Self Portrait

Album: Self Portrait

Recorded: April 1969 to March 1970

Released: June 1970

Songs / length: 24 / 73:15

Long in the gestation, Self Portrait was Dylan's second double LP and arguably the most bloated and incoherent of all his records. With the official bootleg release of Another Self Portrait in 2013, there has been an inevitable reappraisal of the album, but all the over-enthusiasm and diminished discernment of the "legacy" industry did little to convince me that Self Portrait is an underrated gem in Dylan's back catalogue. The appearance of several first-rate unreleased tracks, especially the folk songs like Pretty Saro, was definitely something to be welcomed, but I found the bootleg a little more underwhelming than many of the rock critics reviewing it at the time. Greil Marcus, perhaps looking to make amends for his original "what is this shit?" pronouncement on the album in 1970 (which reportedly upset Dylan), wrote glowing liner notes for Another Self Portrait and conceded that the truest self-portrait might just be "a collection of those things a given person loves".

To my mind, this is the greatest value a Dylan fan can derive from Self Portrait. It may be far from his most accomplished work, but it does reveal sides to his character that he'd kept from public view before, for example the cover of Blue Moon, a popular ballad that represents the polar opposite of his cutting-edge mid-60s work. This taste for "middle of the road" pop songs, often popularised by Frank Sinatra, is something Dylan would explore in much more depth later in life. On the original version of Self Portrait, Dylan also tips his hat to two fellow singer-songwriters, Gordon Lightfoot and Paul Simon, with covers of Early Mornin' Rain (decent) and The Boxer (awful). Given that Dylan would often lead where others followed, it's odd to see him paying homage to fellow musicians, rather than vice versa. All this points to someone in a much more relaxed frame of mind. Happiness writes white.

Country music has a reputation for trite clichés, and it's disappointing and disorientating to hear Dylan clinging to so many of them on this record, especially to the backdrop of syrupy strings and intrusive overdubs. One of the benefits of the remastered version in the deluxe version of Another Self Portrait is that it dispenses with much of this musical furniture. It also offers the most complete and polished recording of his live performance at the Isle of Wight festival in summer 1969, as well as overdub-free versions of Copper Kettle, In Search of Little Sadie and Days of '49, and unreleased gems like Tattle O'Day and Pretty Saro.

Those five tracks, plus atmospheric opener All The Tired Horses, Let It Be Me, Belle Isle, The Mighty Quinn, Wigwam, Alberta #2 and the demo version of When I Paint My Masterpiece would have made for a very decent record in themselves, without the bloat of several covers, instrumentals and live performances. If you can forgive the sloppiness of the production, playing and songwriting, it is worth giving Self Portrait at least one listen all the way though, but the most productive thing you can do is hone down the material from the original album and bootleg into one much smaller, focused playlist (see my effort here). Why Dylan didn't do this himself is often the question I ask whenever I give my vinyl copy of the album a spin, but then I remember that maybe he had better things to do, like raising three kids with his wife.

Album rating: C+