Daniel Lanois says a private listening party revealed unexpected depths in Bob Dylan’s new Frank Sinatra-focused album Shadows in the Night, and about what motivated Dylan to make this surprising career turn.
“He felt that a lot of that music was written not only by great professional songwriters at the time, but a lot of it was written from the heart, from the wartime, and people just pining for a lover,” Lanois, who produced Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind, tells the Vancouver Sun. “He felt there was a lot of spirit in that music. He felt there was a kind of beauty, a sacred ground for him.”
Before Bob Dylan ever played a note, he spent a long time framing his decision — talking to Lanois about his youth, and the mystery and magic of these songs back then. “So, we sat in the kitchen,” Lanois said. “I hadn’t heard a note.”
When they finally got to the album, he says that context served to give Shadows in the Night a deeper complexity. “After having said all that, we then listened to the music and I felt everything that he talked about,” Daniel Lanois says. “For one of America’s great writers to say, ‘I’m not gonna write a song. I’m gonna pay homage to what shook me as young boy,’ I thought was very graceful and dignified.”
Lanois was also struck by the breadth of what Bob Dylan had already accomplished. “We listened to 21 songs — because he’s made two records of this,” Lanois confirmed.
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