Sunday Music – Just Like A Woman – The Bob Dylan Series (Part 9)

Posted on 05/30/2010 by

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Today’s music video is ‘Just Like A Woman’ from The Hollies.

This video was posted to You Tube by nyrainbow4

The original of this song was on Bob’s seventh studio album, the double album ‘Blonde On Blonde’ which was released in mid 1966, a year after his momentous ‘Highway 61 Revisited’. Like nearly everything about Bob Dylan, this album was also ahead of its time. Believed to be one of the very first Double Albums of the modern rock music era, it also stands significantly in lists of Top 100 and 500 Albums. Bob recorded it in Nashville with a group of musicians he was gathering around him. The band was the nucleus of a backing band called The Hawks, and a couple of others who Bob wanted with him, The Hawks later more celebrated under the name of The Band. Bob was now well practiced with a band around him, whereas earlier, he was still mainly a solo artist, and the change from one to the other is not as simple as it may seem. For Bob to take his band to Nashville was a leap on his part, but the result, this wonderful album showed again just how progressive Bob Dylan was. It was recorded over sessions in different months because Bob still had some concert commitments.

The album was a critical success, as well as a commercial success for Bob. In fact, a number of singles were lifted from the album, and a couple of them did well for Bob on his own, without the covers performed by other artists and bands doing just as well. Over the years, this album has gained in stature from what it already had when it was released, and features as one of the upper echelons in any album charts.

Bob released this song, ‘Just Like A Woman’, as a single in the U.S. but it was covered by numerous others, The Byrds, (twice) Joe Cocker, Van Morrison, and Nina Simone just some of them. Most celebrated among these covers, but rarely heard in the U.S. was the English band Manfredd Mann who had a big hit with this song in the UK, as well as here in Australia.

This version is by another English band The Hollies. They were one of those ‘British Invasion’ bands of the mid 60′s and they had numerous hits, using a style which included tight and melodious harmonies. This version here slows down the tempo of the song somewhat, and it was lifted from an album by this band that actually caused the band to split. The album was called ‘Hollies Sing Dylan’ on which they sang 12 of Bob’s compositions, releasing this album in 1969. One of the founding members of the band was Graham Nash, and in the lead up to this album, he voiced his disapproval that they were devoting a whole album solely to covers. He was also a little disheartened that they were so big and when they played to a live audience, no one in the band could hear what they were doing because of the screaming fans, probably more important for The Hollies than most bands, because they required such differing harmonies. This combined with his protests about this album of Dylan covers was the last straw, and Nash left the band. He went to the U.S. and teamed up with Graham Crosby from The Byrds, and Stephen Stills from Buffalo Springfield to form one of the first Supergroups, later joined by Neil Young. The Hollies got another guitarist/singer and continued their career. In all, they had 18 Top Ten Singles, three of these going to Number One.

After Nash left The Hollies, their career as a band hardly faltered, as they kept coming out with hits. This song featured below ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’ actually entered the charts in the UK twice, the first in 1969, when it went to Number Three, and then again in 1988, when it went to Number One.

This video was posted to You Tube by thecatkeaton

This link takes you to the very scratchy and poorly lip synced version by Manfredd Mann which was the biggest hit of this song in the UK.

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Posted in: America (USA), Music, Videos