The Infidels Sessions

[Jules]

I

[Jules]

What I

[JF]

I love Infidels and the demos "Rough cuts"

I don't know if any are interested by who play what, but when you have 2 great guitarist like here, I like searching which part is Mark and which part is Taylor.
Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not.

I have to check it again before listing the songs, but I remember asking myself several times if the sweetheart like you end solo was Mark or Taylor.
I'd say it's 80-90% sure Mick Taylor, but ....

[Fletch]

Completely agree with you JF. I love the Infidels album, and the guitar parts are sublime.
I wonder how Mark would've mixed differently? Probably would add a lute or whistle.

[Jules]

I always wondered who played that kind-of-reagge guitar in "Man gave name to all the animals" in the Slow train coming record. It may be MK because he´s the only credited guitar player (besides Bob) in that record, but it doesnt sounds like MK...

In Infidels I´d say that all the slide guitars are Mick Taylor, and the rest, if it sounds fingerpicking, you know 

I wonder how it would had sounded with Billy Gibbons as MK always says he wanted to propose, but Dylah already had Mick for that sessions...

And now, I copy here some information that TWM posted in other thread that is relevant here:

There had been a short article in THE SUN for 13 June 1983, headlined "Dylan Disc In Dire Straits". It suggested that there been a disagreement between Dylan and Mark, that Mark had walked out to tour with Dire Straits and thatr Dylan was miffed, especially as this project was running late.

In response, Phonogram issued the press release I mentioned. It said that Dylan had approached Mark in January 1983and that Mark's management had cleared some space in his diary by moving seven Dutch dates planned for early May to early June. There was a contract between Dylan and Mark specifying the dates Mark was available and allowing Dylan to take on anyone else if he wanted. It also says that the album was recorded between 11 April and 8 May, that Mark had finished his contribution as required and that Dylan was currently mixing the album in New York.

The contact at the Phonogram Press Office was Mariella Frostrup. I didn't get this information until 25 June. I now wish that I had called her.

Subsequently, Mark was interviewed in a French magazine or on French radio and said he was unhappy with the additional mixing done on the album. It is clear that mark had played the interviewer recordings of his own mix for the album.  I can't find the specific source of this information.

Can someone here help with the details of this? 

[JF]

I always wondered who played that kind-of-reagge guitar in "Man gave name to all the animals" in the Slow train coming record. It may be MK because he

[twm]

Some of you may know (though many may not) that I used to write a Dylan newsletter called "The Wicked Messenger";  hence "twm", by the way.

Now "jbaent" has started this thread, I've looked back at what I wrote about it in TWM back then. Each TWM was an A4 page of typed news snippets, about 40 pages in all in 1983. More than half have something on what became "INFIDELS".   There had been vague rumours of a new album at the end of 1982. The first "real" mention came on 15 January 1983 and Mark's name first came in on 17 February 1983.   Alan Clark is first mentioned on 9 March 1983. And so the story builds, bit by incomplete bit - but there are quite a lot of bits and many words - until November 1983. I actually found it a lot of fun re-reading this material, so many years on. Thanks, "Jbaent" for stimulating me to do so.

There are a few more mentions in 1984, by the way, such as the original artwork with Polaroid snaps of Mark and others, but the bulk of the interesting stuff was in 1983..

If anyone is interested in the history of this album, as the news filtered out to collectors, with a host of snippets, what the participants said and lots more, I am quite prepared to scan the pages and pass the sacns to someone else to post here. I am simply not up to that job technically.

If nobody is interested, I shall not be offended.

[Fletch]

Of course we are interested mr twm!!! I'd love to read pls.

[Jackal]

TWM,

If you have the time and patience to scan those pages, that would be amazing. I don't know what kind of scanning software you have, but if you could scan the pages by using OCR software (Optical Character Recognition), then the text will converted into reusable text that can be edited (and then copied and pasted to a website for instance). There is also software (some free ones mentioned here http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-free-ocr-software-tools-to-convert-your-images-into-text-nb/) that can convert pages that have been scanned as images into text. Just make sure you scan them well (good resolution and contrast).

If these newsletters don't already exists on the Internet, I suppose a lot of Dylan fans would love get access to them.

[Jules]

Everything regarding not only the Infidels but also the Slow train coming records are more than welcome and would be of big interest to us, for sure!!!

The Mariella Fostrup "comunicado" that I quoted from you is also of interest if you still have it.

I read someone already offered to receive the scans, I offer myself too if its needed.

[Pottel]

same here.
also, those polaroids you mention, or those "regular" pictures, that have circulated?
Infidels and Slow train were the albums that brought me to dylan, even though my dad had bought me Nashville Skyline as a present earlier. i liked it, a lot even, but i far more like the two other ones, for obvious reasons)

[Pottel]

and i believe it was mentioned before, but it is hilarious how jerry mentions how he would like to use MK and how Bob really knows everything. and bob's reply was "yeah he does me better then anybody" :-)

[Pottel]

part 2

[Pottel]

part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=bwqesj2v0pk&NR=1

[twm]

Scans of TWMs: I'll do these scans but it won't be immediately. Maybe over the next week or two. I have other demands on my time at present, so can't predict when I'll have the time.

OCR: I have a reasonably good scanner but I've never sought to OCR anything, so don't know if it will do that. At the moment,  I don't really have the time to find out and then learn. Also, the TWMs are not straight typing but have a masthead, headlines and some illustrations.   Having moved house and with masses of "stuff" still boxed, the only TWMs I have available for that period are photocopies - some quite faint. If I scan them, I can almost certainly improve the legibility using a function that is simple and with which I am familiar. This will speed things up.

Mariella Frostrup press release: I am afraid not. It is possible that I may come to write something about INFIDELS for one of the Dylan magazines and it would make an illustration. I'd rather a scan was not yet "in circulation", as it were.

Polaroids: There were four of these, taken in Power Station Studios, and they were intended for the original artwork of the album. I don't know how common they are but one shows Mark and Bob looking at  one of the polaroids and I seem to recall that they have been used on bootleg CDs of the INFIDELS out-takes and alternate takes. Was it called OUTFIDELS?

Slow Train Coming: I didn't start "The Wicked Messenger" until late 1980, so it doesn't have the equivalent sort of material as for INFIDELS. I did TWM for something like 28 years and the earlier issues were quite rudimentary in presentation, as you will discover, but the later ones were more "professional" in appearance.