"GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING" was originally recorded in May 1979 for "Slow Train Coming".

A rewritten version of "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING" was recorded in March 2002 for the long awaited covers compilation "Gotta Serve Somebody - The Gospel Songs Of Bob Dylan", which was finally released in spring 2003 (for details see picture link below, which leads to the website about this project).

On my first copy of Slow Train Coming, back in the old days, there was a huge gap before ‘Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking’, its length depending on the speed with which I could get up, walk over to the turntable, and flip the vinyl so the needle could drop on side two of my first and still favourite Bob Dylan record, kicking off this extremely underrated song.

It would have been a nice idea to have another huge gap, maybe 15 to 20 seconds, before this raucous blues track by Bob Dylan and his 2002 touring band, indicating its stylistic dissimilarity to the ten gospel songs preceding it. This however, to be honest, would have been the only amendment I would have suggested. The song, which is the only song on the album recorded and mixed by Chris Shaw, who also recorded and mixed “Love And Theft”, is indeed a worthy contribution to the project.

One verse of the rewritten lyrics of the song, starting with ‘Jesus is calling, He’s coming back to gather His jewels.’, somehow foreshadows ‘A Voice From On High’, which was performed later that year. But my favourite lines of the rewrite would be ‘The sun (Son?) is shining, ain’t but one train on this track’, and ‘Storms on the ocean, storms out on the mountain too. Oh Lord, You know I have no friend without You’. And of course, I do find the staged dialogue with Mavis Staples simply hilarious, in a good sense.





At the end of this 2002 studio performance of "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING" there is a reference to the seventh verse of Oscar Wilde's "THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL" (this verse is also repeated slightly altered as the last of the 109 verses of this long ballad):

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"
[seventh verse]

"And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"
[last verse]





And here is an interesting part from an interview with Mavis Staples:

Question: "According to what I heard on the CD, you arrived at the studio when Bob was singing and he stopped to let you in and to welcome you. Was that what really happened? Was that set up?"

Mavis Staples: "... Oh, this was Bobby´s idea, a slapstick kind of thing. So I knocked on the door and he said "Oh, it´s Mavis Staples" and I said "What are you doing here?", you know, and then we got to sing the song and it was a jam. We were there in O´Henry´s studio in Los Angeles, California with Bobby´s band and this session lasted way over into the morning. He wouldn´t stop! I said "Bobby, it´s down, it´s good", and he kept saying, "No Mavis, no Mavis, we gotta do it some more". And I said "Well, we gotta eat first", so we went out and got some Mexican food and then we got started again and we musta left the studio at about four o´clock in the morning; for one song! It turned out really good though and we were nominated for the Grammy. We didn´t win. Sting won that Grammy, but it was an honor to do that."





On October 4th 2009, in Seattle, Washington, after almost 30 years, "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING" finally made its return to the stage, as Bob Dylan chose this gem as the opening song of the first show of his 2009 fall tour. It appeared again already on the next evening as the opener of the second show, also in Seattle. After that it was performed once in Berkeley and twice in Los Angeles. Nine days later "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING" opened the show in Tulsa; and a week after that "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING" started the last of the three shows at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. Three days later it was performed in Columbus, Ohio. Twelve days after that "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING" opened the last of the three shows in Boston, and four days after this it kicked off the last of the three shows in New York City, which was also the last show of the year. All ten performances in 2009 follow closely the 2002 studio version (minus the dialogue with Mavis Staples), but have the last verse replaced with a repeat of the first verse, which had also been the first verse of the original version from "Slow Train Coming" in 1979.

The first appearance of "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING" in 2010 was in Japan, opening the 13th show of the year, which was the penultimate of seven shows in Tokyo. It was the first ever performance of any version of this gem outside the US. Unfortunately the song was not performed in Europe at all in 2010, and back in North America it was not until the 95th show of the year, more than seven and a half months later, in Binghamton, New York, that Bob Dylan chose to open again a concert with "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING". Subsequently Bob Dylan chose however to begin all seven of the remaining shows in 2010 with extraordinary fine and focused performances of "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING", at first his two gigs in Massachusetts, then all three shows in New York City, and finally the last two concerts of the year, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and in Mashantucket, Connecticut.

In April 2011, in Beijing, Bob Dylan chose to open his first concert ever in China with a powerful version of "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING". Two days later, in Shanghai, he also started his second show in China with this song, and two days after that, it was also the first song of his first concert ever in Vietnam. Next it was performed during both shows in Hong Kong and the concert in Singapore, before Dylan chose to open also all nine shows in Australia with "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING", as well as his concert in New Zealand. After 16 consecutive performances of "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING" in April it sure was great to see Bob Dylan open his next show as well with this gem, here in Cork on June 16th, which was the first European appearance ever of this fine song. Two days later Dylan also started his show in London with "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING", and two days after that in Tel Aviv his first concert in Israel since 1993. And a few weeks later, in mid July of 2011, Bob Dylan opened his first two US shows of 2011 with "GONNA CHANGE MY WAY OF THINKING", both of them in California.