Nashville Skyline, recorded February, 1969, released April 9, 1969

Background: By 1969, Bob and Sara Dylan were the parents of 4 young children and in December of that year Jakob, the fifth and last child would be born. Little had been heard from Dylan since John Wesley Harding. In the meantime, it seemed, the world had moved on. Viet Nam. Haight-Ashbury. The Summer-of-Love-Flower-Power-psychedelia-Timothy Leary. Watergate, for heaven’s sake! Where was ‘The Voice of the Generation’ when you needed him? “For the public eye, I went to the bucolic and the mundane as far as possible. In my real life I got to do the things that I loved best and that was all that mattered…” (Chronicles, Vol. 1, p 123.)

The Recording: A new voice. (Rumor has it that he stopped smoking to achieve this smoother tenor sound.) Twanging guitars. Charlie Daniels. JOHNNY CASH! And, among the tunes, the song that, for me, emerges as Dylan’s sexiest: Lay Lady Lay. Bob’s been hitting the sourmash, for sure, but what surfaces here is not to be scoffed at. Nashville Skyline Rag, his first full-length instrumental, is a foot-tapper, Peggy Day, To Be Alone With You, One More Night and Country Pie are also upbeat and harken back to an earlier decade. There’s a similar, slightly melancholy flavor present in I Threw it All Away, Tell Me it Isn’t True, and Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You all of which reflect a more serious side of the sing/songwriter. If a Conway Twitty had come out with this album no one would have thought twice about it, but once again Dylan is playing musical chameleon and people take notice. Even if, as one looks back, there’s a more than a hint that this is the direction he’s taking in John Wesley Harding the fence that that album straddled stood much closer to old mountain ballads than it did to fifties or sixties C&W.

Conclusion: Another surprise, but just the fact that it is is in its own way predictable, as far as Dylan’s music goes. Taken at face value, it’s a pleasant listening experience; taken as a Dylan album, one gets the feeling that there’s something more up his sleeve. That grin he’s wearing on the album cover as he tips his hat says, “Wait ‘til you hear what’s inside—I’ve been having fun!

John Wesley Harding recorded Oct./Nov. 1967, released December 27, 1967.

Background: The booing. The hoopla. Europe. Life threats. Amphetamines. Press conferences. Woodstock. THE accident (June 29, 1967).The Recording: The trees are bare. Dry leaves rustle under your feet. November air touches your face with chilled fingers. A plaintive voice (can it be Dylan?) tells you stories as you make your way, unsure of your destination, but feeling that your journey’s origins were in a solid place. Settings for many of the tales you hear—John Wesley Harding, As I Went Out One Morning, All Along the Watchtower, I Am a Lonesome Hobo, Drifter’s Escape, Dear Landlord, I Pity the Poor Immigrant— are as stark as your own surroundings and the spare accompaniment of acoustic guitar, harmonica and unobtrusive drum. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine and The Wicked Messenger confront Biblical allusion with an even greater directness than Highway 61 Revisited. The album ends with the upbeat Down Along the Cove and I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, a surprisingly mellow love song that might be considered the foreplay preceding Lay, Lady, Lay. Dylan’s listener/fan base had already been splintered by his electric evolution. Now, it would seem, both factions would be left dazed by this album. Yet another Dylan has emerged. Unvarnished, unpretentious—unplugged. Where did this come from? (The basement at “Big Pink”, but that’s not an official answer until 1975.) Where is this going? (That question will be answered many months later in one word: Nashville.)

Conclusion: Dylan’s muse has lured him to yet another seemingly unknown region. If listeners didn’t understand that the tenacious pull of transformation is Dylan’s driving force when he ‘went electric’, this album should have brought the fact into clearer focus for them.

The Basement Tapes, Recorded June-Nov 1967, Released 1975

Okay, I've debated about this. First it came here, but then I thought I should be recreating the public experience at the time and not include access to these songs until they were released in 1975 (even tho' bootlegs abounded for all of the intervening years). But the more I try to eliminate my knowledge of them from my reactions to the subsequent recordings, the more it becomes a futile exercise and the more I realize that if someone were to read this, as I intend, as an introduction to Dylan, there's no real reason to keep this information from them and many reasons to include it.

Background: At this point, The Basement Tapes have taken on a mythical quality. Basically, Dylan was recuperating from his motorcycle accident, his backing group, formerly The Hawks, had taken up residence near his Catskill—yes, Woodstock—home. They began working together regularly, at first just jamming, playing songs they all knew and teaching each other ones they didn’t. Much else is conjecture, rumor and myth-building. For whatever reason, they eventually decided to tape at least some of their sessions, whether it was supposed to be as demos for themselves or other artists, or if they just wanted to know how the whole thing was sounding, we really don’t know.

