Sunday Music – Forever Young – The Bob Dylan Series (Part 16)

Posted on Sun 07/18/2010 by TonyfromOz

Today’s music video is ‘Forever Young’ from Meat Loaf. (Michael Lee Aday)

This video was posted to You Tube by Lordrevenge

After the film soundtrack ‘Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid’, Dylan’s contract with Columbia expired, and he moved across to Asylum Records. Columbia then released a compilation album of Dylan songs titled ‘Dylan’ which was released only a month or so before the release of the new record for Asylum. This last Columbia album , although it sold well off the back of the Dylan name was in the main poorly reviewed, and Dylan himself had very little input.

This new album, released in early 1974 was titled ‘Planet Waves’, and was Bob’s first proper studio album for more than three years, not including that film soundtrack and the Columbia compilation. This was his 13th studio album to this point. It received way better reviews that the previous 2 albums, and sold very well as an album. This song, ‘Forever Young’ was recorded for the album in 2 different versions, and the longer version was released as a single by Bob. Even though at the time it did not sell all that well, it has since become one of his most covered songs, so much so that it has become almost a standard. Because so many people have covered it, it’s almost a little hard to believe that they all relate back to the original Dylan song, as those covers have been released over the intervening 36 years. It’s hard to list those many covers but they number more than 20 now, along with other covers released in languages other than English, and most people have heard one version or another from those numerous artists, also without realising it is in fact a Bob Dylan song.

In 1988 Rod Stewart even copied the song shown at this link. It was not a cover, per se, but the song shared lyrics, and even some of the melody. Even though theoretically different, it was so similar as be classed as the same song. Upon threat of a plagiarism suit, Stewart said that subconsciously he used the song as a basis for his own song, and then gave Bob his due share of royalties for the song. That Stewart version has also been covered by numerous artists over the years.

From this same Dylan album, ‘Planet Waves’, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band also covered a song, their one being ‘You Angel You’, from their album 1979 album, ‘Angel Station’, and this song was featured in an earlier Part of this same Dylan series in the post at this link.

This cover version of ‘Forever Young’ is by Meat Loaf, and I think it is one of the better versions of this song. It combines his strong voice with elements of his rock style and melodic piano. It is from his 2003 album ‘Couldn’t Have Said It Better’, which Meat Loaf said was his best album since ‘Bat Out Of Hell’. This song featured above does not exist in any version showing him singing the song, so I have selected this version with the wonderful overlay of images of angels.

Meat Loaf had a relatively long career already before he became the ubiquitous ‘overnight success’ with his appearance in the original ‘Rocky Horror Show’, and then a couple of years later with the monster ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ album, which over the years has sold nearly 50 million copies of that album. He also had a huge Number One Worldwide smash hit in 1993 with ‘I would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’.