Another day, another Bob Dylan cover. Tracks from the “I’m Not There” soundtrack have been leaking all over the place.
Here’s two more tracks for you to listen to: Stephen Malkmus & The Million Dollar Basher‘s take on “Ballad Of A Thin Man,” and Sonic Youth’s rendition of the title track, “I’m Not There” – a Dylan bootleg that’s never been officially released until now.
Soundtrack supervisor Jim Dunbar (who tracked down the obscurity at Neil Young’s ranch) told us that bootleggers – that have gotten their hands on the Band-backed track for years now – “couldn’t resist” blending the tracks. The seemingly improvised and quickly recorded song was originally tracked with most of the instruments in the left channel and the vocals to the right and rather than trying to fix this “mistake” Dunbar and partner Randall Poster left it the way it was (outside of some simple cleaning remastering it seems).
In our I’m Not There OST review we wrote about the various takes on Zimmy covers. While we thought Sonic Youth’s cover wasn’t as “sublime” as their take on The Carpenters’ “Superstar,” “the ghostly vocals, the fractured….rhythm and Moore’s cracked voice” gave the b-side “a wounded new afterlife.” As for Malkmus, “he seems to delight in almost imitating Dylan’s animus-filled snarl from that era.”
SY’s Lee Ranaldo produced both these sessions, but Joe Henry and Calexico founder Joey Burns produced many songs from the soundtrack disc as well (including a few others). Curiously enough, a lot of these covers aren’t actually used in the film itself and much of the music in “I’m Not There” are Dylan originals (the full details of which are here).