Bob Dylan
1965 — Bringing It All Back Home (Columbia)
As Bob Dylan albums go (not necessarily the best way to experience his music), I don’t have a clear-cut favorite, but certainly none are better than Bringing It All Back Home. For me, it’s the second rave-worthy Dylan album after Freewheelin’. Just breaking the tunes down to (a) melody and (b) lyrics, this album probably stands above everything he’s ever done for consistent quality (though maybe Blonde On Blonde and Blood On The Tracks come close).
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" is only my fifth or sixth favorite song on this album, and it’s an iconic classic…
"She Belongs To Me" is wonderful and lovely. Kind of simple to the extreme, musically, but in a good way. I love the "Egyptian ring... that sparkles before she speaks" bit.
"Maggie's Farm": Well, I love the lyrics, his voice, and the blues-melody. It's funny how different people take different things from this — some talk about this song in terms of its being a farewell to the urban-folk crowd. Then, there's Pete Seeger, who heard it as a Socialist message. I just think it’s funny and clever.
"Love Minus Zero / No Limit" is even better than "She Belongs To Me". It has better lyrics and a more interesting melody. I love how he tried to make the song title a fraction!
I like "Outlaw Blues" — the simpler, smaller cousin of "Maggie's Farm". It's a simple, jokey, having-a-laugh kind of bouncy blues, but it's doesn't overstay its welcome and it’s all good fun. Strong vocals on this track. He’s also really great on those Cutting Edge "Take 1" and 'Take 2" outtakes.
Unfortunately, "On The Road Again" does very little for me. I guess it’s passable bluesy silliness, but we’ve already had "Maggie" and "Outlaw Blues", and since this track has nothing special in terms of melody or lyrics (and sounds exactly like those ones), I really don’t understand why Dylan even though to include it on what was already a long album, especially by 1965 standards.
"Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" is okay; it’s fun… just a little longer than necessary.
Flipping it over to side 2, and "Mr. Tambourine Man" I rate as the greatest song ever written by anybody, ever. It's the most perfect melody Dylan ever came up with, and the most perfect lyric. If we sift post-war songwriters (in English), we are left with Dylan and a few other people. And if we sift all of Bob Dylan’s songs as compositions, we are left with “Mr. Tambourine Man”. My mom used to have the Judy Collins songbook for piano and guitar, and Judy says in it that Dylan was at her home one morning and sang this, having just written it. She was impressed.
"Gates Of Eden" I used to adore and now I just… really like. I love the dream-experience in the final verse as a means of crapping on over-analysis, but there are maybe one or two too many verses (well, this is a Bob Dylan song). Also, the line about the “gray flannel dwarf” is possibly taking lyrical conceit a little far. Give young-Bob credit for pushing it there, however.
"It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is an amazing song. Genre-busting.
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" on this record is fab, of course, but for me a difficult one. Why? As a composition, it’s flawless and brilliant. But the recording on the album I don't think is particularly good. His voice strains and it kind of plods a bit. The definitive Dylan version is the Manchester, May 17th 1966 one (hear it on Biograph) — where the harmonica is particularly sublime.
This is an absolutely stellar recording, whose historical significance cannot be overstated. As to the lyrics, I would rate this as the #1 lyrical album in the history of recorded music. So yeah, there’s that. Indeed, there are probably more famous, oft-quoted lines from this LP than any uttered by any other singer, ever, anywhere. Add to this the genre-breaking aspects of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (basically, the first rap hit song) and the so-new-there’s-no-name-for-it aspects of “It's Alright Ma”, and we have the most thoroughly impressive Dylan album, probably. There’s also plenty of aural diversity on the record (unlike the one that follows it).
If I had to nitpick anything with this album it would be these two minor points:
— I think it would have been a more exciting listen if the solo/acoustic tracks and the electric numbers were mixed up in the track listing. I realize Dylan was hedging his bets at the start of 1965, to see if his audience could accept what he was doing, but I might enjoy this more as an album if he’d just thrown all the numbers together, in whatever order.
— The three blues in a row at the end of side 1 are a bit overkill. They’re all decent, so no real harm done, but the album is a bit better if one is deleted (preferably “On The Road Again”).
Bringing It All Back Home is one of the greatest albums of all time, easily, and certainly one of the most significant. (By the way, Dylan also invented the model of "hipster-musician-for-white-guys" with this record.)
