Record: Bringing It All Back Home
Release: March 1965
Songs / length: 11 / 47:14
Mr Tambourine Man, the song Dylan omitted from his previous album as he wanted to develop it further, is a good threshold marker between the first stage in Dylan's development (politically engaged folk & blues musician) and this next one (rock & roll troubadour). If Elvis liberated the body, then Dylan liberated the mind. To paraphrase Elvis Costello, Dylan "changed the possibilities" of pop music with this album, creating songs that were no longer simply anchored in the here and now, but far richer in imagination and scope. In his notes for the 1985 Biograph compilation, Dylan says that Mr Tambourine Man was written when he was in New Orleans in February 1964 for Mardi Gras, which is two months before his first documented acid trip. Drugs were never the song's inspiration, but they helped to keep him up late, when he was at his most productive, tapping away at his typewriter.
Most importantly, Dylan put the poetry into rock & roll. Unleashing his more feminine side was the key to Dylan's mid-60s creative fertility, and part of this process was widening his sphere of influence, to take in French poets like the teenage rebel Arthur Rimbaud. There are clear echoes of Rimbaud's "bateau ivre" (drunken ship) in the "magic swirlin' ship" of Mr Tambourine Man. Rimbaud's stated ambition of bringing about a "dérèglement de tous les sens" (derangement of all the senses) was designed to make himself a reincarnation of the Greek god Prometheus, who brought the divine fire to man. Music writer Ian MacDonald, in his book People's Music, opted for a more scientific metaphor when he called Dylan a "generational evolutionary mutation activated to kick society's development up a level", but I still prefer the Promethean image of Dylan, as the figure who stole the fire of divine inspiration from the literary gods and gave it to the more mundane world of pop music. In doing so, he ennobled the art form.
As well as the lyrics, Mr Tambourine Man was also one of Dylan's most original melodies. Back in New York in March 1964, Dylan had hired an electric guitar, partly inspired by hearing The Beatles on his US road trip, and felt energised by the wider musical palette the instrument gave him. Dylan was also inspired by the release of House of the Rising Sun by The Animals and his first encounter with Johnny Cash at Newport Folk Festival in summer 1964, where Cash played electric guitar and was the hit of the festival. But, as Joe Boyd says in his book White Bicycles, rock music was truly born with Dylan's 1965 performance at Newport, shortly after the release of this album, where he was booed for playing his electric guitar. This isn't because he was the first to play the instrument at a folk festival (Cash, as mentioned above, and others had done so before him), but because it was the first truly rock & roll act of upending audience expectations and going out to perform with a devil-may-care attitude. The audience animosity to "electric Dylan" would intensify on his UK tour in 1966, but his live performance of Mr Tambourine Man is arguably even better than the one on this album.
Half of Bringing It All Back Home is electric and half acoustic, a style some people have dubbed "folk rock" and a potent sign to listeners that Dylan had moved on from his folk phase, as the video below mentions. The album's cover photo was shot by Daniel Kramer in upstate New York, at his manager Albert Grossman's house near Woodstock, where Dylan was spending more and more of his time from summer 1964 onwards. This double life allowed him to mix with both New York City society, including his girlfriend Joan Baez, and country folk, including his future wife Sara Lownds. The woman on the cover of BIABH, though, was neither Joan or Sara, but Sally, the wife of Albert Grossman. There is a link to Joan though in the pink cufflinks that Dylan is wearing in the photo, while in the song She Belongs To Me, he mentions the Egyptian ring that he gave to her. However, it seems that Joan wasn't the subject of another key love song on the record, Love Minus Zero / No Limit, which is widely accepted to be about Sara. Either way, they're both magical love songs.
