Recorded November 23, 2001 in Portland, Maine.
The line from Mississippi quoted in this video's title is a great lyric and a poignant comment that sounds like a bit of sad wisdom from experience.
But is it true? Watching Bob perform some of the best concerts of his career now, at age 82, during his current three-year world tour, casts some doubt on this observation he shared over 25 years ago. Maybe it IS true you can never come back all the way, but with enough effort and commitment, perhaps you can make it to some new place that, while not where you were previously, is still vald and valuable in its own right.
You might say that is something Dylan's done more than once in his career.
While it appeared on 2001's Love and Theft, Mississippi was recorded by Bob in 1996 and 1997 during the "Time Out of Mind" sessions. So it makes sense to include it in this 8-video series celebrating the release of Fragments: The Bootleg Series Vol. 17 and the 25th anniversary of Time Out of Mind.
Held over until Love and Theft, Mississippi ended up being the last song from those sessions to find its way onto a regular album. Yet it appears that the song was among the earliest tracks, if not the very first in fact that Dylan recorded during this fertile period. The oldest version featured on the Bootleg Series release is from September 1996, around the same time that "Red River Shore," another very early track, was originally laid down.
Mississippi was re-recorded many times during September '96 and January 1997. The deluxe 5-CD edition of Fragments includes five different studio takes - more unreleased versions than any other song.
"Fragments" offers fascinating insights into the cumulative creative process Dylan employed as he developed early studio forays into finished, album-released versions. I'm sure there are still more alternate studio takes of many if not all these songs sitting in the Tulsa archive. But those now out on the 5-CD deluxe Bootleg Series release amply demonstrate how Dylan took his creations through so many varied iterations before he felt satisfied that he'd sculpted out of all the elements he experimented with a set of final versions of the songs that he felt were ready to be heard.
For most of the tracks, the biggest changes are in the lyrics,, with Dylan successively replacing earlier, less artful or interesting lines, and in some cases, more nakedly personal expressions, with imagery and phrases that to my ears at least seem more pointed, dramatic, vivid, and poetic.
Mississippi is the notable exception. From one version to the next there are few if any changes in the lyrics. Instead, in each version he experiments with different musical styles to frame the lyrics. They range from heavier, more downbeat and plaintive tones full of resignation, like the track released on Love and Theft, to a surprisingly spritely, upbeat version and another that sounds almost lackadaisical - the mood is decidedly relaxed, easy-going, and full of good humor.
The lyrics in Mississippi combine such widely diverging sentiments from one moment to the next, swinging between melancholic, disillusioned, world-weary, and resigned, to sometimes defiant, and other times surprisingly tender, affectionate and friendly, even optimistic. Maybe by trying the song out with so many different musical approaches, Dylan was trying to settle on a sound that could convincingly accommodate all those shifts of mood and mindset in one song.
Well, whatever--it's just fun listening to so many different versions.
Also, the fast, upbeat take on Fragments helps me at last make sense of how Sheryl Crow could have arrived at the lighthearted and bouncy version she released on an album before Dylan released one of his on Love and Theft. When he offered Crow the song to record, I think we can now guess which of various demo versions he must have sent.
Like the multiple studio versions, Dylan's performances of Mississippi in concert also vary quite a bit in in mood and emphasis, as you'll notice if you decide to compare the version posted here with another live performance of the song that I captured in Chicago almost exactly a month earlier. While this Portland rendition more emphasizes the pain, dejection, and desperation found in some of the lyrics, Dylan's Chicago performance, for me, strikes a much more assertive, self-assured, and philosophical tone, as though the singer has finished his way out of the the painful period the song describes and emerged all the stronger on the other side.
Here's the link if you'd like to compare them. And by all means, please feel free to leave any comments on your own impressions of differences between the two performances that you'd care to share.
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