Garcia's I Shall Be Released

[John A]

I wrote another deep dive Garcia essay. Hopefully interesting at least to some...

 

Garcia’s I Shall Be Released - With A 3rd Verse Intrigue

 

When Jerry Garcia returned to the stage in October 1986 with the JGB after his diabetic coma, he’d worked up two new Bob Dylan ballads in fitting manner. Both songs quickly joined the echelon of Jerry’s great Dylan renditions. On his 1st night back he debuted Forever Young. The next night he unveiled I Shall Be Released. Forever Young was an undeniable choice. Although Jerry wasn’t freshly out of jail, I Shall Be Released provided a litany of appropriate metaphors; and indeed, the song invites endless interpretations. Despite the easy inference of a prison lament, there’s no overt mention of a man being incarcerated. It suggests religious undertones, making it apropos on that level, as that’s a direction the JGB veered in their later period. One can also conjure an allegory of a man’s soul being released from their physical being, also spot on for Garcia, who was known to consider his body an unfortunate obstacle, a burden even, to his artistic inspiration. He sure was prone to treat it that way. Both these Dylan songs would see numerous heartfelt readings in the coming years, remaining tied to the rotation for the rest of Jerry’s life. Both were played in the same show 10 times, but never in the same set.

 

I Shall Be Released seemingly engaged Jerry’s musical muse over his careful lyrical attention. Vocals could be uneven, but the spiritual poignancy of the composition oozed from his guitar. There were deep, piercing, and heartfelt jams between each verse, with Melvin Seals’ organ lending an exquisite dimension. I swore culminating the second jam at The Warfield 8-8-90 Garcia experienced a musical orgasm in a rapturous flurry of notes. Or maybe I just experienced one? Listen to the Neumann “drink rail” tape I made with my late friend Rob Darroch and be the judge.

 

Each verse of I Shall Be Released is compact and powerful, consummate of Dylan’s range spanning long stanzas with challenging phrasing to the enigmatic energy taut writing can provide. The first two verses contain a non-sequitur between lines 1/2 and lines 3/4, yet that’s pressing to notice. Given the sublime illusions Dylan provides, the imagery weaves exquisitely; the artful wonders of a brilliant lyricist. Before delving into specifics, it’s fair to say Jerry took some time getting under the lyrical hood, occasionally reversing verses 2 and 3 in the early versions, and often coming out of a jam staggering through the intro to the next verse. Or worse. Suffice it to say there’s no shortage of mumbling. I’m drawn to certain vocal subtleties, and verse 3 provide them in spades, remaining intensely compelling no matter the particulars. (As an aside, I’ve always considered the chorus gaining more urgency delivered “any day now, any way now”, but who am I to instruct Dylan?)

 

The published recordings of I Shall Be Released provide a fascinating historical tract. Dylan wrote it in 1967, but he didn’t unveil it eponymously until Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol 2 in late 1971 when he recorded it with his own vocals. Its original release was on the Band’s 1968 LP Music From The Big Pink. Richard Manuel sings a great lead vocal, with Rick Danko and Levon Helm harmonizing the chorus. Other productions came much later, both in the Bootleg Series and The Basement Tapes. Meanwhile, as Dylan is known to operate, the lyrics shifted slightly, particularly with the 3rd verse. Here are verses 1 and 2 from Dylan’s lyric site, followed by three distinct versions of verse 3…

 

They say everything can be replaced

Yet every distance is not near (although it’s “they say every …” with both The Band and Garcia)

So I remember every face

Of every man who put me here

 

They say every man needs protection

They say every man must fall

Yet I swear I see my reflection

Some place so high above this wall

 

Verse 3 from The Band’s initial recording:

Now yonder stands a man in this lonely crowd

A man who swears he's not to blame

All day long I hear him shouting so loud

Just crying out that he was framed

 

Verse 3 from Dylan’s 1971 recording:

Down here next to me in this lonely crowd

There’s a man who swears he’s not to blame

All day long I hear him cry so loud

Calling out that he’d been framed

 

Verse 3 from the official Bob Dylan lyric site:

Standing next to me in this lonely crowd

Is a man who swears he’s not to blame

All day long I hear him shout so loud

Crying out that he’d been framed

 

