HIP-HOP HOPPING ALONG: WITH UPDATE

Yesterday's Times reported:

Dylan has agreed to let Mark Ronson, the dance world’s hottest producer, weave his magic on 'Most Likely You'll Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)' [sic], the bittersweet break-up song from his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde.

After years of rejecting all offers to remix his catalogue, Dylan, 66, has decided that a dancefloor makeover is the best way to introduce his generation-defining work to a new teenage audience.
The London-born Ronson is the DJ hitmaker behind Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen. He recently turned a song by The Smiths into a pop hit.

Ronson’s update of Dylan’s bluesy track is expected to fill dancefloors and top the singles chart. The Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe will give the song its first airing next week [on Monday, apparently].

When Elvis Presley’s estate sanctioned a remix of his 'A Little Less Conversation' in 2002 it became a global No 1 and revitalised interest in “The King”. Dylan’s record company is hoping to prompt a similar revival in his popularity before issuing a retrospective of his work in the autumn.

Mike Smith, managing director of Columbia Records, told The Times: “It is the first time Bob has agreed to anything like this. We want to bring his music to an audience unfamiliar with Dylan in a similar fashion to the Elvis campaign.”

Ronson and Smith were invited to trawl through the entire Dylan catalogue for a suitable track to reinvent. Smith said: “We hit on 'You’ll Go Your Way' because it already has a great rhythmic breakbeat. It’s also got a timeless, universal lyric.

“It’s not such a familiar song that people will cry, ‘Sacrilege’. It will also confound people’s expectations of Bob, which he has done throughout his career.”

...Smith said: “We hope the fans will see this as an addition to the canon, not a desecration. It’s a new interpretation of Bob’s world and adds to the mystery. We all approached the remix with respect and awe.”

Ronson said: “It’s the first time Bob Dylan has given anyone the original multi-tracks of his songs to do remixes. I’m a huge Dylan fan, so it’s a great honour, along with the fact that he heard it and approved it, because, as you imagine, he’d be quite picky.”

Bob Dylan has always been interested in rap-type stuff, so hip-hop seems pretty unsurprising, and certainly more interesting than advertising Victoria's Secret or doing tie-ins with Starbucks. Clearly, though, this is motivated by shrewd commercial opportunism - on Jeff Rosen's part, or Bob's, or Sony's, I wonder - and this "new teenage audience" remix will apparently be included on that autumn restrospective set, to be titled DYLAN. (See here for the official details.)

The comparison with Elvis' 'A Little Less Conversation', though spot-on in marketing terms (they hope), is not especially apt artistically. Bob's track - correct name 'Most Likely You [sic] Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)' - is a terrific piece of work from one of his very greatest albums, whereas Elvis' recording of 'A Little Less Conversation' was, pre-remix, one of the least interesting songs and least animated performances he'd ever come up with. This too was unsurprising: it was recorded for one of his last, most clapped-out cheapo movies, Live A Little, Love A Little (and God knows, there was little of either in the film), at the MGM Sound Studios, Culver City, on March 7, 1968, and released that September. A great year for those of us who were in any way attuned to the 1960s, but not for Elvis Presley. And to judge by Chronicles Volume One, Bob Dylan didn't feel attuned to that period either.

So I look forward to hearing Bob hip-hop hopping along, though not, I must admit, to having to run the aural gauntlet of Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe's show.

UPDATE: Actually you can here an extract from it here at a site called Zimming Point now... A first hearing of this snippet suggests that Bob and the remix make uneasy partners, but it gets better... Anyone else want to offer hasty comments?