Bob Dylan – I Was So Much Younger Then Vol. 1 Review

With so many releases, be it nostalgic bootlegs or contemporary thrills, it is hard to keep track of where or what albums are worth hearing. I Was So Much Younger Then Vol. 1 has a name which would match up with those lazily put-together playlists on the official Bob Dylan YouTube channel. Listeners wanting to dig deeper and deeper into his discography must look beyond these channels. They must find a release like I Was So Much Younger Then Vol. 1, a staggering collection of songs from Dylan’s early years. Tape collections from the early years are released in one form or another, but not with the same focus and care they ought to have. You can listen to the Karen Wallace tapes on the official YouTube channel, if you can find them, that is. Title changes, description alterations, and a general lack of care mean the official channels cannot be trusted. 

Turn to this magnificent bootleg compilation, then. Whether it is made obsolete by the impending The Bootleg Series: Volume 18, is yet to be heard. Interviews from those who knew Dylan in his earliest years open this compilation. It is not all great, early years songs. I Was So Much Younger Then Vol. 1 is closer to a passionate documentary than a compilation, and those who want to learn more of Dylan’s earliest years are well-served here. Friendship in Music tells a listener more about Dylan in a minute than some biographies will in five hundred pages. It may get cut off, but it breaches into Dylan singing Little Richard, an awful quality tape, but worth hearing. I Was So Much Younger Then Vol. 1 is a collection of fragments, a layer of articulation given to spare parts.  

That sort of effort is a blessing for those who are interested in the early years. Beyond those apartment tapes and early recordings, which are likely to appear in some way on the official bootleg, there is a reliance on interpretations of other artists. A track named Johnny Cash has great depths to it. It’s like listening to No Direction Home at times, the Martin Scorsese documentary, which dug into those glory years. You can get to grips with the earliest influences on Dylan, those artists he would meet and later overshadow with his work. I Was So Much Younger Then Vol. 1 takes a lighter touch to Dylan’s work, a chance to hear him not at his creative best, but at arguably his most ambitious. It’s the want of everything in the early years that you can hear here. A chance to hear Dylan create with freedom.  

No expectations are affecting the reasons for the performance or quality of the song. It’s a two-disc set of familiar pieces, and the occasional unknown recording, which brings out a bit of extra context for those early years. It’s well worth a listen, even if the tape quality fluctuates. There are worse-sounding bootlegs out there that people remain fond of. I Was So Much Younger Then Vol. 1 is for the historically inclined. Those interested in music history, particularly Dylan’s meteoric rise, are well served here. Listeners are given an incredible insight into what shaped Dylan as an artist. How his rock and roll origins would be moulded into folk numbers for a better chance at success, and would loosen once again with the introduction of electric guitars. It’s an excellent, unofficial compilation of incredible sources.