Miley Cyrus, Adele on board for Bob Dylan cover set

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - What do Bob Dylan and Miley Cyrus have in common -- besides their perpetually chipper demeanor, of course?

They're both doing their part to benefit human rights organization Amnesty International on its 50th anniversary.

The human-rights organization is releasing a sprawling, four-CD collection, "Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International," on January 24, with the proceeds going to AI, according to numerous news reports.

The collection, which primarily consists of cover versions of tunes from the Dylan catalog, encompasses 80 artists. Among those taking a crack at Mr. Zimmerman's songbook: Adele, Sting, Elvis Costello, My Chemical Romance, Ke$ha and, yes, "Party in the USA" songbird Cyrus, who will contribute her take on Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go."

On the other end of the age spectrum, 92-year-old folk icon Pete Seeger will offer his version of "Forever Young," accompanied by a children's chorus.

Aside from Dylan's original 1964 rendition of "Chimes of Freedom," all of the songs will be new recordings.

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Bob Dylan art exhibition coming to NYC (AP)

NEW YORK – A New York City gallery will be exhibiting 18 drawings and paintings by Bob Dylan created while the musician was touring Asia.

The Gagosian Gallery says Dylan's Asia Series will run from Sept. 20 to Oct. 22.

The gallery says it will be the singer-songwriter's first exhibition in New York.

The works depict landscapes and architecture from his travels in Japan, China, Vietnam and Korea in 2009 and 2010.

Last year, the Halcyon Gallery in London exhibited his paintings based on sketches he made while on the road from 1989 to 1992.

In 2009, 100 works from his Brazil Series were shown at Denmark's National Gallery.

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The songs they are a'changing for The Dylan Project (Reuters)

CROPREDY, England (Reuters) – When a band of veteran British rock musicians took to the stage with a different take on Bob Dylan's music at the weekend, they were so good someone in the crowd even shouted "Judas."

The reference to the infamous moment when Dylan turned electric was tongue-in-cheek. The musicians concerned make no pretensions about being acoustic folkies.

Slide guitar, driving bass and drums is what they are in this persona. More blow the house down than "Blowin' in the Wind."

The Dylan Project is fronted by Steve Gibbons, who like Dylan turned 70 earlier this year -- a happy coincidence given that he claims Dylan's music changed his life.

Gibbons is one of those musicians who is well known in certain die-hard music circles, making a critically successful career for years without achieving widespread celebrity.

The eponymous Steve Gibbons Band is said to be the first rock band from the West to have been invited to tour East Germany in the early 1980s when the Berlin Wall was still up. It has toured with The Who and shared the stage with a plethora of rock names.

But when friends got together to celebrate Gibbons's big birthday in Austria in July, it was The Dylan Project that tuned up.

The band is a side project for various musicians from the British folk-rock or roots-rock scene, notably bassist Dave Pegg of Fairport Convention and slide guitarist PJ Wright of Little Johnny England.

It plays Dylan. But it is no tribute band, more an homage to the man Wright describes as inventing rock music.

"We have our own take on Bob's songs. We don't do core versions," Pegg said backstage after the Project played at his other band's annual Fairport's Cropredy Convention festival in rural north Oxfordshire.

That much was evident from the Cropredy set, a crowd-pleasing performance that focused on a lot of lesser-known Dylan numbers as well as the likes of "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Like a Rolling Stone."

Gibbons, it has to be said, can sound eerily like Dylan -- at least on the latter's good-voice days -- which threatens at times to slip into parody.

But the music overcomes any similarity.

Each song is an interpretation. The overall effect is jazzier and bluesier that the originals, exemplified by a particularly haunting "Ballad of a Thin Man."

The Dylan Project plays around a dozen gigs a year -- mainly in Britain and continental Europe -- and there appears to be no great desire to extend the touring.

This is mainly because it is a side project for the musicians, most of whom can afford to keep it that way.

"We do it for the craic," Wright said, using an Anglo-Irish expression for entertainment. "We do it for fun."

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Aspiring singer Pablo Dylan speaks about grandpa Bob (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Pablo Dylan, the 15-year-old grandson of music legend Bob Dylan, is making a name for himself in rap.

