A Song-By-Song Guide to Bob Dylan's FRAGMENTS Outtakes (BS: 17)

Guest Post By: Jeremy D. Goodwin (Twitter @jeremydgoodwin) (website). Jeremy is Arts and Culture Senior Correspondent at St. Louis Public Radio, and has reported on the arts extensively for other venues including NPR, The New York Times and The Boston Globe. 

Introduction 

The basic shape of the “Time Out Of Mind” sessions, a story many fans of the album are familiar with, is that they began in Daniel Lanois’ theater-cum-studio, Teatro, located in Oxnard, California in late 1996. It was a small group:  Bob Dylan, producer/multi-instrumentalist Lanois, drummer/percussionist Tony Mangurian, and perhaps later, bassist Tony Garnier. The session proper was preceded by some work Lanois and Mangurian did in the latter’s basic studio on Spring St. in New York City, crafting drum loops. The very earliest idea for the album was to build it around drum loops that musicians would play over, inspired vaguely by Beck. 

That concept didn’t advance very far. But with a small band in place, Teatro appare…