The Recording: Not always the best quality, not even, necessarily complete songs, these are the re-mastered 1975 releases of a portion of the songs that were taped. People who gather the bootlegs have a much larger playlist from these sets. (See Sid Griffin’s Million Dollar Bash for an exhaustive—if somewhat speculative—investigative report of the sessions and the re-masterings as well as a song-by-song description of the complete set of tapes as they are known to exist.) 24 songs. The first to emerge from the basaement were used by Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, as demos and soon became hits for other groups. Others became standards in The Band’s repertoire a few years down the line. A select set has made it’s way to Dylan’s live concerts. And a few, except for the fact that they are among this touted group, have faded quietly away.

Conclusion: Eric Clapton has confessed that hearing these tapes was the impetus for his disbanding Cream to seek another musical direction for himself. These are an important milestone in popular music, at the very least. They are the explanation, if you will, for the change in direction Dylan takes in the recordings that follow. But what was behind that, we may never really know. Did the emotional burden of the events in the years leading up to this period thrust him in a new direction in hopes of escaping the expectations he felt had been placed upon him or did a young loner from the mid-west who’d never been able keep a band around him in high school and who had taken it upon his narrow nineteen year old shoulders to venture to New York City and solitarily follow his muse despite what might come finally find solace in a group of talented musicians who were open to new ideas? Whatever the motivation, much was accomplished that eventually spilled into mainstream music in the decades that followed.

Musings II: In Concert

So I saw him ‘in person’. Was it a religious experience? No. Was I prepared? Not the first time. Yeah, stupid me. The first time I expected that ‘The Man’, ‘His Bobness’ would be belting ‘em out just as I’ve always heard them in the soundtrack of my life, that the hits would just ‘keep on coming’. Right. That was when I was a true novice, when I still had expectations of predictability. But in the little more than a year since that first time I’ve learned a lot. A lot. First, I’ve come to realize that, despite what people say about his mumbling, it’s the lyrics that you really have to know backwards and forwards to have any hope of recognizing the songs because it’s the melody and the rhythm that he truly enjoys messing with. The lyrics hold up pretty well in comparison and if you can just pin down a phrase here or there among the mumbled words and distorted delivery thanks to the amped up sound system, you’re golden. I’ve found that binoculars are a great aid here if you can get a seat where you’ve got a shot at watching his mouth.

Okay, let’s skip all the usual arguments: “Why bother going to see him if he can’t sing/if he doesn’t care/if he’s just an old geezer” vs. “Would you go see Shakespeare or Picasso if you had the chance?/He can too sing, it’s just a new style”, etc. Taking the experience at face value rather than expecting to see only a slightly older version of the 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert or talking yourself into the transcendental nature of being in the same arena with his greatness, what do you have? These days you have a rockin’ band that, over time, is getting better and better at knowing what Dylan’s doing out there and enhancing it with their own talents. You’ve got a repertoire of classics and new tunes woven into such an unpredictable string of setlists that there are at least 2 websites dedicated to forecasting what he’s gonna play. You’ve got an old-fashioned, down-to-earth, no fancy-laser-light-super-screen-projected extravaganza techonographed to co-ordinate with a lip-synched production of previously recorded muzak, concert. There’s a man and his band. Period. (Okay, a coupla lighting effects here and there, but if you’re the lighting guy at a Dylan concert, you can pretty much phone in your efforts—and Dylan certainly won’t care/notice if you screw up ‘cause that’s not what he’s paying attention to. He’s there to have a good time for himself. Period.

How do I answer the complaints about the fact that he barely acknowledges the audience, that he sings ‘too many” new songs leaving out some of the old standards, that he’s just plain old? I say that this guy has followed his muse, his bliss, his instincts for a very long time now. Despite (or because of) his success, he’s paid some pretty high personal prices along the way. On top of that, he’s a very sen-sa-tee-uhv (oops, we haven’t gotten to Blood on the Tracks yet, have we?) person, who has built up an arsenal of defenses against the real and perceived lack of appreciation of his art by fans and non-fans. The fact that he still puts himself out there and is still creating, night after night, is a testament to his genius/artistry and I, for one, consider it a privilege to witness it. Period.

