A song of heartbreak from two men who know all about it. Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton share a stage, performing Idiot Wind deep in the heart of a legendary studio. Ties to everyone from The Band to Rick Rubin lay on the floor of Shangri-La. But this was before the latter and right after the former. To hear Clapton and Dylan performing together in the studio, even in the context of an unreleased demo, is solid gold to many. Where Dylan may resent the autobiographical assessment of Idiot Wind, the charms of a song made up of memory and anguish are irresistible. Pairing with Clapton in the studio, however briefly, notes a chance for Dylan to assess one of his best songs with a man who wrote one of the all-time great love songs. Layla may have failed in its objective but it has steadied generations to come.
So too does Idiot Wind, and for those seeking a neat and brief understanding of the song, Shangri La awaits. Clunky and hammering away at the song, the moments where they say they “just can’t” do it. Those are not because of emotive strains but because they have not found a flow for the song yet. The Band features with Clapton and this feels more like a bit of training for Idiot Wind, a teething issue after its release. Dylan hammers through, singing irrespective of the background chatter as he tries to grasp something familiar with a song that, while written just two years before this recording, was a vastly different experience to the one he was now having. But those higher tempos, the change in octave and the relatively crackly recording are all layers of additional detail not available on the album.
Idiot Wind in Shangri La is a chance to hear a song being redeveloped. Dylan would change many of the lyrics from Blood on the Tracks for his live shows, Tangled Up in Blue most of all made way for religious intensity. A lost book of poems was space enough for flipping pages of The Bible and while there is no major change to Idiot Wind just yet, there is a trickle of guilt found at the end of the track now affecting Dylan. A year removed from the album release but not quite ready to move on from the songs and their hurt. It sounds strong even in this patchy form, even when those moments of musical overlap do not quite come through.
You would be hard-pressed to distinguish what The Band and Clapton add to this, though Dylan sounds adamant in pressing on with a performance of some type. He muddles the lyrics, frustration at the door as the rest of the impressive instrumental ensemble gathers around and waits for that note of brilliance. Loose studio jams are not meant to be anything slick. This is just a chance to find a new route through a song which was already starting to weigh the set with a heavy rage. Even the chance just to hear Clapton, Dylan and Robbie Robertson working together is quite the spectacle, though much of it remains feedback, chatter and clanging notes.