The son of Bob's oldest son Jesse - a music video director who has worked with the likes of Lenny Kravitz, Tom Petty, and Will.I.Am for the Barack Obama "Yes We Can" video - Pablo Dylan released his "10 Minutes" mixtape, available for download on his site.

"We got like 50,000 views on that, and I just got back in the studio to work on things and perfect everything," Pablo said in an interview with AllHipHop.

In his single, "Top of the World," Pablo raps: "I'm a grandson of a man nothin' less than legendary."

"I consider him the Jay-Z of his time, he continued in the AllHipHop interview. " has a legacy that a lot of people look up to."

While his name carries the weight that got his work out there, Pablo is hoping to gain traction based on his own efforts.

"Of course we do two different things, and I don't want people to see me for what he has done," Pablo told AllHipHop. "But, what I have done, I mean from a musical and personal standpoint, is definitely influenced by him."

(Editing by Jill Serjeant)

(This story corrects the name Pablo Dylan in the first paragraph)

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Unpublished Dylan lyrics to be sold in New York (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A selection of previously unpublished draft lyrics by legendary songwriter Bob Dylan is hitting the auction block this month, Christie's said on Wednesday.

The heavily annotated, sometimes in crayon, lyrics date from the mid-1960s, during one of Dylan's most productive periods. They will be sold at Christie's auction of fine printed books and manuscripts in New York on June 23.

"The mid-60s, especially 1964-1966, were a true watershed for Dylan," said Chris Coover, Christie's senior specialist for books.

"In that period his lyrics became deeper and more personal, while his songs moved away from the acoustic, folk-inflected style, and he forged a unique personal style as poet and songwriter."

The items for sale include early, formative versions of five songs from 1965's "Bringing It All Back Home" album, including "I Ain't Gonna Work on Maggie's Farm No More," a draft for "Maggie's Farm," estimated to sell for $70,000 to $90,000.

Some of the revised and corrected lyrics are handwritten and others are typed.

Christie's said the newly discovered drafts once belonged to Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman. They feature some of Dylan's best-known songs, including "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Queen Jane Approximately" and "Visions of Johanna."

Several of the sheets include groups of rhyming words which he used as springboards for additional lines of verse.

Song lyrics have fetched some impressive prices recently. Dylan's smudged, hand-written and dog-eared lyrics to the 1960s anthem "The Times They Are A-Changin" fetched $422,000 at Sotheby's in December, while John Lennon's lyrics to "A Day In The Life" soared to $1.2 million at the auction house a year ago.

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Dylan admits past heroin addiction in 1966 interview (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) – Music legend Bob Dylan has revealed that he was once addicted to heroin, in an interview taped in 1966 and only released for the first time on Monday.

"I kicked a heroin habit in New York City," the singer-songwriter confessed to his friend Robert Shelton in a March 1966 interview.

"I got very, very strung out for a while, I mean really, very strung out. And I kicked the habit. I had about a $25-a-day habit and I kicked it."

It is thought to be the only time that Dylan, dubbed the "voice of a generation" for anthems like "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and the poet laureate of folk for "Hey Mr. Tambourine Man" and others, admitted the habit.

The two-hour interview, broadcast by BBC radio, was conducted on Dylan's private plane while he was touring the United States. He and Shelton, the critic who helped launch his career, were flying from Lincoln, Nebraska to Denver.

Elsewhere in the interview tapes, Dylan, then aged 24, reveals that he thought about killing himself.

"Death to me is nothing... death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast. Many times I've known I could have been able to die fast, and I could have easily gone over and done it," he said.

"I'll admit to having this suicidal thing... but I came through this time."

Asked about his writing, Dylan said he took his work "less seriously than anybody" and said "it's not going to make me happy. You can't be happy by doing something groovy".

Returning to the theme of suicide, he says: "I'm not the kind of cat (guy) that's going to cut off an ear if I can't do something. I'm the kind of cat that would just commit suicide.

"I'd shoot myself in the brain if things got bad. I'd jump from a window... man, I would shoot myself. You know I can think about death, man, openly."

The tapes were uncovered during research for a revised edition of Shelton's biography, "No Direction Home", which first came out in 1986. The new edition coincides with Dylan's 70th birthday on Tuesday.

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Bob Dylan denies censorship of China shows (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Rock legend Bob Dylan took to his website on Friday to dispute accusations he bowed to censorship for his first ever concerts in China last month.

