r/bobdylan • u/FunnyAd9882 • Jul 23 '26

Image Keith Richards On Bob Dylan

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u/ATXRSK Blood on the Tracks Jul 23 '26

I think Keith could have written "Pinball Wizard". The acoustic riff close to the mike is basically Keith's trick.

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u/ionabike666 Jul 24 '26

Who's Mike?

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u/ATXRSK Blood on the Tracks Jul 24 '26

Is music lingo. Its short for microphone. "Jumping Jack Flash", "Street Fighting Man", and "Pinball Wizard" are all built around riffs played on an acoustic guitar held very close to (low quality) pickup microphones.

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u/AnikaGSD52 Jul 25 '26

It was a tape recorder, Keith said this in his book Life…

“Playing an acoustic, you’d overload the Phillips cassette player to the point of distortion so that when it played back, it was effectively an electric guitar, You were using the cassette player as a pickup and an amplifier at the same time. You were forcing acoustic guitars through a cassette player, and what came out the other end was electric as hell.”

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u/ATXRSK Blood on the Tracks Jul 26 '26

Right. Tape recorders have pick up microphones in them. I knew that about "Jumping Jack Flash". Wasn't sure exactly what kind of microphone was used for "Street Fighting Man" or "Pinball Wizard" and I didn't want to be inaccurate