Dylan at 80

[Sits]

He freewheels into his ninth decade next Monday, May 24th.

Where to start?

[Benjm]

6Music has a drivetime, aka cooktime, feature where they play through a classic album in sequence. One day last week the choice was Bringing it All Back Home. I know most of the songs from it but couldn't swear to having listened to the whole in order before. What struck me, listening while chopping vegetables, was how fantastically exciting it still sounds at 55 years remove. When I was a teen getting into music, discussion of Dylan tended to focus on the dry question of his work's standing as literature or attempts to pinpoint when he had definitively lost it (this was the mid-80s, some time before he was deemed to have come good again). The sheer exhilaration of his best work was rather undersold.

[ad hoc]

Bringing it All Back Home is my favourite Dylan album bar none. Absolutely brilliant

[Stumpy Pepys]

I still worry that, when he's no longer with us, we'll see headlines like: "Protest singer Bob Dylan dies."

I mean how many LPs of 'protest songs' did he make? Two?

Anyroad, Bringing it All Back Home or Blood on the Tracks for me.

[Sits]

Blood on the Tracks is head and shoulders on top, but the next closest for me is Blonde on Blonde.

The former is still one of my most regularly played albums.

[jameswba]

I'm not sure Bringing It All Back Home is my favourite as such, but it is the one where I always wonder what it must have been like to hear the songs for the first time aged, say, 18. Subterranean Homesick Blues, Love Minus Zero, She Belongs to Me, It's All Right Ma... ; yes, they're exhilarating whenever you hear them, but how must they have seemed all those years ago?

Just last year, he came out with an absolute masterpiece as well.

[Sits]

jameswba nice post, and now I think about it, whilst that’s not in my Top Two of his albums, Love Minus Zero are maybe my favourite lyrics of his. Maybe.

My love she speaks like silence,
Without ideals or violence,
She doesn't have to say she's faithful,
Yet she's true, like ice, like fire.
People carry roses,
Make promises by the hours,
My love she laughs like the flowers,
Valentines can't buy her.
In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly,
She knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all.
The cloak and dagger dangles,
Madams light the candles.
In ceremonies of the horsemen,
Even the pawn must hold a grudge.
Statues made of match sticks,
Crumble into one another,
My love winks, she does not bother,
She knows too much to argue or to judge.
The bridge at midnight trembles,
The country doctor rambles,
Bankers' nieces seek perfection,
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring.
The wind howls like a hammer,
The night blows cold and rainy,
My love she's like some raven
At my window with a broken wing.

Those last four lines, oh my God.

[Duncan Gardner]

4 BIABH
3 Blonde on Blonde
2 Blood on the Tracks
1 Highway 61

[G-Man]

Well, a good time to mention my collection of Dylan songs covered by others.

[Amor de Cosmos]

jameswba nice post, and now I think about it, whilst that’s not in my Top Two of his albums, Love Minus Zero are maybe my favourite lyrics of his. Maybe.

My love she speaks like silence,
Without ideals or violence,
She doesn't have to say she's faithful,
Yet she's true, like ice, like fire.
People carry roses,
Make promises by the hours,
My love she laughs like the flowers,
Valentines can't buy her.
In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly,
She knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all.
The cloak and dagger dangles,
Madams light the candles.
In ceremonies of the horsemen,
Even the pawn must hold a grudge.
Statues made of match sticks,
Crumble into one another,
My love winks, she does not bother,
She knows too much to argue or to judge.
The bridge at midnight trembles,
The country doctor rambles,
Bankers' nieces seek perfection,
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring.
The wind howls like a hammer,
The night blows cold and rainy,
My love she's like some raven
At my window with a broken wing.

Those last four lines, oh my God.

Heh!

Bringing it all Back Home was the first Dylan album I bought, though I was deeply familiar with his first four, as they were played constantly at college and parties. I had most of his songs memorized from those albums and still do.

I sent those lyrics to Love Minus Zero, No Limit to my then girlfriend. Her reaction was pretty much "Wha...?" We split up shortly afterwards. The thing about BIABH is that was released just six months after Another Side of Bob Dylan and six months before Highway 61 Revisited. Dylan's creative output has always been remarkable, but back then it was nothing short of uncanny.

[diggedy derek]

Just listening to Bringing It All Back Home, the amount of excitement packed into the first minute. It's crazy how short Subterranean Homesick Blues is.