Dylan was criticized by Western media and by Human Rights Watch for not performing some of his best-known protest songs on his China tour in April.

In a rare online posting, Dylan said Chinese authorities asked for the names of the songs he would play in their country.

Dylan said he sent Chinese officials his set lists from the previous three months of shows. He performed in Beijing on April 6 and Shanghai two days later.

"If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play," Dylan wrote in the post.

Media commentators cited the absence of songs "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Blowin' in the Wind" from Dylan's China set list as evidence that the counter-culture hero had caved to pressure.

Dylan, who turns 70 this month, said in his Web post that the audience in China, rather than clamoring for his 1960s material, "responded enthusiastically" to music from his last four or five albums.

In March, China's Culture Ministry said in a brief statement that an agreement to have Dylan sing in the country came with the proviso that he perform "the approved content."

China's censors have been sensitive in the past to subversive political content as well as references to sex, drugs and religion in songs by Western performers.

Dylan did open his China shows with his overtly Christian 1979 song "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking," from the period soon after Dylan, who was born Jewish, embraced Christianity for a number of years.

His China tour also included his hit songs "Like A Rolling Stone," "All Along the Watchtower" and "Forever Young."

Dylan, who is known as "Baobo Dilun" in China, said on his website that he sold 12,000 tickets for the Beijing show, out of a total of 13,000 seats available. He said that the rest of the tickets were given away to orphanages.

Dylan faced accusations of selling out after appearing in a 2004 Victoria's Secret commercial and for allowing a Canadian bank to use "The Times They Are A-Changin'" in a 1996 advertisement.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Dylan disputes reports he was censored by Chinese (AP)

NEW YORK – Bob Dylan doesn't understand all the fuss about his tour last month in China.

In a brief letter posted Friday on his website, http://www.bobdylan.com, the singer-songwriter disputed reports that he had originally been denied permission to perform in the country or that government officials had censored his playlist.

"As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing," Dylan wrote. "There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous three months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play."

In a column published April 9, The New York Times' Maureen Dowd criticized Dylan for not singing such protest anthems as "The Times They Are a-Changin,'" and "Blowin' in the Wind." Dylan, she wrote, "sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left."

Defenders of Dylan noted that he did perform one of his greatest protest songs, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," along with such biting classics as "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Ballad of a Thin Man." He opened his shows with "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking," which includes the lines: "I'm gonna change my way of thinking/Make myself a different set of rules."

With hundreds of songs to choose from, Dylan rotates his set list regularly. According to his website, "Like a Rolling Stone" and "All Along the Watchtower" are the songs he is most likely to perform.

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Bob Dylan addresses 'China controversy' (AFP)

BEIJING (AFP) – In a rare and strongly worded message to his fans, Bob Dylan has denied claims his songs were censored by government authorities when he made his much-publicised China debut last month.

The music legend, who played in Beijing and Shanghai on April 6 and 8, missed out some of his best known politically inspired songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind", sparking speculation he may have been censored.

Addressing the "so-called China controversy" in a post on his official website, Dylan admitted that authorities had asked for the names of the songs he would be playing ahead of the concerts.

China's leaders -- criticised by rights groups and Western governments for human rights violations -- are widely believed to be nervous about the potential for politically provocative songs or statements by foreign rock acts.

"There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous three months," Dylan wrote on Friday.

"If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play."

Dylan, who received a warm reception from a mixed crowd of Chinese and expatriates in Beijing and Shanghai, denied reports that his concerts had been attended mostly by foreigners and that there were many empty seats.

"If anybody wants to check with any of the concert-goers they will see that it was mostly Chinese young people that came," he said, adding the audience responded "enthusiastically" to his more recent songs.

"Out of 13,000 seats we sold about 12,000 of them, and the rest of the tickets were given away to orphanages," he added.

Dylan was playing as part of a tour commemorating 50 years since his first major performance on April 11, 1961. He also denied claims that he had been banned from playing in China last year.

"This was all drummed up by a Chinese promoter who was trying to get me to come there after playing Japan and Korea," he wrote.

"We had no intention of playing China at that time, and when it didn't happen most likely the promoter had to save face by issuing statements that the Chinese ministry had refused permission for me to play there to get himself off the hook."

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