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Last night I played piano for a special Valentine's Show with a lady named"Syd Straw", at St. Ann's Warehouse. During the soundcheck/rehearsal, a guywalks in, smaller and skinnier than I ever was, older dude, and he's playinga violin and mandolin. He's sitting to my immediate right, next to the grandpiano. We run through some of the songs, this 8 piece band, and the singer,Syd, says his name, "David Mansfield". It hits me. This is the same guy whoplayed on the Rolling Thunder Revue, Street Legal, AND Bob Dylan at Budokan!!My three favorite Dylan phases!
So on our break I walk up to him, and I ask him, "So who came up withthose crazy arrangements on the Dylan Budokan album? Surely it wasn't Bob!"And he kind of laughs and tells me that Bob basically hired the best musicianshe could pay after the Rolling Thunder fiasco, which was all his old GreenwichVillage cronies, e.g. Rob Stoner on bass. He replaced Stoner with Elvis'bass player (Elvis had died a year or two before), and a sax player fromthe early fifties rock and roll records. He said that there were no "Banddirectors" and that everyone was winging it at the Budokan show, which wassupposed to be a remote locale where they could try out the new schtick.The album ended up being the only document of that band, which he said becamemuch much better by the Australian leg of the tour. He said Dylan loved thatband and wanted to keep touring and not stop, but he had to stop becauseof financial issues and the fact that the critics didn't like it (He toldme the critics were claiming that Bob was imitating "The Boss", by employingthe prototype sax player that Clarence was basically a spin-off from).
I even sited specifics, like the flute on "Love Minus Zero/ No Limit",the Burlesque ending of "Going, Going, Gone, and the talking in-between songs:"Thank you, that was called Maggie's Farm". He told me that Dylan was turningso into professionalism, that he hired a costume designer to design someflamboyant outfits for the band members to wear (You remember what Dylanwas wearing on the back of Street Legal). I asked him if Dylan ever set hisguitar down and just sang. He told me that he set it down to walk throughthe crowd shaking hand with the audience during "Ballad of a Thin Man". Itwas a great conversation, and I appreciate that he could have easily dismissedme with a simple, "Hey, I don't come up to you with all my problems, do I?" close window