Unreleased and remastered, the annals of Bob Dylan and the live performances out there, just waiting for a listener, are endless. DA Pennebaker captured much as he rounded out the monumental Don’t Look Back documentary, an at-the-time contemporary showcase of an artist at work. Dylan jams his way through I Can’t Leave Her Behind, stripped from a delicate Glasgow-based performance. There is a delicacy to this live recording, thankfully restored by those with the power to do so, distributed by those that are set on letting people hear it. Credit to those who have worked hard on scraping the pieces together, slotting them into place and offering up I Can’t Leave Her Behind.
Dedication of that kind underscores this Bob Dylan bootleg. There are few artists out there who would take the time to scour archives and audio just to slice together a live performance from those early days. It was well worth it, and I Can’t Leave Her Behind marks a fascinating throwaway track from a Glasgow live performance. Blonde on Blonde dropped that same year. A drama-filled tour by all accounts, but this intimate display of acoustic beauty is no stranger to the dedicated Dylan fan, wrapping themselves up in the darker annals of his forgotten bootlegs. I Can’t Leave Her Behind is an essential bootleg, a real gateway to the dusty recordings and community that surrounds art preservation. Moody crowds swearing off his electric blues must have been delighted by this acoustic beauty at the time.
Sharp and poignant workings are pushed to the front of I Can’t Leave Her Behind. It is as simple as the title suggests but performed with lyrical freestyling, a flow of youth and reminiscence. It would soon spurn into On A Rainy Afternoon, but there is enough difference between the two to warrant separate meanings, unique differences and changes to the experience of either track. Dylan poses broad and difficult questions that relay his worries about pursuing some unknown flame and the result is a lush acoustic presentation that depends on freestyled lyricisms. Ripped right from those Glasgow bootleg tapes but pieced together through dedicated work from Swingin’ Pig, this pre-The Band jam with Robbie Robertson is an important little document of how Dylan would form songs and envision them. Little clusters, pockets of influence and ideas swing through with that back and forth of vocal and acoustic.
Very intimate and simple love song structures are depended on by Dylan here, whose display of pursuit and loss takes him way back home. Quieter vocals from Dylan and a real presence from the acoustic beauties that flutter through this piece are more for the live setup than any active choice. They work nicely. Those softer cries for the track’s beauty are interjected by the on-the-spot improvisation, a clutter of ideas that could not be separated from some of his very best unless indicated as on-the-fly attempts at lyrical beauty. His throwaway shows strength for an acoustic style that was sidelined for an electric style at the time, but the sheer fact I Can’t Leave Her Behind remains unreleased and unrecorded all these decades later is a glimpse into how deep the well of Dylan’s creativity goes.