So what does Garcia do with these minute but notable variations as he emerges from the typically scintillating final jam? It’s safe to assume his first exposure to the song was from The Band’s 1968 release, although surely he heard other renditions over the years prior to tackling it. I listened to an admittedly limited yet representative sampling of the 59 JGB versions from 1986 through 1995. When he isn’t mumbling there are some early takes with “standing here in this lonely crowd”, but he ultimately favors “yonder stands a man in this lonely crowd”, and this is when his vocals become most ardent. I think it’s the more poetic phrase and also better suited to Garcia’s folksy persona. Line 2 is consistently “a man who swears he’s not to blame”, while lines 3 and 4 saw some months of evolution before an eventual signature reading. Early versions weave from “…shout so loud”, “…shouting out so loud”, and also “calling out that he’s been framed”. There’s a bit of everything. But soon Jerry resolved his unique interpretation. He reversed shouting and crying in the final couplet, settling into “all day long I hear him crying out so loud / shouting out that he was framed.” Personally I like the cadence and phrasing of the take he landed on. Garcia’s own plaintive crying as he bemoaned the poor man’s plight, whatever plight that might be, worked impeccably, molding the concluding verse  as his own and embedding himself into the narrator.

 

Jerry Garcia’s 3rd verse:

Yonder stands a man in this lonely crowd

A man who swears he’s not to blame

All day long I hear him crying out so loud

Shouting out that he’s been framed

 

A master cassette soundboard circulates from 3-5-88 at The Warfield, and Jerry’s vocals are remarkably present. He does a perfect delivery of all three verses, right down to his signature third verse. But verses 2 and 3 are reversed. I love when despite losing track he recovers without missing a beat. Notable examples of this are The Night They Drove Old Dixie down from The Warfield 8-9-90 (this made it to an official release), and the epic Morning Dew from Madison Square Garden 9-18-87, in which, due to its culmination just before the first jam, the line “there’s no need for you to be worrying about all those people” exhibits more emotive gusto than perhaps ever.

 

The Electric On The Eel release from 6-10-89 contains a particularly interesting version. There’s more John Kahn lead bass than I otherwise heard, along with more up front Melvin organ riffs. As a remastered board it also has forward vocals, and while Jerry nails the final two verses, and the 3rd with some extra intensity, verse 1 is sung with an almost comic jumbling. Jerry transposes each line from verse 1 and verse 2, and if you didn’t know better you wouldn’t guess it. Easy to imagine Dylan wrote it that way. To wit: “They say every man needs protection / they say every distance is not near / yet I swear I see the reflection / of every man who put me here.” You can’t make that up!

 

The most widely heard Garcia rendition of I Shall Be Released is likely from the 1991 2-CD set simply titled “Jerry Garcia Band”, culled from 24-track recordings during two 1990 Warfield runs, April 13-15 and August 7-9. I remember walking the street behind the theatre past the mobile recording truck parked by the back entrance, with cabling snakes going across the sidewalk and into the back door.  Although the release didn’t notate the dates of the individual tracks, I Shall Be Released is clearly culled from the 8-8 show; the same version that blew me away live. Most listeners will prefer this over my audience recording, and Jerry’s vocals are undoubtedly more present, but I have a sweet spot for our recording; that’s how we heard it as it happened. At loud volumes on systems that can extract the Warfield’s natural ambience, I’d argue the Neumann tape more than holds its own. Plus there’s a palpable rush from the crowd after the titanic conclusion to the final jam - as well there should have been. And fittingly for this essay, Jerry sings “crying” in each of the final lines, concluding with “just crying out that he was framed”. A cherry atop my pedantic exploration.

 

My dive proved sufficiently deep to garner some unfolding patterns, hear some great jams, and bump into some intriguingly unique versions. It’s fair to note if I could magically run all this by Jerry he’d be bemused at best, while perhaps responding along the lines of, “What’s your trip, man? Never thought about any of it.” But maybe he’d get a kick from the notion he had a musical orgasm playing I Shall Be Released on August 8th, 1990.

[Tea]

John A has gone all DeadEssay on us! Very good dissertation ❤️