Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home

"You sound like you're having a good old time," a purist Dylan fan is spotted telling the artist in the documentary Don't Look Back just after the release of this, his first (half-)electric album. He certainly does. Updating Chicago blues forms with hilarious, tough lyrics--in fact, all but stealing the meter of Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" for "Subterranean Homesick Blues"--on one side, dropping some of his most devastating solo acoustic science ("It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Mr. Tambourine Man") on the other, the first of Dylan's two 1965 long-players broke it right down with style, substance, and elegance. --Rickey Wright Amazon.com

There Are No Sins Outside The Gates Of Eden

It seems hard to believe now both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). It is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.

Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan's role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to comment on a couple of songs here. Obviously, no one will ever really unravel what the meaning of Subterranean Homesick Blues is about except that it has produced one of the most famous lines of the 1960's- `you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows' (although if the truth be known you do) that I am fond of using anytime I get a change to use it as a political cutting edge. Love Minus Zero No Limit is one of the great modern love songs that will along with a few others define what love, longing and companionship meant for our generation ('my love is like some raven at my window with a broken wing' says more above love than half the sonnets every written).

Needless to say Gates of Eden is the modern equivalent of John Milton's Paradise Lost (and I do not mean to use that praise hyperbolically). If Milton was explaining the ways of god to man in the aftermath of the defeat of the English Revolution then Dylan was attempting to give his take on the eternal verities for modern times. May 23, 2008

1965 masterpiece marking Dylan's transition from folkie to rocker

1965 masterpiece from Bob Dylan marking his transition from folk singer to rocker. Contains not only his greatest song "Mr. Tambourine Man" but other works of genius "Subterranean Homesick Blues", "Maggie's Farm", "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" and finishes appropriately with "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". Dylan was on fire at this time and was to follow this up just five months later with "Highway 61 Revisited". Great album cover as well.

Trivia: This album has been released in some countries as the more prosaically titled "Subterranean Homesick Blues". April 11, 2008

Bob Dylan Invents Folk Rock

This Record chronicles a change in Bob Dylan's style. The poetry is still here, but now Dylan has hired a band, and a darned good one to boot. He's gone electric and he's invented folk rock. This turned off many of his fans, but apparently it got him even more, because with this record, Dylan has finally broken into Billboard's top ten.

Apparently Dylan didn't want to completely turn off his old fans, because half of this album is acoustic and half electric, however we won't see another acoustic album from him for twenty-seven years when he does a beautiful album, covering traditional songs called Good As I Been to You. Though he does a great original acoustic song, "Dark Eyes," on Empire Burlesque, but that is still way off in the future. And, of course, a few left over acoustic songs come out on compilations and there are those three songs recorded with Happy Traum on Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, but really, this record was the last of the folky Dylan. From here on out he records with a band, aiming for the top spot on the charts, his only competition in the minds of many, the Beatles. April 10, 2008

Bob Dylan: At His Best

Long having denied the implication that he created the folk-rock genre, rather giving the credit to Gene Clark of The Byrds, this release by the Bard from Hibbing would undoubtedly serve as the cornerstone of folk-rock through the ages! "Bringing It All Back Home" continues Dylan's introspection from "Another Side Of Bob Dylan" while adding electric instruments to the mix (a fact that, for some reason, would be acceptable to fans on record but not live at Newport). Here, Dylan can be at his most romantic one minute, with the Baez-inspired "Love Minus Zero / No Limit" or "She Belongs To Me," and simultaneously prophetic and surreal the next!

Introducing classics like "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Maggie's Farm" alongside concert stalwarts "Gates Of Eden" and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," this release would be the first of a trilogy ended all too soon by Dylan's supposed "motorpsycho nitemare." The other two albums in this trilogy are, of course, "Highway 61 Revisited" and the double-disc "Blonde On Blonde."

Many will say that this is Dylan at his finest, placing the artist into an uncomfortable categorization or time capsule, but he would continue to produce highly creative and innovative work both with The Band and The Traveling Wilburys, as well as via his solo career throughout the 1970's and 80's. "Bringing It All Back Home" merely brings folk-rock to the forefront, introduces his audience to "Another Side Of Bob Dylan," and provides some excellent entertainment for the unsuspecting yet open-minded listener. April 1, 2008

Dylan Goes Electric !

Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisted" and "Blonde On Blonde" are considered by many to be his best albums. But, in some ways, this was his most momentous and important. It is here that Dylan "goes electric", with the first side of the album made up of blues based rockers and sardonic ballads. The second side is acoustic. But here too Dylan is transfroming, reaching a new level of lyrical and musical artistry.

Prior to Dylan rock and roll was considered by many, incuding some in the counter-culture, to be bubblegum pop music. But Dylan changed all that by combining the depth and substance of his words with the rhythm and energy of rock to create something entirely new and better. American music, and perhaps American culture itself, would never be the same.

This album is chock full of classic songs like "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "Maggie's Farm". "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" is perhaps my favorite love song of all time, with lines like - "My love she laughs like the flowers/Valentines can't buy her." Forget this bling-bling nonsense, that is what real romance is all about!

"Mr Tambourine Man" and "Baby Blue" have Dylan experimenting with surrealistic word play and imagery, a type of song writing that would go on to influence the Grateful Dead and many other great rock bands. But "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is perhaps the most glorious of all the songs here. The music providing a powerful underpinning for radical, extradorinary lyrics like "If my thought-dreams could be seen/they would probably put my head in a guillotine."

Some called Dylan a "sell out" for turning from folk to rock. But the truth is that he was actually just taking it to the next level of artistic accomplishment, still willing to challenge mainstream society but now going beyond mere political rhetoric to explore what it means to be human in the heart and soul as well as the mind. Yes, it was Dylan who took music to the next level and we are all the better for it. January 19, 2008

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