Blonde on Blonde recorded Oct 5, 1965-March 10, 1966; released May 16, 1966.

Background: By this point, Dylan, rather than assimilating the mood and tenor of the world around him then reflecting back what he has encountered through the his music, is now sending out his music into a world that is ripe for his influence. No longer is it the reflection, it is the image. This album was produced entirely after the Newport confrontation between the folkies and Dylan’s undeniable destiny. In a way, it is a statement that confirms that he has chosen his path. In Chronicles I Dylan explains, “The folk music scene had been like a paradise that I had to leave, like Adam had to leave the garden. It was just too perfect…The road out would be treacherous, and I didn’t know where it would lead but I followed it anyway. It was a strange world ahead that would unfold, a thunderhead of a world with jagged lightning edges. Many got it wrong and never did get it right. I went straight into it. It was wide open. One thing for sure, not only was it not run by God, but it wasn’t run by the devil either.”

The Recording: Produced by Bob Johnston, at the Columbia Recording Studios, Nashville, Tennessee. Joining Dylan instrumentally were, once again, Charlie McCoy and Al Kooper along with Wayne Moss, Ken Buttrey, Hargus Robbins, Jerry Kennedy, Bill Aidens, Henry Strzelecki, Jaime Robertson and the legendary Joe South. (Note that despite the fact that Dylan had appearing live with The-Hawks-eventually-to-be-The-Band during this time, none of them yet appears in the studio.) With its 14 songs, many longer than 5 minutes, including the 11-plus minute Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands this album is the first rock ‘n’ roll 2 record set.

Conclusion: Now more than forty years old, nearly half of the songs (Rainy Day Women 12&35, Visions of Johanna, I Want You, Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat, Just Like a Woman and Absolutely Sweet Marie) included have found their way onto the setlists of recent performances of the ‘NeverEnding Tour’ while Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine) attracted new attention in a Mark Ronson remix version this spring. Listening to the entire album, there is little that falls between the cracks. Even the few songs that are no longer played live and are resurrected less often on oldies stations, etc. (Temporary Like Achilles, 4th Time Around and Obviously Five Believers) do not seem dated nor unfamiliar like some of the lesser known tracks on the earlier albums. This collection is arguably the cornerstone of the portion of Dylan’s oeuvre that is most readily recognized by current mainstream rock ‘n’ roll fans

Highway 61 Revisited recorded May 12-Aug. 4, 1965, released Aug. 30, 1965.

Background: Close on the heels of Bringing it All Back Home, Dylan seems to be propelled by the force of his search for that “high, wild mercury sound”, adding the support of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (then of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band), and Paul Griffin, Bobby Gregg, Harvey Goldstein, Charley McCoy, Frank Owens and Russ Savakus. Dylan’s ideas, both lyrical and musical seem to have been torrential at this time. One pictures Tom Wilson and Bob Johnson rushing to find a way to capture it all before it succumbed to the acoustical equivalent of evaporation. When Dylan arrived on the scene 4 years earlier his music was a product of history and his environment. By the time this album is released he is making musical history and affecting a seismic shift in the musical, if not social, environment. The state of world affairs, national economy, the political climate are becoming irrelevant to the journey upon which he has embarked. He is propelled by his own vision now.

The Recording: What is there to say but to list the titles? Like a Rolling Stone, Tombstone Blues, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, From a Buick 6, Ballad of a Thin Man, Queen Jane Approximately, Highway 61 Revisited, Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, Desolation Row. There they are: strung along like a choker of quality gems—sparkling each on their own and, at the same time, contributing to the overall brilliance of the work as a whole.

Conclusion: Dylan has said at some point in his career that he was most satisfied with his accomplishments on this recording. Although I haven’t been able to trace the timeframe for that statement, I would be hard-pressed to think of a time when there would be a strong argument to completely negate that opinion. He has also said that Like a Rolling Stone (emphasis on 'rolling', not 'stone') was his greatest contribution to popular music. (And whether or not it’s an honor he seeks, Desolation Row, currently is seen as his greatest contribution to literature if one takes its inclusion in The Oxford Book of American Poetry as a reliable indicator.) Personally, I certainly can find no fault with these superlatives and have realized through this project that this is the album I find most entertaining.

