Bob Dylan released a CD of 28 tracks from the soundtrack of “ Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid » due to European copyright law.
Earlier this month, some European Bob Dylan fans came across a new album called 50th Anniversary Collection 1973 in record stores scattered across the continent. This collection of 28 tracks consists only of studio outtakes from the soundtrack sessions of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid from 1973, but it sent the Dylan collecting community into turmoil. Bidding exceeds $500 for the few copies available on Ebay, and fans are scouring the shelves of European stores in the hope of finding one.
Fiftieth anniversary collections are an annual December tradition in the rock world, due to a provision in European copyright law whereby all sound recordings fall into the public domain if not published. years after their creation. Over the past decade, bands such as Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and Dylan have had to release large quantities of live and studio recordings from their vaults in order to secure their copyrights. Some choose to dump them on streaming services, while others opt for limited physical editions.
Bob Dylan’s team has solved this problem in multiple ways over the years. When the deadline for copyright protection approached for the takes of his first three electric albums (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited And Blonde on Blonde), they have created an 18-disc box set for die-hard fans, as well as a two-disc box set for casual fans. When the deadline was set for more obscure periods of Dylan’s career, they simply pressed 300 CDs and sent them to random European stores, without notice, in order to technically comply with the law.
The just-released 1973 collection will be widely known to Dylan fans, since the sessions for Pat Garrett were disclosed decades ago. Former Old Crow Medicine Show singer/guitarist Chris “Critter” Fuqua picked up a copy of the bootleg on a family trip to London while he was in high school, and passed it on to his bandmate Ketch Secor. The latter fell in love with the song fragment “ Rock Me Mama “, which is nothing other than Dylan and his comrades having a little fun after recording ” Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door “.
Secor transformed the composition into a finished work and eventually published it as “ Wagon Wheel ” on Old Crow’s self-titled album Medicine Show in 2004. It became the group’s signature song and found an even wider audience in 2013 when Darius Rucker took it to number one on the Country chart. Old Crow Medicine Show returned to sessions Pat Garrett in 2014 when Fuqua and Secor took “ Sweet Amarillo “, another fragment of a song from the period, and finished it. The song did not have the same success as ” Wagon Wheel “, but Dylan received a writing credit in both cases.
The original versions of “ Rock Me Mama ” And ” Sweet Amarillo ” feature on the new 50th anniversary collection, as well as an alternative interpretation of “ Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door ” and multiple takes of songs such as “ Billy Surrenders “, ” And He Killed Me Too ” And ” Final Theme », which will be of only limited interest to true Dylan completists. That said, ” Untitled 1973 Instrumental No. 1 ” And ” United 1973 Instrumental No. 2 » are just waiting for treatment from the Old Crow Medicine Show.
Bob Dylan recorded the soundtrack for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid during the first weeks of 1973. He returned to the studio in November of that year to record Planet Waves with The Band. Very few outtakes from these sessions were leaked to bootleggers, and Dylan’s camp apparently decided to keep everything they had from this period in the vault. If Dylan’s team continues to release copyright extension albums, they will turn their attention to touring Before the Flood of 1974 with The Band before the end of next year.
In other copyright news, an early version of Mickey Mouse will enter the public domain in January, as it has been 95 years since the character’s first appearance in Steamboat Willie. Many thought this day would never come as Congress changed copyright laws several times over the years to protect the iconic Disney character, but it set the limit at 95 years. Disney released a statement emphasizing that only the raw version of Mickey Mouse as he appeared in Steamboat Willie was concerned. “ More modern versions of Mickey will not be affected by the expiration of Mickey’s copyright Steamboat Willieand Mickey will continue to play a leading role as a global ambassador for The Walt Disney Company in our stories, theme park attractions and merchandise. »
This means that if you have secretly been stockpiling Planet Waves all these years you can start pressing them legally on CD and vinyl with Mickey Mouse from the era of Steamboat Willie on the cover. No one will stop you.
