A Contrarian's View of Dylan

And once again Bob's shifted gears on us. Gone are the electric guitars that so inflamed the Newport audience. At the height of psychedelia, Bob the rebel comes out with what in the 90s would be considered an Unplugged band. Also the tenor of the lyrics has changed. Instead of the random fleeting images of Blonde On Blonde, we have a set of fairly literal straightforward story-songs, the original definition of ballad. Regardless of how interesting or dull the events described, you could always tell exactly what was going on. Oddly enough, the one song with the most surreal lyrics, "All Along The Watchtower" was also the biggest hit (not for Dylan, but Jimi Hendrix). This time around Bob is only using a bass and drums in addition to his acoustic guitar and harmonica. Only while Bob's earliest albums, which didn't even have that rhythm section, managed to sound interesting and diverse, this new arrangement strangles and limits Bob. While Bob would make this line-up work to great effect on Blood On The Tracks, here it has a very static and dull quality musically. Most of the songs are kind of hard to tell apart from each other: the title track, "As I Went Out One Morning", "I Am A Lonesome Hobo", "Dear Landlord", "Drifter's Escape", "I Pity The Immigrant", "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine". As for "The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest", goes on way too long, particularly if you find the lyrics to be unimpressive. By the time the Pete Drake shows up for the last two songs (even though usually I think of the pedal steel guitar and the audio equivalent of a headache), it's almost a relief to get some more scope. A couple of songs are worth mentioning. "All Along The Watchtower" manages to be just as wild and heavy as Hendrix's version, even without all the distortion and effects. "The Wicked Messenger" (my personal favorite) is just a simple riff, repeated with such single-mindedness that it becomes something much more impressive. "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" could be seen as an interesting one-off genre experiment if it weren't for the album that follows.

American Kafka

John Wesley Harding is an audacious album, even by a man famous for his audacity and perversity. It pretends to be a folk album, but it's one of the most unique recordings I know. (Acoustic guitar, harmonica, (acoustic?) bass, and restrained drums rarely combine so magically.) It pretends to contain topical songs, but the lyrical meanings are more elusive than allusive. Others have described the dreamlike quality of the recordings, so I'll focus on the lyrics.



Franz Kafka combined paradox, allusion to classical and biblical myth (cf. his shorts on Neptune or on the Tower of Babel), and an unparalleled sense of absurdity and irony to create some of the most striking short stories (many fewer than five paragraphs) in any language. I don't mean to suggest that Dylan intentionally imitated Kafka's style for this album, but in a way he channels it.



Dylan draws heavily upon Western myths and symbols (St. Augustine, John Wesley Hardin, Tom Paine, the drifter, the landlord, the hobo, Eli - New Englander or prophet, you decide) and invents his own (Frankie Lee and Judas Priest). As Kafka did with his characters and objects, Dylan creates an alternate reality, where all expectations are wrong and anything can happen. So Tom Paine, abolitionist, is a slaveholder; St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church, becomes a martyr in a cloak of solid gold; John Wesley Hardin, bloodthirsty and unredeemable murderer, becomes a friend to the poor.



It's true that Dylan's earlier lyrics sound like Western culture processed by a Waring blender -- Highway 61 Revisited's title track alone puts a dozen familiar characters into bizarre situations -- but this collection of songs is far more sober, pastoral, and focused. Each song is about one character or situation, and that topic is fully developed. The references aren't used to amuse or entertain, but are treated seriously in their new context.



One further new feature of this bundle of songs is that each carries a strong moral message. Of course, this is Dylan, and that moral message is clear as mud in several songs. The conviction and focus of Dylan's voice tells you more about this moral purpose than any analysis I can make.



This album is, like Kafka's work, chock-ful of witty observations, one-liners, and strange comments. Like Kafka, though, the album's greatest strength lies in the atmosphere of confusion and absurdity these create. One line, the last line of "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest", sums up the album wonderfully: "Nothing was revealed."



