Far Out
A song is never written: Bette Midler’s visit to the studio in 1975 lifted the lid on Bob Dylan’s songwriting
By Tom Taylor
April 13, 2026
It’s a marvel of music that it’s never the same twice: every song is a fluid piece of art, and every masterpiece you’ve ever heard might have sounded different on another day, another take, another wisp of inspiration, another millimeter of microphone placement, another five minutes in bed for Bob Dylan.
We’ve grown so accustomed to recorded music that we often see songs as fixed, a tactile work of art set in stone. But as Dylan’s old pal, Tom Waits, puts it, ”My theory is the best songs have never really been recorded,” the ‘Martha’ singer poetically opines.
Poetically continuing, ”We’re listening to things that made it through but there’s so many songs that have never made it because they were scared of the machine and wouldn’t allow themselves to be recorded. The trick is to get it in there, don’t hurt the song when you record it”.
Dylan, however, takes the inverse approach of that same coin. This was evidenced back in October 1975, when the mercurial Bob Dylan teamed up with Bette Midler on the duet version of ‘Buckets of Rain’. It seems he figures if a song is so fragile and fluid, then you may as well play around with it. Mould it ply it, and then hammer it to the acetate once you’re happy.
Midler got to witness this firsthand. A recording of their studio time was uncovered through a series of bootleg tapes as part of Bob Dylan New York Sessions 1974-1975. “It opens with some upgrades of the original Blood On The Tracks sessions from September 1974, and progresses chronologically through some early Desire sessions,” one anonymous bootlegger behind the release wrote.
They continue, “Winding up to the main event: almost half an hour of never-heard October 1975 session outtakes of the recording of Bette Midler’s cover of ‘Buckets Of Rain’ with Dylan, which would show up on her Songs For The New Depression album the following January.”
Blood On The Tracks arrived as the 15th studio album by Dylan, released in 1975 and marking the return to Columbia Records after linking up with Asylum Records for his two albums prior to this moment. Widely considered to be one of Dylan’s most complete projects, the album included fan favourites such as ‘Tangled Up in Blue’, ‘Buckets of Rain’, Shelter from the Storm’ and many more gritty classics.
Dylan has famously discussed how opening up his mind to numerous sources of inspiration helped forge the record, spending several weeks in New York attending art classes with the painter Norman Raeben, for example. “[Raeben] taught me how to see,” Dylan said on reflection. “In a way that allowed me to do consciously what I unconsciously felt .. when I started doing it, the first album I made was Blood on the Tracks.”
It felt like a rejuvenating breakthrough for an artist who had prolifically been releasing albums a breakneck speed for around 13 years at this stage.”Everybody agrees that was pretty different, and what’s different about it is there’s a code in the lyrics, and also there’s no sense of time,” he added.
Feeling supremely confident in his material, Dylan arrived in the studio in a buoyant mood. Working at the A & R Recording Studios in New York City, the musician developed a “spontaneous” approach to recording, which often sees him rolling into different songs with ease, as if it were a medley. One other act of spontaneity would arrive with Bette Midler joining Dylan in the booth.
With Moogy Klingman backing them up on the piano, Midler seems a little hesitant at first, saying, “I can’t sing ‘I ain’t no monkey’” before Dylan manages to gently persuade her to take part. But what is most startling is how – even with the esteemed Midler watching on – Dylan is more than happy to be roughshod and reckless with his creation. Lyrics are changed on a whim, the melody trods along unfixed and unmoored.
He throws out what doesn’t fit, and plays the whole thing by ear. Yet, at the end of this haphazard experiment, he ends up, as was his wont, with something utterly timeless, as though it was always meant to be that way to begin with.
