A little over a month ago I reported on the expectation that a rare new recording of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind” would sell for £700,000 – £1 million at an upcoming auction at Christie’s in London. Well, the auction happened yesterday and defied everyones expectations, selling for a staggering $1,769,508 (around 1.5 million pounds).
The 2021 recording of the 1962 classic was produced by T Bone Burnett in Los Angeles and recorded directly onto an acetate record, called an Ionic Recording, which is considered to produce the most superior sound money can buy on a typical record player.
T Bone Burnett has stressed the exclusivity of the pressing and insisted it’s purpose as a rejection of mass consumerism, recently telling Variety “I think it is important to know for people who are concerned about the exclusivity of what we are doing. An Ionic Original is not a ‘copy.’ It is an original recording. We are not contriving scarcity. This is actually scarce. It is a unique, handmade, original recording. We have all been conditioned to accept the terms of and react to things from the frame of mass production. This is not that.”
Burnett has also commented on how highly he prides this particular recording, going as far as to describe it as the “the best record I’ve ever made in my life“, a pretty wild statement considering the renowned producers previous feats. He has won multiple Grammy’s and accolades in his illustrious career so far, writing and producing scores for films like “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, “Cold Mountain”, “Walk the Line”, and “Crazy Heart”, as well as contributing to the work of artists such as Robert Plant, Counting Crows, Sam Phillips, and Roy Orbison. So to put this to the top of his list of achievements is quite something and a mark of how passionately he stands by the project and it’s extraordinary price tag.
“This is a full rebellion against mass consumerism,” Burnett concluded with Variety. “It’s not that I don’t want people to hear it. I think this is the best record I’ve ever made in my life, so I want everybody to hear it. For my ego and my sense of ‘I would like everybody to like me,’ this is a sacrifice. I mean, you heard it. Bob sounds good. The band sounds good. The song’s great. And I have to say, I think it’s the best thing that I’ve ever been involved in. It’s the best singer, the best song, great musicians, the sound is killer. I’ll say this: I’ve never done anything better, to be sure.”
One lucky, and apparently very wealthy, listener has walked away with the pressing, being the only person bar a few members of the press granted access to listen to it, it is now down to he or she, their identity being undisclosed, whether they will ever let anyone else tune in. Being a big Dylan fan myself, I hope for a leak one day, it feels inevitable in this day and age, but the purist in me also hopes that it will forever hang on the mystery buyers wall, a temptation to whomever gazes upon it.
