Listen to Bob Dylan’s rare reimagining of Gotta Serve Somebody ‘cut from Shadow Kingdom’

A rare version of Bob Dylan’s Gotta Serve Somebody has been shared – and it’s believed to be a cutting from Shadow Kingdom.

Dylan’s 2023 experimental album blended studio recordings and live renditions together as he reimagined some of his greatest hits. When I Paint My Masterpiece, Queen Jane Approximately, and Forever Young were featured on the album, which featured a total of 14 reimaginings of Dylan’s best works. True to form for Dylan in the studio, some of the best recordings were left out entirely and have not been formally released. A fan who claims a rendition of Gotta Serve Somebody had been recorded for the album has since shared the rendition, taken from the acetate sessions overseen by veteran producer T. Bone Burnett. The producer, who has worked with Ringo Starr and Elvis Costello, was a session player for Shadow Kingdom along with Don Was.

Though neither studio legend is credited on the album, some fans believe Burnett was instrumental in the making of Dylan’s follow-up to Rough and Rowdy Ways. A rendition of Gotta Serve Somebody which sounds similar to the tone taken on other adaptations of Dylan’s work for Shadow Kingdom has since been shared to the r/BobDylan subreddit.

One fan wrote: “Re-recorded Gotta Serve Somebody. Probably from the T. Bone Burnett acetate sessions in 2021. Posted by Mg, Expecting Rain.” Another fan added: “Whoa!! Why wasn’t this released on Shadow Kingdom?” A third replied: “Bob always has to leave something great off the record.”

Gotta Serve Somebody is not the only song Dylan recorded and chose to leave off his Shadow Kingdom album. It was reported at the time that Burnett had opted to sell the recordings of Simple Twist of Fate, Masters of War, and Blowin’ in the Wind. Two further songs, Not Dark Yet and The Times They Are A-Changin, have been withheld but are believed to exist.

Elizabeth Seigel, the head of private and iconic collections for Christies, told Variety at the time of the sale: “We’ve stayed in constant touch with T Bone over the past year after our exciting result last July.

“There was much interest and speculation last year in what’s going to happen with the other recordings. We’ve been brainstorming together what a next step could be in trying to reach maybe some of the same people we had interest from in the auction last year, but also the potential to reach new buyers who may be interested.

“So I broached the idea to them of a private sale going out on our Christie’s, and they were very interested by the idea. The auction process can be daunting for those who haven’t partaken in it before, so this is just another channel that we employ to interact with our clients.”

Burnett added: “I realised when we had an auction that we had no idea who was going to buy it. It could have been somebody just to hoard it or something. … Christie’s actually came to us and said, ‘What if we do a private sale of these [next ones]?’ So that’s what we’re doing with these three pieces now.”

Blowin’ in the Wind was sold to a private party for $1.8million. Speaking of the sale and future auctions, Burnett said: “Somebody could buy all three. And that might not be the worst eventuality either, if it was the right person. Because there’s a Michelangelo painting that sold recently for $450 million, but you can look at it in Wikipedia, so even fine art gets mass-distributed in some form sooner or later.

“I could imagine an exhibition set up a room where people could go in and listen to these things. That would be interesting. I would love for people to be able to hear these discs the way they actually sound, rather than a copy of a copy of a copy of them or something like that.

“There’s always a possibility of the owner of the disc going to Columbia and saying, ‘I’d like to distribute this.’ I don’t know if that’ll ever happen with that disc or not, but that’s a distinct possibility. If one of the buyers was altruistic, that kind of thing could happen. In fact, I think it will happen to all of these things eventually.”

This version of Gotta Serve Somebody has since been shared by fans on the r/BobDylan subreddit. You can download the “swampy and beautiful” Shadow Kingdom version of Gotta Serve Somebody here.