Bob Dylan – Heatpipes and Drainpipes Review

Just months after the release of Modern Times and Bob Dylan, rather expectedly, was back on the road. His 2006 tour was a hits compilation with a few sprinklings of contemporary material, for those who wished to hear the likes of Thunder on the Mountain. Dylan had been thinking about more than Alicia Keys on this tour, and it’s one of the first slices of that new, gruff voice that went on to define Dylan as a stage presence that still splits fans. Just four years before this and he was jamming away on an electric keyboard, still finding new routes through his Love and Theft material. Heatpipes and Drainpipes is exactly that, but with Modern Times as the backdrop. Here is a chance to hear Dylan revisit songs he wrote with The Band, deep cuts from the 1980s, and a hit or two for good measure. It’s a musing on everything that put Dylan together at this point. A walking legend since the 1990s still pushing the contemporary fold. It’s quite the spectacle.  

This bootleg opens with a groovy interpretation of You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere, a delightful song that has Dylan prove it’s one of his best. Follow that up with performances of Desolation Row, Things Have Changed, and Lenny Bruce of all the songs to choose from, and you have a strong and often interesting bootleg on your hands. Heatpipes and Drainpipes lingers as one of the better bootlegs because it manages to find those oddities and experiments that Dylan’s modern, on-stage offerings support. It’s a thrill to hear the likes of I Shall Be Released and Señor (Tales of Yankee Power) within this bootleg. They hold their own amid an ever-changing instrumental style. Dylan has plenty of songs to choose from, most of them nothing short of outstanding. It means that, whatever the set, disappointment reigns. He didn’t play this, never showed up for that. It makes all the difference to the listener wanting a specific arrangement. That’s what Heatpipes and Drainpipes is all about.  

These are renditions of truly great Dylan spectacles that may have flown under the radar had they not been compiled on this bootleg. Ain’t Talkin’ and The Levee’s Gonna Break are outstanding examples of how the at-the-time instrumental flourish made Dylan sound like a whole new artist. He’s a man who has worn many different genres, and many more suit him. But this blur of soft rock and blues-like structure, the improvised flourish that comes through the trance-like thump heard on Ain’t Talkin’, is a spectacle worth hearing. A rocking great time is what you have on your hands with Heatpipes and Drainpipes. Much of it comes from the instrumental steadiness. It’s a familiar sound for those who have listened to any of the bootlegs released in the last fifteen years, but it also gives the instrumentalists on stage with Dylan the freedom to improvise. That’s what keeps these songs always fresh.  

Dylan has a knack for adapting his lyrics and the wider appeal of his songs into genres that some may never have considered an apt backdrop for them. This much is clear on When the Deal Goes Down and Visions of Johanna. It’s not just tempo changes and instrumental variation. There is a real skill to piecing together these lyrics in a way that the original intent is intact, but with it comes a justification for changing it up. Whether it’s the wiser experiences of Dylan, decades removed from when he first wrote the song, or reflections on what went right or wrong for this song or that, it matters not. What does matter is that Dylan has provided listeners with new interpretations of some very best works, and they’re compiled well on Heatpipes and Drainpipes.