Now, if you were any kind of devotee of my writing (and you’re not, please stop lying to yourself <humour, it’s all good, please relax), you would notice that there is an omission from my occasional series of glibly titled fanboy pieces, ‘Best Things Ever’. #1 deals with Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ and #2 with the elixir of life that is tea, but then it jumps to #4 Joyce’s Eveline and #5 ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. What, I don’t here you ask, happened to #3?
#3 was meant to be
about the Bob Dylan album, ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, but I got stuck. Back then
(and notice I don’t say ‘back in the day’ here, because people who say ‘back in
the day’ should be shot through the throat so that they can never say it again),
I hadn’t really got the hang of the mechanics of writing and if
things didn’t immediately work out the way I wanted, I became disheartened and gave
up. Thankfully things are a lot better today. Sort of.
Anyway, at some
point I decided to complicate matters and write not just one piece about
‘Highway 61 Revisited’, but two more pieces about the albums which preceded and
followed it, ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ and ‘Blonde on Blonde’ ,
which to me constitute the three greatest albums ever recorded in a row.
Over the next three
days, I’m going to publish written pieces relating to each of those albums.
Tomorrow, finally, will be unveiled my article on ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ (which
is now written), followed by something slightly different relating to ‘Blonde on
Blonde’ on Saturday.
For today, I present
the one review I actually finished at the time, the one about ‘Bringing It All
Back Home’. I’ve left it pretty much as it was written at the time, with some
minor edits. It’s not the greatest thing I’ve ever written, but is published here in
order to contrast with tomorrow’s much delayed offering.
Cheers.
Bringing It All Back
Home
To
understand the impact of Bringing It All Home, it has to be seen in context to
Dylan’s previous releases. For fans and critics alike, The Freewheelin’ Bob
Dylan and especially The Time They Are A Changin’ were proclamations of a
generation’s disenfranchisement with the established order. With Blowin’ in the
Wind, Masters of War and A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall; With God on Our Side, Only a
Pawn in Their Game and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, Dylan vocalised
what many were thinking and saying . He was seen as spokesman for disaffected
youth in America. He was only in his early twenties himself. The issues of
racism, inequality and questionable war that had already dominated the 60’s, and
which would continue to do so throughout the decade, were all to be found here.
And like his hero, Woody Gutherie, a guitar and harmonica were all that Bob
Dylan needed to arm himself with.
With
his next release, Another Side of Bob Dylan, it appeared that he had all but
abandoned social commentary. It was a more light hearted Dylan that emerged. His
ability to put a fresh twist on the traditional love song was further
illustrated with masterpieces like It Ain’t Me Babe and Spanish Harlem Incident.
But the gaps were filled with far jokier tales, interspersed with giggles mid
verse. Already he had tired of the presumption that he was somehow the property
of the folk and civil rights movements. The chorus of My Back Pages, ‘I was so
much older then, I’m younger than that now’, seemed a direct rebuke to that
assumption.
It
was against this backdrop that Bringing It All Back Home was released. The
first two chords of Subterranean Homesick Blues, like the false start of 115
Dream, seemed to issue a warning. I’ll write politicised lyrics, Dylan was
saying, but it’s gonna cost you. The first bend of the lead guitar reveals what
that price was. The first half of Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan plays with a
full band. He’d done so before, but for never more than a track or two.
At
the time there was outrage. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems like a
small price to pay. A full band added a new dimension to Dylan’s song writing. The
title of the album is a reference to The Beatles. Chuck Berry, Elvis and others
had popularised rock n’ roll in America, but it had become stale. The Beatles
reinvented and returned it across the Atlantic. Their example galvanised Dylan
to look again at a style he had toyed with and rejected as a teenager. Now he
grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and threw out some of the most important
songs ever written. From the surreal and the abstract, to the romantic and
bitter, to the anthemic and the empowering, Bringing It All Back Home is a tour
de force which has only ever been matched by Dylan himself.
She
Belongs To Me and Love Minus Zero/No Limit are love songs of extraordinary
beauty and imagery. The former tells of a woman with the power to bend men to
her will. She is free and emancipated. In the later, nothing is expected of the
lover and yet she exceeds all expectations. Cliched romantic gestures don’t
fool her and yet she’s soft and feminine enough to desire intimacy.
Maggie’s
Farm is reminiscent of the great socialist novels of John Steinbeck, like The
Grapes of Wrath and In Dubious Battle. In Outlaw Blues, Dylan imagines being on some Australian mountain range,
foreshadowing his retreat from public life, two years later. The lyric, She’s a brown skinned women, but I love her
all the same, must has seemed repulsive to a deeply segregated America.
Side
one ends with Bob Dylan’s 115 Dream. Here he is at the height of his creativity.
The barriers between past and future;
fiction and reality break down. A melting pot of ideas which mirrors the
ethnic mix of the city in which the action takes place. Like his later epics,
the lyrics are littered with a cavalcade of characters. Captain Ahab (or Arab)
and Columbus, French women and English men. And yet the most hostile reaction
the hobo sailor receives is from a house displaying the stars and stripes. Indeed,
penetrate the abstract imagery and you
find a damming indictment of the
hostility and selfishness of American society.
If
side one is fact paced and energy packed, then side two is literally the
reverse. The rhythm section have departed and Dylan is left all but alone. Four
songs, twenty two minutes in length. Mr Tambourine Man, remains a favourite
among fans and occasional subscribers alike. The verses seem to stretch on
forever, giving a feeling of time standing still. The effect perfectly portrays
the sense of being stoned.
In
Garden of Eden, the acoustic guitar pounds out cords which accompany lyrics
that themselves are like a sledgehammer hitting the words home. And unlike the
desolation row of the following album, everybody wants to get into the
garden.
My
favourite song on the album, probably my favourite Dylan song of all, is It’s
Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding). Like Subterranean Homesick Blues, it’s lyrics
are packed full of life affirming aphorisms:
Advertising signs that con you into thinking you’re the one,
that can do what’s never been done, that can win what’s never been won,
meantime life outside goes on all around you.
Old lady judges watch people in
pairs, limited in sex they dare, to push fake morals, insult and stare, while
money doesn’t talk it swears, obscenity who really cares, propaganda, all is
phoney.
It
deserves to be played every morning to remind one not to take life to seriously.
Given his more recent guise as a salesman for lattes and red wine, perhaps Dylan
should be made to listen to it himself on a regular basis. Live, he still plays
it regularly. The line, But even the
President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked is always
guaranteed to be received by a cheer. The
first time I saw him live was the same week that President Dubya was in London and it
seemed all the more poignant.
The
album ends, as Highway 61 Revisited begins, with a tale of a girl turned
vagabond. It could almost be a prequel to Like A Rolling Stone, but
whereas the later is heavy with bitterness and sarcasm, It’s All Over Now Baby
Blue, is more tender and regretful. A fait accompli, that the narrator wishes
wasn’t so.
Dylan
had moved on and it was up to his fans to catch him up. He would never entirely
abandon the unaccompanied strumming of his first few albums, but from hereon
the energy of rock n’ roll would be the last piece in the puzzle. The style
that he had developed in isolation meant that when he came to play with a band,
he rarely explained to the other musicians what was meant to happen. This is
perfectly exemplified in 115 Dream’s false start. It leant an edge to the
performances and set the tone for everything that was to follow. In chaos, it
seems, genius emerges.
Get it done.
See Also (click on links)
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