LaRM day 120 (Bob Dylan)

So we begin our Dylan odyssey with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). It's going to come as a surprise to see just how random the selection of Dylan records that we own is. There's loads of big ones missing and yet we've got Oh Mercy. There's no explaining it. Anyway, Freewheelin' is, of course, a superb album and no matter how uncomfortable in retrospect I may feel about just what Dylan's motivations for anything he ever did really were, there's just no denying a) what a game changer this and the previous debut self-titled album were and b) what a brilliant record it is, no matter what the context. Everything here is exceptionally good, and although most people prefer Another Side, The Times They Are A-Changing or the debut, I think Freewheelin' is the absolute peak of Dylan's voice, guitar and harmonica work. Of the big songs, the obvious greats are 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' but I prefer the lesser numbers, 'Corrina, Corrina' and 'Oxford Town' particularly, and the vicious 'Don't Think Twice It's Alright' (which gives bleak forewarning of Dylan's later physical demonstrations of his attitude to women) is my favourite song of the Zim's by far. (btw, due to a certain level of scrupulous attention on the part of Dylan and his record companies, there's no internet presence for the man UNLESS YOU PAY UP SCUMBAGS. Just another facet of the unpredictability of everyman's champion, Bob Dylan. Woody Guthrie would be so proud of him, don't you think? Therefore, no links.)

Freewheelin' is the only one of the first five Dylan albums that I own, so we move on to the second album he released in 1965, and the first fully electrified and with a full band throughout, Highway 61 Revisited. Again, it goes without saying that this is a fantastic album, and again, taking popular music into new and uncharted waters, and setting the template for the folk-rock that would become such a popular choice thereafter. As befitted the man, as the times changed and new bandwagons arrived, so too did Dylan's approach and music change and the folk element is pretty much sidelined in favour of a snide, cool attitude and rough rock. Once again, it makes no difference what I think of his intentions, Highway 61 Revisited really is one of the truly great albums. While there are one or two miscalculations in my opinion (the legendary 'Ballad of a Thin Man' which is often cited as one of his finest songs, I personally think is terrible), the album is essentially a remarkable piece of work and the good songs are among his very best ('Like a Rolling Stone', 'From a Buick 6' and the title track are phenomenal, and 'Desolation Row' set the foundation for some of his best work to come).

Dylan's assimilation of rock culminated and peaked with the sprawling Blonde On Blonde (1966). If anything, critical opinion of Blonde On Blonde merely increases with time and it is certainly one of the defining records of the 1960's, creating a series of formats which have remained not only hardy but essential for huge amounts of pop music since its recording. Pretty much everything is thrown into the album, garage rock, country, blues, anything Dylan could use and manipulate he grabbed and threw in. And it all works gloriously, it's a simply incredible record. It's all helped enormously by the band (ie, the Band, who were still Ronnie Hawkins' Hawks at the time) who create real texture and form for the songs. Lyrically Dylan was moving further and further into imagistic introspection and there's no trace of the hard-fighting, hard-talking political motivation of before (that was so yesterday, man) and instead we have some truly affecting poetic reflection (I of course use the word poetic strictly in the context of pop music lyrics) and the whole album works both in its big rock numbers and its slower, more introverted pieces. Standouts? Well, there's the epic, drifting, hazy 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' (that'll be a song he wrote for his muse (and later wife) Sara, as we'll find out later. Shame he apparently ended up punching her in the face and moving his other lover onto their estate. Ever the charmer, Dylan), 'I Want You' and 'Visions of Johanna', which really is a marvellous piece of work.

The second career overiew to that point, Greatest Hits Vol. II (1971) is particularly interesting for the inclusion of almost an entire side's worth of new material, all of which is regarded as being classic Dylan. Indeed it's surprising to think that 'Down in the Flood', I Shall Be Released', and 'You Ain't Goin' Nowhere' all made their first appearance on a greatest hits collection and not studio albums. Each one of those new songs is superb, and the rest of the choices on the album (which covers material from 1964 onwards, and takes in material from most of the many albums up to 1970) are exceptionally well selected. What's also odd about Greatest Hits Vol. II is that virtually nothing on it was a hit, it's composed mostly of album tracks that had become famous as opposed to single releases. In any event, it acts in many ways as a better career overview than a singles compilation would have done, because it takes in all of Dylan's stylistic shifts and presents them glaringly juxtaposed, and it's a very revealing demonstration.

Dylan's soundtrack to the Sam Peckinpah film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) is something of a surprise. Despite being a relatively slight record it does demonstrate Dylan's ability to utilise source material in a way that one wouldn't really expect. For a start it's clear that although unprepared to compromise his fundamental approach to writing music, he took the brief seriously and constructed a soundtrack entirely appropriate to the film. The tunes are shot through with a fictional version of old-fashioned country music that entirely suits the post-pioneer mentality that the film depicts, and are for the most part lightly lovely pieces of music. It's a gentle, elegaic mood that Dylan creates and although listening to the soundtrack as an album is a relatively slight experience, it is also a calm and thoughtful one. Mostly instrumental, when 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' appears it's slightly jarring, in that not only has its familiarity impaired it, but it also strangely breaks the languid mood of the album.

And Dylan, day 1, ends with one of the absolute highlights of his entire career, Blood on the Tracks (1975). Crumbs, what an album this is. Ostensibly (and somewhat abstractly) an overview of the nasty, brutal and tasteless demise of his marriage to Sara, it's an album overloaded with bitterness, recrimination, spite, self-loathing, blame and disgrace and it's absolutely brilliant. But that turbulent emotional element is strictly lyrically speaking, the tunes are just lovely. There's not a single song on Blood on the Tracks that isn't perfect within its own framework, every one is a miniature masterpiece, each revealing a new facet of either the artistic, personal, musical or emotional make-up of Dylan, and in many ways, despite its occasionally cryptic exterior, its probably the closest thing to honesty that Dylan ever allowed an audience access to. Quite apart from the importance of the idea of these songs, they also happen to be some of the most accessible and beautifully constructed and simply engaging of any that he has ever written. It's an album of almost endless treasures and it seems such a tragedy that such an unpleasant and disappointingly mundane situation should have led to such a remarkably accomplished, and such a remarkably universal set of songs. There is absolutely no point in singling out particular highlights so instead I'll just say that 'You're a Big Girl Now' and 'Meet Me in the Morning' are maybe slightly less extraordinary than the other eight on the album.