On Novem­ber 23rd, Bob Dylan played a live con­cert for one awed fan. As Rolling Stone described it, “Fredrik Wik­ings­son walked into Philadel­phi­a’s Acad­e­my of Music, took a seat in the [sixth] row and pre­pared to watch his hero play a con­cert just for him.” “At this point,” Wik­ings­son said, “I still thought I was about to get Punk’d.” “I thought some ass­hole would walk onstage and just laugh at me. I just could­n’t fath­om that Dylan would actu­al­ly do this.”

But it was­n’t a joke. Dylan treat­ed the super­fan to a per­son­al con­cert, play­ing cov­ers of songs from the ear­ly days of Amer­i­can rock n roll. And it was all filmed for a Swedish TV series called Exper­i­ment Ensam (Exper­i­ment Alone), where indi­vid­u­als take part, alone, in activ­i­ties usu­al­ly meant for groups. The video of the exper­i­men­tal con­cert went online yes­ter­day. You can watch it above.

For more news bring­ing togeth­er Bob Dylan and Swe­den, see our recent post: Swedish Sci­en­tists Sneak Bob Dylan Lyrics Into Their Aca­d­e­m­ic Pub­li­ca­tions For Last 17 Years.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969

In 1966, Jimi Hen­drix released his first sin­gle, “Hey Joe,” a cov­er song, and, in a cer­tain sense, reclaimed Amer­i­can rock ‘n’ roll from the British inva­sion. Eight years lat­er in ‘74, it may have seemed like rock ‘n’ roll was dead and gone. Nos­tal­gia set in; Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” hit the charts again thanks to Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti and Hap­py Days. And then, a skin­ny poet from New Jer­sey and four kids from Queens more or less invent­ed punk and res­ur­rect­ed the molder­ing corpse of rock. The Ramones appeared at CBGB’s for the first time in August. (See one of their ear­li­est record­ed per­for­mances here.) That same month saw the release of Pat­ti Smith’s first single—“Hey Joe”—arguably the first punk release in his­to­ry, though she sings it like a torch song. (The B‑side, the spo­ken word “Piss Fac­to­ry,” set the tone for punk rock nam­ing prac­tices for decades to come).

At the top, hear Smith’s ver­sion of “Hey Joe,” which she intro­duces with an orig­i­nal piece of trans­gres­sive poet­ry about Pat­ty Hearst, then still a cap­tive mem­ber of the Sym­bionese Lib­er­a­tion Army. In the still image, Smith wears a t‑shirt that seems to answer the echo of Bill Haley’s ghost: “F*ck the Clock. “ Just above, see Smith and band play “Hey Joe” live on The Old Grey Whis­tle Test in 1976, just after an abridged ver­sion of “Hors­es.”

One of Smith’s biggest hits, “Glo­ria,” was also a cov­er, of a song by Van Morrison’s for­mer band Them. She mem­o­rably made that song her own as well with the open­ing line “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.” She went on to cov­er a host of artists—Dylan, The Bea­t­les, Ste­vie Won­der, U2. In fact her 10th stu­dio album, 2007’s Twelve, con­sists entire­ly of cov­ers. Just above from that record, hear her folky take on Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” record­ed with stand-up bass and ban­jo. And below, she deliv­ers a spooky ren­di­tion of Jef­fer­son Airplane’s “White Rab­bit.”

While her stage per­sona may have mel­lowed with age, Smith’s voice has remained as pow­er­ful and cap­ti­vat­ing as ever. Below she belts out the Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter” live on the BBC’s Lat­er… with Jool Hol­land, a song she also cov­ers on Twelve.

Her tastes are eclec­tic, her range wide, and though she’ll always get the cred­it as the “God­moth­er of Punk,” she’s able to work in almost any style, even a kind of adult con­tem­po­rary that doesn’t seem very Pat­ti Smith at all. But she owns it in her cov­er of Prince’s “When Doves Cry” below, from her two-disc com­pi­la­tion album Land (1975–2002). It’s a long way from “Piss Fac­to­ry,” but it’s still Smith doing what she’s always done—paying homage to the artists who inspire her. Whether it’s Smokey Robin­son, Bruce Spring­steen, or Vir­ginia Woolf, she’s able to chan­nel the genius of her influ­ences while infus­ing their work with her own pas­sion­ate sex­u­al ener­gy and poet­ic inten­si­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Pat­ti Smith Read 12 Poems From Sev­enth Heav­en, Her First Col­lec­tion (1972)

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

See Pat­ti Smith Give Two Dra­mat­ic Read­ings of Allen Ginsberg’s “Foot­note to Howl”

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Like ‘em or lump ‘em, you should give ‘em credit—Dave Grohl’s Foo Fight­ers have kind of rede­fined the con­cept album with their lat­est, Son­ic High­ways, push­ing a tired form in a refresh­ing direc­tion. Rather than a self-con­tained nar­ra­tive, the record opens itself up to tell the sto­ries of rock ‘n’ roll itself or, as All­mu­sic puts it, “the clas­sic rock that unites the U.S. from coast to coast.” Pick­ing up where his cel­e­bra­to­ry film Sound City left off, Grohl ties in his newest release with a series of HBO doc­u­men­taries that vis­it cities from New York, to Nashville, Austin, New Orleans, L.A., Wash­ing­ton, DC., and Seat­tle to tell their musi­cal sto­ries.

