contemporary artist was foundering. It was a difficult period for Dylan artistically. Bob Dylan was 29 studio albums and nearly 40 years into his career when he began recording Time Out of Mind in January 1997.