Those 60s albums were recorded absurdly quickly. Sometimes they'd do 12-14 takes of each track, but often with different arrangements or time signatures. They didn't spend a long time honing these performances. They just wanted to capture the heat.

[jameswba]

Yes, and I think Dylan himself found it uncanny. There's that 2004 interview with him where he quotes the opening lines to It's All Right Ma... and says :

“Try to sit down and write something like that. There’s a magic to that, and it’s not Siegfried and Roy kind of magic, you know? It’s a different kind of a penetrating magic. And, you know, I did it. I did it at one time. I did it once, and I can do other things now. But, I can’t do that.”

He wasn't that faraway from doing it again mind, with songs like Not Dark Yet, Things Have Changed, Long and Wasted Years, Murder Most Foul etc Those would be the peak of anyone else's career.

But he that knew neither he, nor anyone, could ever better this,

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon

or the lines Sits highlighted from Love Minus Zero.

Incredible.

[San Bernardhinault]

There aren't many acts where I can come up with a reasonable top 10 of albums.

Blonde on Blonde
Blood on the Tracks
Highway 61
Bringing It All Back Home
Oh Mercy
John Wesley Harding
Modern Times
Desire
Time Out Of Mind
Love And Theft

[anton pulisov]

Well, a good time to mention my collection of Dylan songs covered by others.

The fact that you've made that huge list of covers, and managed not to mention my favourite one, is testament to the massive output of quality by the man.

(Changing of the Guards by Patti Smith, although you noted the Frank Black version)

[Amor de Cosmos]

Yes, and I think Dylan himself found it uncanny. There's that 2004 interview with him where he quotes the opening lines to It's All Right Ma... and says :

“Try to sit down and write something like that. There’s a magic to that, and it’s not Siegfried and Roy kind of magic, you know? It’s a different kind of a penetrating magic. And, you know, I did it. I did it at one time. I did it once, and I can do other things now. But, I can’t do that.”

Yup. It's always a leap of faith to take Dylan at his word, but it rings true. He mentions in Chronicles that a pivotal moment for the mid-60s songs was hearing Kurt Weil's Pirate Jenny in a show his girlfriend Suze Rotolo worked on. "It wasn't a protest or topical song and there was no love for people in it... This heavy song was a new stimulant for my senses, indeed very much like a folk song but a folk song from a different gallon jug in a different back yard." The man was, is, and always has been a musical sponge. Soaking up fresh water then squeezing it out as wine in a gnat's heartbeat.

[Sits]

I'm not sure Bringing It All Back Home is my favourite as such, but it is the one where I always wonder what it must have been like to hear the songs for the first time aged, say, 18. Subterranean Homesick Blues, Love Minus Zero, She Belongs to Me, It's All Right Ma... ; yes, they're exhilarating whenever you hear them, but how must they have seemed all those years ago?

Amor de Cosmos was the person who sprang to mind immediately when I read this. And a friend of ours when we were back in England who was around 15 years older - so would be around the same age as AdC. I remember going for dinner at his and his wife’s house, and later in the evening he showed me his Dylan albums and played some. He played Desire and Street Legal but it’s the records themselves I remember. The sleeve of his original Another Side was yellowed, creased and held together with Sellotape. He had such love for those records.

[jwdd27]

My Dad was/is a fan and my introduction to Dylan was through his repeated playing of "Before The Flood", which is in effect "The Best of Bob Dylan (Live)". As such I have only a vague knowledge of which track comes from which album, I'm aware that there is a vast treasure trove of great songs I've never heard if I ever had the time or inclination to listen to the albums.

I saw him live at the Phoenix Festival in 1995, and he was pretty ropey, although his finale of "Rainy Day Women" went down well with a crowd who were very much down with the idea of everybody getting stoned.

Two years later he wrote and recorded "Make You Feel My Love", which has since been covered by over 450 artists and become a standard, which is not bad for an artist supposedly well past his creative peak - I can't think of many others of his generation who were still recording worthwhile material in their mid 50s (and that song was essentially an album filler, it wasn't promoted to any extent).

[Amor de Cosmos]

His performances do seem to be... umm, maybe eccentric is a kinder term than inconsistent. His insistence on re-imagining his back catalog never really goes down well, even though everyone expects it by now. He explained why he does it in his bio, and it makes sense particularly for someone who's essentially on a never-ending tour. I've only seen him three times. At the Isle of Wight festival in 1969. Which was massively hyped, as his first appearance in the UK since his motor cycle accident and two weeks after Woodstock was bound to be. Inevitably it was a bit underwhelming. I was way back in the crowd watching a white fluorescent dot. He was wearing his Nashville Skyline voice, which was great for that album's material, but not so much for the older stuff. Saw the Desire tour here in Van in 76. He was incandescent, or maybe it was just the combo of him and Scarlet Rivera, I took way too many 'shrooms that night. The last time was 13 years ago on my 60th birthday. He rearranged the music every single song and arthritis meant he couldn't play guitar, but it was still a blast.

