Bob Dylan - Abandoned Desire (1976)

When Bob Dylan released 'Desire' in 1976 it immediately joined the record books for being one of the longest ever single vinyl albums, at over 56 minutes. In order to cram so much music onto a single disc the grooves had to be much closer together than normal, resulting in a loss of audio fidelity. If he'd just added in a couple of the out-takes from the 'Desire' sessions then he could have released a double album of four standard length sides, with the resultant increase in the audio quality. The songs on 'Desire' were written during the Rolling Thunder Review tour, with some of them being co-writes with Jacques Levy, and they were recorded in mid-1975. The story goes that on the way to the studio Dylan spotted Scarlet Rivera walking along with her violin case, and he stopped to talk to her, following which he invited her to the rehearsal studio to play violin on some of his songs. She later said that if she'd crossed the road a little earlier she would never have met him and her life would have been very different.
I've gathered together all the out-takes from the sessions and scattered them throughout the released version of the album. There was one song which Dylan wrote but never recorded, as he offered it to Eric Clapton first, who accepted it and put it on his 'No Reason To Cry' album. Dylan helped out on vocals when it was recorded, so that version of 'Sign Language' is also included. The version of 'Seven Days' is a live one, as it's much better than the demo that is doing the rounds. So this is what 'Desire' could have sounded like if Dylan had decided to go down the double-album route, instead of compressing his generally lengthy songs onto a single disc. 

Track listing

01 Hurricane
02 Isis
03 Abandoned Love
04 Mozambique
05 Catfish
06 One More Cup Of Coffee
07 Golden Loom
08 Oh, Sister
09 Sign Language
10 Seven Days
11 Joey
12 Rita May
13 Romance In Durango
14 Black Diamond Bay
15 Sara

Thanks to Album Fixer for the original concept in July 2016.