Bringing It All Back Home, recorded January 13-15, 1965, released March 22, 1965

Background: On May 22, 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson chose Ann Arbor, Michigan as the site at which to unveil his grand vision for the United States: The Great Society. His social plan would improve education, launch a War on Poverty, jumpstart urban renewal, the development of depressed regions, conservation efforts and institute the Medicare system—broad, sweeping, industrious goals all. In January, 1965, Johnson formally presented his plan to Congress, a tool, he, if anyone, knew how to manipulate and utilise. Soon the distinguished representatives on both sides of the aisle were working toward his objectives. Meanwhile, Dylan, whose cross-country road trip in 1964 had given him time to listen to the moptops from Liverpool, had adopted a new vision as well. Like Johnson, he was ready to produce concrete evidence of that vision in January.

The Recording: Subterranean Homesick Blues, Maggie’s Farm, Love Minus Zero/No Limit, Mr. Tambourine Man, Gates of Eden, It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue and MORE! Although the arrangements are still simple and include his acoustic guitar and harmonica, percussion and electric guitar are heard on several tracks. Social injustices are still a theme, particularly in Gates of Eden and It’s All Right, Ma. The liner notes track Dylan's thoughts, but in a more subdued form than for the past two releases. Tom Wilson is once again producing—and can be heard laughing at the gaff at the beginning of Take 1 of 115th Dream. Arrangements are tight and energetic. Humour is more prevalent. (Even without If You Gotta Go, Go Now which was recorded in these sessions but not released.) You cannot listen to this album without tapping your foot or without a smile coming to your lips and you cannot look at its cover without knowing that the times are truly a-changin’ for Dylan. A chic dark-haired female (Albert Grossman’s wife) has replaced the innocent-looking Rotolo and trappings of modern affluence have taken over for snow-covered New York streets as a setting. (Is this to be the face of the Great Society?)

Conclusion: The next phase of Dylan’s career begins here. The stage is being set for Newport. If the Greenwich Village enclave did not know it before, they know it now: their Guthrie-would-be has found more modern influences. The only question that remains is how far will those influences take him? And the answer, this time, will not be blowin’ in the wind.

Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded June 9, 1964, released Aug. 8, 1964

Background: Late winter/early spring 1964, following the release of The Times They are A-Changin’ in January, are busy months for Dylan. He introduces the stunning Chimes of Freedom at a Denver concert in February. His relationship with Suze Rotolo comes to an end in March (said to be documented in Ballad in Plain D). With a friend he drives cross- country. During the summer (after recording the tracks that will comprise this album) he writes the poems that will be published under the title “Some Other Kind of Songs” as liner notes to this album. In July he is billed as a major performer at the Newport Folk Festival where he introduces several songs that will appear on this album as well as Mr. Tambourine Man. These performances—including a duet of With God on Our Side with Joan Baez do not meet with the adoring acceptance of previous Newport appearances. (The following year his short set at this event will incite Dylan’s ousting by the folk community.)

The Recording: The history of this recording is, no doubt, a contributing factor to the legend regarding brief amount of time Dylan spends in the studio compared to other performers. The entire album, along with several songs that are not released at the time, was recorded during a single, 3 hour session according to CBS records. With Tom Wilson once again at the helm (and visible in one of the photos in the 2003 re-release’s booklet), two songs (To Ramona and All I Really Want to Do) were recorded in one take. Standouts in my 2007 playback are Spanish Harlem Incident, Chimes of Freedom, To Ramona, My Back Pages, and I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met). (As with the previous albums, I think that the overexposure to All I Really Want to Do and It Ain’t Me Babe over the years takes away what would have been their original impact to the 1964 listener. Overall, I was conscious of the less-than-perfect renditions of many of the tracks, particularly the slurring of words and lackluster guitar accompaniments. On the other hand, his guitar has a lively calypso feel on I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met). There is no additional instrumental support on any of these tracks, but Dylan does play piano rather than guitar on Black Crow Blues (probably my least favorite track). Ballad in Plain D is heart-wrenching and foreshadows his future use of song to explore the pain of love gone wrong that reaches its epitome in Blood on the Tracks more than a decade hence.

Conclusion: My perception of this album is that Dylan had written a slew of new songs and Columbia was anxious to get them on vinyl. He and Tom Wilson spent a few hours recording them without being overly critical, knowing that Dylan’s fans were not expecting Andy Williams or Johnny Mathis. There are, of course, great songs here that he’s still playing today, but they, for the most part, remain unpolished in this recording. (Dylan has said that many of these early recordings were really meant as demos.) One never knows what choices are made in the name of marketing by large corporations such as Columbia Records. With that said, it’s still a thrill to hear some of these songs, especially My Back Pages, in their original form—his young, innocent sound in contradiction to the wisdom of his words.