Bob Dylan - Masters of War (Live in Alan Lomax’s Apartment)

The inaugural physical release from Lomax Archive is one of the treasures of Alan Lomax’s archive of recordings: the first known tape of Bob Dylan playing the now canonical “Masters of War” for Alan, in his New York City apartment, in January 1963. We are issuing this for the first time on a special 45RPM 7” record, limited to 4000 stamped, numbered copies.

Alan Lomax’s recording notes: “This brief session features a young Bob Dylan performing a private performance of Masters Of War followed by a lively conversation about the origins of the song and current geopolitics. Bob Dylan discusses composing Masters of War in England after reading an article about Kennedy and MacMillan. He tells a brief story about Nikita Khrushchev. Mono recording, 8 minutes.”

For this landmark recording, we’ve split the performance to Side A and the conversation to Side B. It provides rare insight into Dylan’s thought process while writing the now classic song. 

This will not be released on streaming services. Once they are gone, they are gone.