The last two songs are exceptions to the above comments: they're fairly simple slide-guitar country songs, pretty but not too substantial. Think of them as a trailer for Nashville Skyline, if you will.

difficult

i really wish that bob dylan would have developed this sound more before retreating to nashville skyline. "all along the watchtower" is one of his best songs; i prefer it to the hendrix version. "as i went out one morning" is also fiery and brilliant. if it weren't for songs 7-9, i'd give the album five stars [as it is it's a 8.5/8.75 album]. people harp on the title track - which i don't understand. i would have liked to see what dylan would have accomplished in the late 60's if he followed through w/ the innovative rock featured on HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED [the greatest album of all time] and BLONDE ON BLONDE, but i'm not one to let that tarnish a perfectly good album. "the ballad of frankie lee and judas priest" is also unfairly harped on. it's a brilliant song. another thing that's interesting to me while reading these reviews is to hear people saying that the songs are straight forward. they are most certainly narratives, but straight forward? many of these tales [and tales would be the correct word] are quite surreal - "as i went out one morning", "i dreamed i saw st. augustine", "all along the watchtower", "the ballad of frankie lee and judas priest", "the drifter's escape", and "the wicked messenger" are all anything but straight forward.



i really don't know what the hell he was doing on songs 7-9, but every other song is brilliant. 9 brilliant songs and 3 forgettable songs. granted, BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME only had one or two forgettable songs ["on the road again" and maybe "bob dylan's 115th dream"]; HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED had no forgettable songs; and BLONDE ON BLONDE only had one forgettable song ["sad eyed lady of the lowlands"]. still, this album is more than worth the price of admission. there are many highlights, and no other dylan album sounds like it. that's all you need to know.

Pretty good Dylan - not his peak.

This was a retreat for Dylan. After his accident, he no longer was breaking barriers and this was a retrenchment away from rock and roll and back into a simpler sound. It's quality music, but not Dylan at his peak and most adventurous.

Remaster no good? Stick with the original...

After hearing NOTHING good about the remastered version of this CD, I decided to stick with my original copy. But all remasters aside, this album from 1967 (less than a week from 1968) now stands as one of Dylan's greats. Some consider it his last GREAT work ("Nashville Skyline" followed it, and then "Self-Portrait" and "New Morning"). At the time his core fans must have thought something was a little off. The monumental "Blonde on Blonde" preceded it in 1966 with its raucous mood, catchy incredibly Dylan-drawled melodies, and burgeoning instrumentation that lashes out like solar prominence from speakers and headphones. Juxtaposed with the full frontal attack of "Blonde On Blonde", "John Wesley Harding" seems introverted, introspective, and exceedingly pared down. Of course Dylan was just being the never repetitive Dylan. And of course he was also in a horrific motorcycle accident following the release of "Blonde On Blonde". Nonetheless, according to Dylan's amazing "Chronicles Vol. 1" he was still seeking escape from his reputation as a "prophet" and "savior" in 1967. Many big names at the time, including Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and Phil Ochs, were publicly calling on Dylan to stop flirting with the mainstream and "lead them". Dylan didn't have the same calling. He withdrew. Maybe "John Wesley Harding" is a manifestation of this withdrawal and introversion?



The album is pared down. It is laid back. It is anything but raucous. It even feels lonely. Dylan's voice is very different than on "Blonde On Blonde". The lyrics focus on the down-and-out, the have-nots, and the deprived. They glisten with Dylan's usual lyrical brilliance. The instrumentation is minimal: acoustic guitars, bass, harmonica, piano here and there, understated drums, and Dylan crooning over the mix. Dylan produced nothing else like it before or after. It isn't quite country, but it presages "Nashville Skyline". It is, in the end, a transitional album, and one of Dylan's many. Like "Another Side of Bob Dylan" and "Bringing It All Back Home" it points to the future and has almost nothing to do with the past. The last song, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight", supports this, and provides an open door to Dylan's full blown country phase (it could have fit very well onto "Nashville Skyline").



After "John Wesley Harding" Dylan never went back. He kept on developing and changing, leaving his works behind him like a massive treasure trail. He never reappropriated them for artistic or commercial gain. He even said that he never could play "All Along the Watchtower" the same again after hearing Jimi Hendrix's 1968 version. So the version here was very short lived. In retrospect, "John Wesley Harding" fills out Dylan's 1960's output appropriately. And it remains one of his best. Hopefully he'll write about it in "Chronicles, Vol. 2".



One last thing: the cover. It's probably one of Dylan's strangest and most cryptic. Dylan wears the same jacket from the cover of "Blonde On Blonde". And legend has it that on the original British pressing one can clearly see the faces of the Beatles upside-down in the tree under the letters "le" (the CD obscures this, unfortunately). Rolling Stone supposedly stated "Dylan Record Puts Beatles up a Tree". The photo was taken in Woodstock (supposedly Sally Grossman's backyard) with two men from Bengal (called "The Bauls of Bengal") and a local carpenter who happened to be there. Why Dylan used it for an album cover who knows? Something more for "Chronicles, Vol. 2", I guess.