I Shall Be Released

Rick Nelson has a great version of this song. A song Elvis should have recorded properly but he was too busy with Clambake I guess. Check out Rick's version.

I don't think Ricky, Elvis, Lennon, whoever, could do much with this mess!

Yeah, happy new year with a few lines of a missed opportunity. This is one for good. The Gipsy Man himself should have recorded it. But he was involved in B-movie-nonsens. Compared to Do The Clam one can't get help to get sad. This prophetic song is breathing the same spirit of those great Woody Guthrie Lyrics. It represents the heart of great north american music. Too much cash sometimes kills creativity and sens for real good music.

The sad thing is that Dylan, Lennon, McCartney would have all jumped at the chance to write for Elvis or work with him. What a heartbreaking thought. Parker has a lot to answer for. Think how the '68 Special would have turned out if it wasn't for Steve Binder.

Useless. If this is what writing a song is all about, than who cares who write it. Heard it once and never again.

The people who dismiss this song because they only know if for the few lines Elvis sings obviously never heard this song performed by anyone else. It is one of Dylan's best. Check out a proper version before you put it down. There are a lot of versions out there. Too bad Elvis wasnt one of them.

Happy new year to all Elvis fans around the world...Hopefully we all shall be released in 2009 from sarcastic comments towards one another...Well, If I can dream...

Boring song anyway ! Elvis' LPs in the later stage of his career where pretty much poor with one or two good song's within,he had gone back to C&W too much !

Well now! You can´t change history, can you? We are the most privileged music fans in the world! So many fantastic recordings by the best song interpreter ever in spite of disastrous management and wasted years. And this is not a recording, but "a rolling tape" thing never meant for publication, and as a matter of fact he sings beautifully!

I like Dylan's original and the version that Rick Nelson did I think live at the Troubadour? In the late 1960s. I think Elvis should have done a studio version and even an album of songs written and recorded by contemporary artists of the day, and given it the Presley treatment without the strings and the barber shop singers he loved to employ.

This short version always gives me goosebumps. Wish Elvis had recorded the whole song. It's a statement from Elvis that he know the songs of Bob Dylan and that he liked it.

There is an unofficial mix out there of I Shall Be Released, with added guitar backing, spliced with It's Only Love. It's fabulous !

I threw it all away would have been a great Dylan track for Elvis in the seventies. If someone would add a instrumental piece, this could be a hit.

Elvis should have done a folk album around the time this was caught on tape. Add those wonderful performances of the Don't Think Twice jam, For Lovin' Me and Early Morning Rain. It's a real pity it never happened!

Boring, absolutely boring; definitely needs more instrumentation. I agree with others as to the release of his 1970's albums for the most part there was no direction and they were just thrown together; a few "diamonds in the rough" as to actual songs, but mostly just thrown together and not worth the vinyl they were originally released on. The 1950's and 1960's... that's another story, all for the positive!

I would love to have heard Elvis do a studio recording of this Dylan song. It would have been a classic!

If we are talking solely about this recording then for the 45 or so seconds it lasts, then there is not much to recommend it.H

I Shall Be Released is an excellent song. My favorite version is by OK Go and Bonerama, but the little snippet that Elvis sings probably has more feeling in it than any other version I have heard, which makes it all the more sad that Elvis didn't record a real proper version of the song. An entire album of Elvis covering Dylan songs would have been a dream come true; the man with the perfect voice covering songs by one of the greatest lyric writers of all time. It is a shame we don't have more, but I love the little bit we do have. Elvis obviously found a lot of meaning and feeling in the song--you can hear it in his voice even in the little bit we have. I wouldn't mind if someone recorded some backing--the way David Briggs did with Twelfth of Never--as long as they employed a very light touch.

This is such a beautiful song and it's such a shame that Elvis didn't ever record a proper version of it. So, I had to rate Elvis' very brief version of it just 1 star.

I know Bob Dylan's version. Would have been interesting to hear a proper version from Elvis. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

Can't stand Richard Manuel's vocal on the Band's original version of the song (albeit that Robbie Robertson did later record one of the best Elvis tribute songs ever in American Roulette!) - by far the best versions of the song are by Joan Baez and Joe Cocker. Shame Elvis never recorded a proper version, but the snippet is an interesting glimpse into what might have been.