I kinda think Dylan, for people my age, is like Picasso was for my grandfather's generation. They were —are —both era defining artists. Known universally by a single name — love 'em or hate 'em — everyone always knows who you're talking about. Both still producing interesting work at the sunset of their time on this planet. Dylan is also a lifelong a touchstone for me and my cohort "What's he doing?" We have to know, even if we don't especially like it. Sure there have been other stars in the firmament but none have burned so brightly for so long, so consistently and felt so necessary. .

[Sits]

I got lucky the first time I saw him, on a work trip to NY in Jan 98. I read in Time Out that he was playing a/the(?) small theatre in Madison Square Garden that evening in a double bill with Van Morrison. I basically bunked off work from about 2pm, queued for a cancellation ticket and got it. It was the Time Out Of Mind period and he was fantastic, from the opening Tangled Up In Blue. Van had opened and been grumpily underwhelming, the best part of his set being the end where he and Bob duetted on Blue Suede Shoes as Carl Perkins had died that day.

The other time I wasn’t so lucky, an outdoor show in Centennial Park Sydney, in 2001. It was pretty awful, leaving aside the fact it rained part of the time. All the songs sounded the same because of his vocal delivery which was a croaky squeak, or a squeaky croak. But, hey maybe it’s the best he could do. I’m very glad I caught the first one.

Edit: apologies as this definitely is not the first time I’ve described these shows on OTF.

[Nefertiti2]

[jameswba]

I've only seen him the once, at Kosice's ice-hockey stadium in 2014. I wish it was more than once, given how the experience is so different each time. I've seen objectively better concerts, including by Leonard Cohen in Bratislava five years earlier, but it was still a great night. Half the set list was made up of tracks from Tempest, released the year before, but he played stuff from each of his decades, including She Belongs to Me and Simple Twist of Fate, with All Along the Watchtower and Blowin' in the Wind making up the encore. The highlight was Long and Wasted Years though ; there was a stage rush for that one. It's been my favourite of his post-2000 songs ever since.

[1974ddr]

I've seen him a number of times, but my favourite was (I think) 1986 with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Roger McGuinn opened, unannounced as far as I was aware; I rolled up at the NEC (for that was the venue) thinking they were playing Byrds hits over the PA, walked in and there was the man himself. Followed by The Heartbreakers, a Dylan solo set, and a joint electric set. He played three nights, during which I believe he played about forty songs as the set was dramatically different each night. Different times. Nowadays it's fifteen to twenty songs over the course of a tour.
Edit: looked it up, it was 1987.

[Artificial Hipster]

First one I bought was Bob Dylan At Budokan as I recognised a lot of the titles on it. I could easily have given up there and then but fortunately I picked up a cheap copy of Bringing It All Back Home shortly afterwards (one of several albums from that era I own that have triangles cut from one corner - no idea what that was about?) which was when the love affair truly began. Within a few months I was standing in the vicinity of the penalty spot at the Gallowgate End at St James Park staring wide-eyed and hang-jawed at the mesmeric figure on stage, barely able to believe he was real. July '84 it was, I'd just turned 17. He even spoke. Once. Something about someone having just been knocked right out of their socks. I think a shoe had been thrown at him or something. I remember it as though it was yesterday.

Blood On The Tracks has spent the subsequent 37 years doing everything within its majestic power to dislodge the electric trilogy from their shifting positions as Dylan's top 3 albums but whatever unearthly power it is that they possess it's never quite been able to make it.

[treibeis]

The wind howls like a hammer,
The night blows cold and rainy,
My love she's like some raven
At my window with a broken wing.[/i]

Those last four lines, oh my God.

Yes, "oh my God" is about right.

"Howls like a hammer"? Fuck off.

[danielmak]

Masters of War is still my favorite in terms of powerful songwriting, especially these two parts:


You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
While the young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud



How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do


The second part that I pasted is so good because he knows the response that is coming and he's answering that response.

And I love this bootleg (1-3) version of Tangled up in Blue -- the line about tying the laces of my shoes is delivered so well.