Album: Nashville Skyline
Recorded: February 1969
Released: April 1969
Songs / length: 10 / 27:14
Nashville Skyline was a musical departure for Dylan in so many ways. All the visionary mid-60s work, including the roots music of the Basement Tapes and John Wesley Harding, was replaced with a more homespun approach. Dylan's songwriting is looser, more cliched and less precise, and his voice smoother, fuller and deeper – there's a warmth of tone that feels out of keeping with the rest of his 60s work. Given his prolific output during the decade, the gap between JWH's release in late 1967 and the recording of Nashville Skyline in early 1969 was a relatively long one for Dylan. What was he doing in the interim? During a time of great upheaval – Martin Luther King Jr murdered in April 1968, the Vietnam war, Nixon voted into office in January 1969 – Dylan was mainly home in Woodstock focused on raising his three kids with his wife Sara.
 |
| Dylan, Sara and Jesse in 1968 |
Nashville Skyline is Dylan's first complete embrace of country music. Robert Shelton, in his Dylan biography No Direction Home, says: “I had always found Dylan more aware of the country currents than most other city folk singers … [around 1961]. He often alluded to Hank Snow, Hank Thompson, Bill Andersen … He repeatedly told associates that he regarded country music as the coming thing, long before he cut Nashville Skyline.” Though country was still "hick" music in 1968, things were changing. Dylan was one of the early country rock pioneers, with the last two songs on JWH, but it was The Byrds and mid-1968 release, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, that made the genre even more popular. The Flying Burrito Brothers released The Gilded Palace of Sin, arguably the greatest country rock record, the same month that Dylan was recording Nashville Skyline.
Dylan says in his Chronicles that the album was an attempt to get people off his back, and its relatively short running time does give it a throwaway feel. He seems much more relaxed, notably on tracks like Country Pie: "Saddle me up a big white goose! / Tie me on her and turn her loose! / Oh! me, oh! my / Love that Country Pie!" There's a softer focus to the songs too, which almost feels out of character for Dylan; all the restlessness of his other 60s albums seems to have been jettisoned, summed up in the title of album closer, Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You. His songwriting really couldn't have drifted further from the bitterness of It Ain't Me, Babe or the sneer of Like A Rolling Stone, and the lyrics of I Threw It All Away are remarkably straightforward and simple : "Love is all there is / it makes the world go round".
Johnny Cash wrote the liner notes to Nashville Skyline and introduced Dylan as a guest on The Johnny Cash Show around the time of the album's release. As mentioned previously, Dylan and Cash were acquainted from the mid-60s onwards, and in films like Eat The Document – which shows Dylan playing piano while Cash slurs and tries to sing along to I Still Miss Someone – and No Direction Home – which shows them attempting a duet of Hank Williams' I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry – you can see there's a clear rapport between the two. One of the major frustrations this album throws up is that it's a clear missed opportunity, in that every song could and should have been as good as the first, Girl from the North Country, which is the only officially released duet from the Nashville Skyline sessions (I'm sure a bootleg is in the pipeline!).
We know that Dylan and Cash recorded a whole series of duets, including One Too Many Mornings, I Still Miss Someone, Mountain Dew, Mystery Train, Big River, I Walk the Line, You Are My Sunshine, Ring of Fire and Blue Yodel No.5. There is a take of One Too Many Mornings that was shown in the film Johnny Cash, The Man and His Music (1969), but for now all that Dylan and Cash fans have are some poorly recorded bootlegs, which you can check out on YouTube.
Perhaps they were both disappointed with the results – the bootleg does suggest that not all the recordings have the impact of Girl from the North Country – but it's hard to tell if it's just the poor quality of the recordings or a lack of chemistry. In all honesty, though, I'd rather have an album of indifferent Cash & Dylan duets than an album of (mostly) indifferent Dylan solo songs. That's not to say it's a bad record, just a bit insubstantial and underwhelming. I can't help finding Lay Lady Lay a bit cheesy, but I do like how One More Night summons up the spirit of Hank Williams and the simple lyrics and beautiful melody of To Be Alone With You make for another highlight, along with the album closer.
A final note on the musicians, most of whom played on Nashville Skyline and follow-up record, Self Portrait. The drumming is the work of the impressive Kenny Buttrey, who also played on Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding, while Pete Drake's wonderful steel guitar sound that lights up the last two songs of JWH also graces this record. In fact, the guitar that Dylan's holding on the album cover, a Gibson J-200, actually belonged to George Harrison, and Dylan would use it later in 1969 when he performed at the Isle of Wight Festival.
Album rating: B
Comments