Love Minus Zero / No Limit, with its beautiful lines like "my love she speaks like silence" and "people talk of situations / read books, repeat quotations / draw conclusions on the wall", was released in the same year as the overdubbed version of Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence, which includes the line: "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls". The convergence between the two classic songs is striking. What Dylan seems to be saying in the song is that Sara is not like the other girls he's met, she's not needy ("my love winks, she does not bother") or easily won over ("valentines can't buy her"), but steadfast ("without ideals or violence") and true ("like ice, like fire"). Dylan likewise sounds in awe of a woman's strength and independence on She Belongs To Me, which makes the song's title ironic; whether the artist referred to is Joan Baez or Nico (whom Dylan had first met on his European travels in 1964), or neither, Dylan definitely belonged to her. On other songs though Dylan preaches the virtue of self-reliance, most notably on Subterranean Homesick Blues: "You don’t need a weatherman / to know which way the wind blows".
This song, and Maggie's Farm, show that Dylan hadn't lost his political edge completely, but instead his references were now more oblique. One of his first electric recordings and his first US Top 40, Subterranean Homesick Blues starts with Dylan "on the pavement, thinking about the government", paranoid about spies ("the phone's tapped anyway") and undercover policemen ("watch the plain clothes"), as though he were writing a warning to young people about how to stay out of trouble with the authorities. If you listen closely to the end though, it's more a warning for the less privileged against showing too much compliance with the capitalist system ("Please her, please him, buy gifts / don’t steal, don’t lift / twenty years of schoolin’ / and they put you on the day shift"). A similar desire not to conform pervades Maggie's Farm ("Well, I try my best / To be just like I am / but everybody wants you / to be just like them").
You can also tell how much Dylan's enjoying himself, especially his new role as leader of a band, and on songs like Bob Dylan's 115th Dream, he starts by breaking down into laughter and then goes on to imagine an alternative American history. Throughout the album, Dylan's political focus appears to have shifted away from public concerns to issues of private freedom, and on the William Blake-inspired Gates of Eden he seems to be rejecting the idea that he should curtail his instincts in the hope of a better future in the afterlife, while at the same time feeling downcast about ever making sense of this world ("At dawn my lover comes to me / and tells me of her dreams / with no attempts to shovel the glimpse / into the ditch of what each one means"). What's most remarkable about the album is the quality of the songwriting – take It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), for example, "He not busy being born is busy dying", "But even the president of the United States / sometimes must have to stand naked" – while its rollicking sound makes the whole thing sound technicolored compared to earlier, more monochrome efforts. It really is a virtuoso joy.
Album rating: A
Release: March 1965
Songs / length: 11 / 47:14
Most importantly, Dylan put the poetry into rock & roll. Unleashing his more feminine side was the key to Dylan's mid-60s creative fertility, and part of this process was widening his sphere of influence, to take in French poets like the teenage rebel Arthur Rimbaud. There are clear echoes of Rimbaud's "bateau ivre" (drunken ship) in the "magic swirlin' ship" of Mr Tambourine Man. Rimbaud's stated ambition of bringing about a "dérèglement de tous les sens" (derangement of all the senses) was designed to make himself a reincarnation of the Greek god Prometheus, who brought the divine fire to man. Music writer Ian MacDonald, in his book People's Music, opted for a more scientific metaphor when he called Dylan a "generational evolutionary mutation activated to kick society's development up a level", but I still prefer the Promethean image of Dylan, as the figure who stole the fire of divine inspiration from the literary gods and gave it to the more mundane world of pop music. In doing so, he ennobled the art form.
As well as the lyrics, Mr Tambourine Man was also one of Dylan's most original melodies. Back in New York in March 1964, Dylan had hired an electric guitar, partly inspired by hearing The Beatles on his US road trip, and felt energised by the wider musical palette the instrument gave him. Dylan was also inspired by the release of House of the Rising Sun by The Animals and his first encounter with Johnny Cash at Newport Folk Festival in summer 1964, where Cash played electric guitar and was the hit of the festival. But, as Joe Boyd says in his book White Bicycles, rock music was truly born with Dylan's 1965 performance at Newport, shortly after the release of this album, where he was booed for playing his electric guitar. This isn't because he was the first to play the instrument at a folk festival (Cash, as mentioned above, and others had done so before him), but because it was the first truly rock & roll act of upending audience expectations and going out to perform with a devil-may-care attitude. The audience animosity to "electric Dylan" would intensify on his UK tour in 1966, but his live performance of Mr Tambourine Man is arguably even better than the one on this album.