Of course, the musi­cal his­to­ry of that last metrop­o­lis can­not be nar­rat­ed with­out ref­er­ence to Grohl’s for­mer band, and so, Con­se­quence of Sound informs us, “Nir­vana received heavy focus dur­ing the [Seat­tle Son­ic High­ways] episode as Dave Grohl recount­ed his time in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame out­fit. Among the biggest rev­e­la­tions was the time Kurt Cobain asked to hear solo record­ings Grohl had been work­ing on dur­ing Nirvana’s 1992 tour.”

“Kurt heard that, and kissed me on the face, as he was in a bath,” Grohl revealed. “He was so excit­ed. He was like, ‘I heard you record­ed some stuff with Bar­rett [Jones].’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ He was like, ‘Let me hear it.’ I was too afraid to be in the same room as he lis­tened to it.”

At the time, Grohl intend­ed these ear­ly Foo Fight­ers record­ings as an anony­mous side project, but the demos gar­nered enough atten­tion that he lat­er [after Cobain’s death] formed a band and, well… we pret­ty much know the rest of that sto­ry, tragedy and all. But as for the demos, we can hear them too, just as Cobain did, pos­si­bly while in the bath, in ‘92. These ear­ly ver­sions of songs like “Alone + Easy Tar­get” (top), “Big Me” (above), and “Exhaust­ed” (below)—all of which even­tu­al­ly made their way onto the first, epony­mous 1995 Foo Fight­ers album—have been col­lect­ed as an unof­fi­cial release called Nir­vana: Dave’s Demo­tapes 1992–1993.

Grohl plays all the instru­ments on these record­ings (hear more here), and wrote all the lyrics, though, as he tells us in an inter­view below, writ­ing lyrics isn’t some­thing he enjoys. He also dis­cuss­es his admi­ra­tion for Cobain’s nat­ur­al writ­ing abil­i­ty, and reveals that the Nir­vana front­man liked “Exhaust­ed” and “Alone + Easy Tar­get” so much he want­ed to turn them into Nir­vana songs. The oppor­tu­ni­ty was lost, but Cobain’s encour­age­ment clear­ly had pos­i­tive effect on the future Foo Fight­er.

Becom­ing a rock frontman—and a cur­rent sto­ry­teller of rock history—may have been an evo­lu­tion­ary leap for Grohl, but drum­ming has been a con­stant before, dur­ing, and after the Nir­vana phe­nom­e­non. As a denizen of the DC punk scene, Grohl lived part of the rock his­to­ry of that city as well, play­ing with sev­er­al hard­core bands, includ­ing Dain Bra­m­age, the project that fol­lowed his first band, Mis­sion Impos­si­ble. Music blog Antiqui­et brings us that band’s 1986 demo record­ings. They’re well worth a lis­ten, show­cas­ing a clas­sic mid-80s DC sound, backed by what was even then some pro­found­ly excel­lent drum­ming from Grohl. As Dain Bramage’s singer remarked, “After you’ve spent a cou­ple years with Dave Grohl as your drum­mer it’s easy to feel like no oth­er drum­mer exists.” The charis­mat­ic but hum­ble Grohl writes some pret­ty decent songs too, even while work­ing in the shad­ow of super­fa­mous Kurt Cobain.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nir­vana Plays in a Radio Shack, the Day After Record­ing its First Demo Tape (1988)

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Lis­ten to The John Bon­ham Sto­ry, a Radio Show Host­ed by Dave Grohl

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

It’s not hard to guess what Bob Dylan will fans will be putting on their Christ­mas lists this year — either the new hard­cov­er book, The Lyrics: Since 1962, the 14-pound, 960-page book con­tain­ing all the lyrics Dylan wrote, record­ed, and per­formed through­out the years. Or the defin­i­tive edi­tion of The Base­ment Tapes, the new col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing 6‑discs and 138 tracks.

Above, actor Jeff Bridges (you know him as “The Dude” in The Big Lebows­ki) nar­rates the sto­ry behind The Base­ment Tapes, trac­ing Dylan’s jour­ney from Green­wich Vil­lage to the base­ment of “Big Pink,” the unas­sum­ing home in West Sauger­ties, New York where Dylan and The Band record­ed those famous tapes. We don’t need to rehearse the sto­ry. Bridges does a fine job of doing that. Below, you can watch him show off some of his musi­cal tal­ents, play­ing a cov­er of a Dylan song, “Ring Them Bells,” at the El Rey The­atre in LA in April 2013. He’s obvi­ous­ly a fan.

H/T Mike

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: 12 Rare Record­ings

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969