How did some of Bob Dylan’s best-loved songs end up on Broadway?
Simon Hale didn’t grow up on Bob Dylan.
In fact, he wasn’t even all that familiar with the first-tier Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s body of work when he first got the gig to do the orchestrations for “Girl from the North Country,” the award-winning musical built on Dylan songs that visits the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco July 30 through Aug. 18 (broadwaysf.com).
“I’ve learned more about Bob Dylan since working on this show than I knew about him before,” Hale says during a recent Zoom interview from his home in the U.K. “He had been in my awareness, but he wasn’t the music I was listening to particularly.
“Because, you know, circumstance, and where you are as a teenager and in your mid-20s and everything else, you just kind of follow certain paths — and (Dylan) didn’t happen to be one of mine.”
Instead, the 60-year-old Birmingham, England, native’s paths veered to funk, jazz, orchestral music and pop, with the diverse likes of Quincy Jones, The Police and Igor Stravinsky earning plenty of time on his stereo.
And he wasn’t the only Dylan novice onboard during the early years of the production, which premiered in London in 2017 and made its off-Broadway debut the following year.
“Funnily enough, a lot of our company in New York and London had a similar kind of experience,” Hale remembers. “Suddenly, we were drawn into this whole world — a rather extraordinary world that we didn’t kind of know very well. It’s been incredible to suddenly then discover his incredible catalog.”
Hale did know enough about Dylan, however, to be justifiably intimidated by the idea of tackling such a project.
“It was excitement and fear for me,” he says of his initial reaction. “Then, also, just an awareness of working on such an incredible catalog of songs. We were given carte blanche to work on any songs we wanted and do whatever we liked to them. That’s kind of pretty extraordinary when you think of what an incredible body of songs it is.”
Penned by Irish playwright Conor McPherson, “Girl from the North County” isn’t a traditional kind of jukebox musical, where an artist’s story unfolds onstage to a soundtrack of big hits — like with “The Cher Show,” “Jersey Boys” and “Tina.” This isn’t the Bob Dylan story, but rather one telling of a fictional family in 1930s-era Duluth, Minnesota (which, not coincidentally, is where the songwriter hails from) set to 28 Dylan tunes.
Some of them, such as “All Along the Watchtower,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” “Lay, Lady, Lay” and “Forever Young,” are stone-cold classics that most Dylan fans could sing at the drop of a hat. Yet, others are more obscure choices, hailing from albums that have been widely overlooked through the years.
The trick for Hale, of course, was trying to figure out how he wanted to orchestrate the music. Namely, did he need to stay as true as possible to the best-known versions of the classic Dylan numbers?
“What kind of unlocked it for me, a little bit, was Dylan himself, funnily enough — watching him talking about his own music in interviews,” Hale says. “I remember watching (Martin Scorsese’s 2005 documentary film) ‘No Direction Home’ and finding it really interesting where he would talk about how he felt as a songwriter — not as someone listening to his songs, but as a songwriter creating those songs.
“He’d say people comment on the records and this version (of a song). But sometimes he felt that a more representative, definitive version of a particular song might have been at a some bar when there were three people there — but not necessarily the version you heard on a particularly iconic record.”
That comment turned out to be a game-changer for Hale.
“I thought that was quite interesting,” he says. “Because actually it really says it’s all about being in the moment – not having to do with status or success or anything else. It’s just how does it feel right at that particular time? For me, that is representing instinct and gut reaction and all those kind of things.
“I could really identify with that because I just felt, ‘OK, he’s there empowering me to think: What do I think? How do I feel about this? What do I think is the best solution and choice to make at this particular place and time?”
That freed Hale up to follow his own artistic muse, rather than be overly concerned about what listeners would think about the orchestration work.
“You never are really going to get at the heart of that,” Hale surmises. “You need to just go ‘What do I think? What are we trying to do here? And how do I think I can best achieve that?’”
He tried to peer into the mindset of Dylan as a young man, having just arrived in New York and starting to make a name for himself one small club gig at a time. In the end, wherever the music took him, Hale just wanted to “be honest, be genuine” and “tell the story.”
Plus, why should Hale be overly concerned about tinkering with the music when Dylan songs have always been open to interpretation and change — especially by the songwriter himself.
“Actually, he kind of did that to his own audience himself sometimes — changing styles and not really seeming to be bothered about that, just going, ‘I’m going to do what I feel is the right thing at the right time,’” Hale reasons.
And that must have been the right course for Hale to take, given that “Girl from the North County” has drawn massive acclaim from both Dylan aficionados and relative newcomers to the fold.
“I’m not trying to sugarcoat this, but I think (the response) has been universally favorable,” says Hale, who received a Tony for best orchestration for his work on the musical. “Because what people have seen is that we’ve really just been respectful to the music and made it sound interesting, creative and part of a stage piece.”
And Hale says he realizes just how important that this is to Dylan fans — especially those living in the U.S.
“I remember somebody saying to me, ‘Dylan is in our DNA,’” he says. “I’m going, ‘Whoa — that’s pretty deep.’ That an artist is so connected to generations of Americans and how deep he is in your makeup and your influence – politically, musically and artistically. That’s a huge deal.
“I’m kind of glad I didn’t know that when I started out, because that would have been even more overwhelming, actually. But at some point, you have to just get on with making something and do the best you can.”
‘GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY’
By Conor McPherson, presented by BroadwaySF
Through: Aug. 18
Where: Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco
Tickets: $49-$150 (subject to change); www.broadwaysf.com