Half of Bringing It All Back Home is electric and half acoustic, a style some people have dubbed "folk rock" and a potent sign to listeners that Dylan had moved on from his folk phase, as the video below mentions. The album's cover photo was shot by Daniel Kramer in upstate New York, at his manager Albert Grossman's house near Woodstock, where Dylan was spending more and more of his time from summer 1964 onwards. This double life allowed him to mix with both New York City society, including his girlfriend Joan Baez, and country folk, including his future wife Sara Lownds. The woman on the cover of BIABH, though, was neither Joan or Sara, but Sally, the wife of Albert Grossman. There is a link to Joan though in the pink cufflinks that Dylan is wearing in the photo, while in the song She Belongs To Me, he mentions the Egyptian ring that he gave to her. However, it seems that Joan wasn't the subject of another key love song on the record, Love Minus Zero / No Limit, which is widely accepted to be about Sara. Either way, they're both magical love songs.
Love Minus Zero / No Limit, with its beautiful lines like "my love she speaks like silence" and "people talk of situations / read books, repeat quotations / draw conclusions on the wall", was released in the same year as the overdubbed version of Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence, which includes the line: "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls". The convergence between the two classic songs is striking. What Dylan seems to be saying in the song is that Sara is not like the other girls he's met, she's not needy ("my love winks, she does not bother") or easily won over ("valentines can't buy her"), but steadfast ("without ideals or violence") and true ("like ice, like fire"). Dylan likewise sounds in awe of a woman's strength and independence on She Belongs To Me, which makes the song's title ironic; whether the artist referred to is Joan Baez or Nico (whom Dylan had first met on his European travels in 1964), or neither, Dylan definitely belonged to her. On other songs though Dylan preaches the virtue of self-reliance, most notably on Subterranean Homesick Blues: "You don’t need a weatherman / to know which way the wind blows".
This song, and Maggie's Farm, show that Dylan hadn't lost his political edge completely, but instead his references were now more oblique. One of his first electric recordings and his first US Top 40, Subterranean Homesick Blues starts with Dylan "on the pavement, thinking about the government", paranoid about spies ("the phone's tapped anyway") and undercover policemen ("watch the plain clothes"), as though he were writing a warning to young people about how to stay out of trouble with the authorities. If you listen closely to the end though, it's more a warning for the less privileged against showing too much compliance with the capitalist system ("Please her, please him, buy gifts / don’t steal, don’t lift / twenty years of schoolin’ / and they put you on the day shift"). A similar desire not to conform pervades Maggie's Farm ("Well, I try my best / To be just like I am / but everybody wants you / to be just like them").
You can also tell how much Dylan's enjoying himself, especially his new role as leader of a band, and on songs like Bob Dylan's 115th Dream, he starts by breaking down into laughter and then goes on to imagine an alternative American history. Throughout the album, Dylan's political focus appears to have shifted away from public concerns to issues of private freedom, and on the William Blake-inspired Gates of Eden he seems to be rejecting the idea that he should curtail his instincts in the hope of a better future in the afterlife, while at the same time feeling downcast about ever making sense of this world ("At dawn my lover comes to me / and tells me of her dreams / with no attempts to shovel the glimpse / into the ditch of what each one means"). What's most remarkable about the album is the quality of the songwriting – take It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), for example, "He not busy being born is busy dying", "But even the president of the United States / sometimes must have to stand naked" – while its rollicking sound makes the whole thing sound technicolored compared to earlier, more monochrome efforts. It really is a virtuoso joy.
Album rating: A
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