Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead – Rehearsals Review

Five hours of rehearsal tape is enough to satiate the appetite of any Bob Dylan or Grateful Dead fan. Fill your boots with Rehearsals, a four-disc soundboard set where Dylan and the Dead can be heard piecing together what would be an underwhelming Dylan and the Dead live album. The tour preceding it is filled with moments of interest and intensity, though most of this comes from Grateful Dead’s instrumental style. They provide more of a backdrop to Dylan who at this stage is feeling his way through the hits of his past in the hopes of rekindling his lyrical charm. Rehearsals is a massive compilation, a gratifying collection of studio freedom as the band and Dylan prep for another set of days on the road. This is a niche sort of work which gives us a glimpse as Get Back, The Beatles documentary, did.  

From instrumental jams to reworking classic tracks, there is a sense of liberation for all artists involved in these rehearsals. Those early moments of chatter and performances of The French Girl and John Hardy feel more like warm-ups for the warm-up. Plucking away on acoustic guitars and trying to coax confidence and chemistry out of the burrow. Hank Williams cover I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry marks the first moment of interest in a massive, six-hour set where the sparks never truly fly. But they are not meant to. The whole purpose of these rehearsals is to reinvent and reinvigorate a group of musicians whose part in the spotlight was losing against the synth-heavy tones of the time. This is no fault of Dylan, Jerry Garcia or the Dead, and their continued dedication to those folksy tones which were so popular in their early days makes for a warm experience. Give it a bit of time, and Rehearsals grows well. The Times They Are A-Changin’ and When I Paint My Masterpiece are a little vocally rough but provide a warm instrumental flavour, the beautiful piano underscores the electric additions here.  

This is as much a confidence-building exercise for Dylan as it is a chance for The Dead to perform some songs that are not their own. “Someday, everything is going to be different,” cuts through the instrumental volume, a straight and bold punch from Dylan there. It is one of the finest moments of Rehearsals and contextualises many of the songs to follow. A rocking cover of Man of Peace, the classy Infidels rip ends too soon, but it is a sign of progression for the group, a step in the right direction before their shows. Keep an ear out for classics like Ballad of a Thin Man, too. Staggering instrumental changes breathe new life into them, even if they are on the side of showy fretwork. Dylan is offbeat and appears to have forgotten some of the words and the importance of tempo, but it is still a fascinating performance. 

 Hearing the development of Slow Train is another crucial moment, following on from some fairly standard and showy moments of Joey and Queen Jane Approximately. Through these Rehearsals is a desire to reconnect with the classics but an uncertainty in how to do it. So too do Tangled Up in Blue and all those great hits which find themselves ripped through, in search of new beginnings. Dylan does not find it here but the Dead material, brief it may be and overlooked it is on Rehearsals, is a nice break from a musician trying to relight the fire. He gets close when he steps away from vocal work, as he does on All Along the Watchtower, a marvellous, Dylan-less piece. It is at this low ebb where Dylan revitalises himself, and hearing this process through Rehearsals is a treat.