Fun facts:
- The iconic album cover photo includes Bob Dylan and Sally Grossman, the wife of Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman. The photo was taken in the Grossman house in Bearsville, New York. For more info on how the cover got created, click here.
- Arguably the greatest and darkest political song Dylan wrote, “It’s Alright Ma” was written in the summer of 1964 in Woodstock, New York while folk scene peers Richard and Mimi Farina and Joan Baez were Dylan’s houseguests.
- “I’ll Keep It With Mine” was performed by Dylan during the recording of Bringing It All Back Home, but the song never made the album. As the story goes, it was written for Nico, the German actress and singer who, before her recruitment into the Velvet Underground, spent some quality time with Dylan in Greece. Nico ended up recording the song for her debut solo album while the Dylan outtake “I’ll Keep It With Mine” surfaced on later compilations and most notably on the Record Store Day (RSD) 2016 special release titled, Side Tracks.
Beer Pairing: Manhattan Project Beer Company, Bikini Atoll
Tart, salty and crisp describe this fruited blackberry and raspberry Leipzig gose, which are all adjectives that could be used to describe Dylan’s sound and stories in Bringing It All Back Home. Texas-based Manhattan Project Beer Company caught plenty of heat for naming one of its beverages after the location of a nuclear test site, i.e., Bikini Atoll, that resulted in the contamination of the Marshall Islands. On the other hand, Rolling Stone gave Dylan praise for tying nuclear warfare and the fallout-shelter sign on the album’s cover as “the cultural equivalent of a nuclear bomb.”
What gives? I guess it comes down to knowing your audience and satisfying their tastes, but don’t be fooled, both beer and album are worth devouring and best together!
Here are photos of the beer paired with Bringing It All Back Home
