Hello, it's Bern Burrell here. I hope you're doing right. Hope all is good in your world. It's been a while since we last spoke, hasn't it? I was just trying to think, actually, before I started recording, what has happened? What major thing? What's the number one thing that's happened in Bob's world since we last did this podcast? And I'm struggling to think there's been lots that have happened. All I can think about, though, is him hitting a wrench against a microphone. Do you remember that? Did you see that on social media? It went viral a while ago now. But it was a strange occurrence at a live show. Probably has never happened before. Probably never happened again, I'd imagine. That's why I'm doing this entire half an our show on why Bob was hitting a wrench against a microphone. No, that's not happening, sadly.

What I thought it would be nice to do. why I'm doing this entire half an hour show on why Bob was hitting a wrench against a microphone.

No, that's not happening sadly. What I thought it would be nice to do is bring you some Patreon

episodes. We did Patreon for a while on this podcast. Thank you if you subscribe it, by the way.

What a joy it was. You enabled me to make this show even better, and it was such a joy to do that.

I thought enough time has elapsed now between us finishing the Patreon episodes

to bring some onto this feed.

And I wanted to bring the episodes we did on Patreon on Omercy to this feed

because the episode on Oh Mercy that we did on the Bob Dylan album by album podcast

was a little bit light because it was for one of a less

grandiose term a pilot. I was just trying to kind of work out what the podcast would be, how it would

sound and I didn't do as much kind of extensive deep diving into Oh Mercy as some other albums

that came later. And that's one of my favorite albums, Omercy, if not my favorite record.

So I thought it would be fun to bring you these episodes on this record that I feel we didn't

cover enough on the original podcast.

And we've really gone to town on it because it's a multi-part episode on Omercy.

So here is the first part of this multi-part episode look at Omercy. We're going to look at the early stages of the recording process for the album and the first two songs that were recorded on the record. What a joy is to be back with you. Enjoy these special O Mercy episodes. Here is part one.

Let me set a scene for you. It's late.

Bob Dylan is sat in a large dining room.

Outside a window to his left is a huge tanker slowly making its way across the Pacific Ocean's horizon.

He has a phone in his hand.

He's pressed it tightly against his ear.

...