I’ve been meaning to focus on this one for a while. It’s been prompted by reading the illustrated edition of Robert Shelton’s Bob Dylan – No Direction Home, which I got from my aunt at Christmas. You can buy it for £30. If I didn’t already have a copy, I’d happily pay double for it.

The older I get the more I seek out bootlegs of rehearsals. Why? There’s nothing better than a live performance done right, especially accompanied by exuberant audience feedback. Its strips the sanitization out of a studio recording and it reveals the worth of the artist. Can you elevate the song without relying on multiple takes and editing (the are you a serious musician test, basically)? For this reason, many of my favourite versions of songs are live versions. A few random selections: Slippery People by Talking Heads (from the Stop Making Sense live album). In Every Dream Home A Heartache live in Glasgow 1988 by Bryan Ferry, Michael Hedges’ cover of the Fine Young Cannibals “She Drives Me Crazy” at Philips Uni in 1989, The Stones performing Sympathy For The Devil at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus 1968, Judas Priest covering Fleetwood Mac’s “The Green Manalishi” from Unleashed In The East – Tokyo 1979. Even David Essex’s live version of Rock On (from what I assume is The Grey Whistle Test) is the best.

Albums of concerts are common as muck and far easier to track down than bootlegs or soundboards of rehearsals. Which is a shame as some of the best live performances are reserved for rehearsals not intended for public consumption. It makes sense, there’s no pressure to perform or audience expectation to cater to, so there’s a looseness that lends itself to experimentation. Numerous takes and fragments of songs on occasion offer a window into the embryonic process of how a song could be constructed or refined. The recent Beatles documentary capturing Macca conjuring the melody to Get Back in real time being a fantastic example.

Where Voices Of Freedom sets itself apart from other bootlegs (caveat here – that’s I’ve discovered, it’s a big world out there), is that it weaves Bob Dylan and Keith Richards’ philosophical approach to writing while they’re practicing. It lets you under the hood. Normally, this is piecemeal process, you need to sift through a ghastly journalese interview for quotes on their process and a bootleg or deluxe reissue to ratify that. No better example of this happens during the “Blowin in the Wind” take which is eight minutes long. Keith muses “that after you’ve been playing your songs for so long you start to re-write them” to which Bob, immediately, knowingly emphatically agrees. A true moment of kindship that only two songwriting veterans who know the game could have. It’s also a beautiful take of the song with some gorgeous guitar embellishments, dare I say improvements, by Keith, followed up with them discussing optimal composition for a few minutes on the next track. Then Bob strums a chord sequence interspersed by Ron and Keith talking random bollocks. That doesn’t sound brilliant, but trust me, it is, because the session is uncut it places you right there. Almost as brilliant is the guitar improv all three bring to “Dark Eyes”.

It’s also amusing and full of gossip, if that’s your thing. Highlights include Richards’ slapping down Mick Taylor for being disorganized and a slow writer after Bob praises “Leather Jacket” from Taylor’s 1979 debut album (the song being a shot at Mick Jagger’s celebrity lifestyle, so even during their falling out Keith was always loyal to Jagger). Ron and Keith adlibbing a cynical song about Careless Ethiopians wasting cash – they’d get cancelled into oblivion and accused of being racist these days. I also chuckled at Ron Wood ordering booze and fags by the barrel load as he coughs up a lump of coal. Him and Keith really do live up to the hard living billing.

It’s amazing the Voices of Freedom collab even happened at all. Dylan had not long emerged from his born-again rabbit hole (let’s not knock the musical output of this phase, it was worthwhile). Mick and Keith were somewhat publicly feuding through the media, “Mick was unbearable” during the early eighties according to Keith, and they certainly were not working together at the time. Had they been, surely the Stones would’ve performed in either London or Philadelphia as a group and Bob might’ve had to draft in some other less interesting musicians to rehearse with.

Indeed, the least interesting part of the Voices Of Freedom release is the recordings of the live gig, it’s standard fare. But even here we get reminded of a fascinating historical nugget – Bob Dylan made a faux pas, suggesting that the US farmers should get a subsidy from the Live Aid proceeds, and was heavily criticized for this at the time.

I’ll stop with the music history geekery here, suffice to say this one offers us a rare insight into some of the best and most influential musicians of our age. We, sorry, I, need more of this of-the-cuff stuff, warts and all, than sanitized documentaries with excerpts of perfectly curated studio sessions that may or may not appear on an album reissue.

Voices Of Freedom, sadly, is the exception. Thanks to the era of cancel culture coalescing with the ubiquitousness of cameras, the one sanctuary in which show business could actually allow its stars to drop their guard, as Bob, Keith and Ron do here, has gone for good. The threat of being hounded in person and online for not being morally and politically perfect isn’t worth granting such intimate access. Instead of freedom of expression these days it’s self-censorship. But, thanks to Soulseek and a few other places, Voices Of Freedom and the like are there to remind us to judge the art and not the artist.