FEATURE:
Bob Dylan at Eighty
Ten of the Best Albums
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BECAUSE the genius that is Bob Dylan…
turns eighty on 24th May, I am going to put out a couple of features to mark that occasion. Today, I am thinking about the very best albums by Dylan. Everyone has their own thoughts on this. As he released his thirty-ninth studio album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, last year, there is more than enough to choose from! I realty love his stuff from the 1960s and 1970s, though some prefer some of his more modern albums. Here, like A Buyer’s Guide, I am selecting albums that you need to check out. I will also select the best tracks from each album, in addition to a link where you can buy that album. Ahead of the eightieth birthday of one of the greatest songwriters the world has ever seen, here are the ten albums that I feel…
PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
EVERYONE should check out.
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The Times They Are a-Changin'
Release Date: 13th January, 1964
Label: Columbia
Producer: Tom Wilson
Standout Tracks: With God on Our Side/North Country Blues/The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
Buy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Times-They-Are-Changin-VINYL/dp/B00005OAES
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7DZeLXvr9eTVpyI1OlqtcS?si=S3XxwwPeRXCTRCuAKZks1g
Review:
“If The Times They Are a-Changin' isn't a marked step forward from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, even if it is his first collection of all originals, it's nevertheless a fine collection all the same. It isn't as rich as Freewheelin', and Dylan has tempered his sense of humor considerably, choosing to concentrate on social protests in the style of "Blowin' in the Wind." With the title track, he wrote an anthem that nearly equaled that song, and "With God on Our Side" and "Only a Pawn in Their Game" are nearly as good, while "Ballad of Hollis Brown" and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" are remarkably skilled re-castings of contemporary tales of injustice. His absurdity is missed, but he makes up for it with the wonderful "One Too Many Mornings" and "Boots of Spanish Leather," two lovely classics. If there are a couple of songs that don't achieve the level of the aforementioned songs, that speaks more to the quality of those songs than the weakness of the remainder of the record. And that's also true of the album itself -- yes, it pales next to its predecessor, but it's terrific by any other standard” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: The Times They Are a-Changin
Bringing It All Back Home
Release Date: 22nd March, 1965
Label: Columbia
Producer: Tom Wilson
Standout Tracks: Subterranean Homesick Blues/Mr. Tambourine Man/It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/bob-dylan/bringing-it-all-back-home
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1lPoRKSgZHQAYXxzBsOQ7v?si=IYhP7jd0QKyavNMUWWyx2Q
Review:
“As cynical as the previous tracks are, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” completely pivots in the opposite direction, almost like an extremist love song. The very title (a mathematical equation which results in “absolutely unlimited love”) indicates the complete offering of one’s existence to a significant other, in this case Dylan’s future wife Sara Lowndes. Another complete departure for Dylan is “Outlaw Blues”, a rollicking, bluesy and about as heavy as rock and roll came in 1965. In fact, this song could, at once, be a true ancestor to bluesy jam bands as well as the hard rock and heavy metal which arrived a half a decade later. With “On the Road Again”, Dylan takes a large step forward both musically and lyrically. This strong rock/blues track with especially potent drums by Bobby Gregg, contain lyrics written in the spirit of Kerouac’s novel On the Road but with a definite original edge;
Well, there’s fist fights in the kitchen, enough to make me cry / The mailman comes in and even he’s gotta take a side / Even the butler, he’s got something to prove / Then you ask why I don’t live here, Honey, how come you don’t move?”
The album’s first side ends with a bit of levity in the false start of “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”. Once the song really kicks in, it employs a true stream-of-consciousness and may have the most surreal lyrics on the album. The song’s title alludes to the track “Bob Dylan’s Dream” from his 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, but as an almost satirical sequel to that serious folk song.
Upon its release, Bringing It All Back Home reached the Top Ten on both sides of the Atlantic and has continued to grow in stature and importance in the half century since its release. Later in 1965, Dylan would record and release another masterpiece, Highway 61 Revisited, an album Classic Rock Review will examine on August 30th, the 50th anniversary of that album’s release” – Classic Rock Review
Choice Cut: It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Highway 61 Revisited
Release Date: 30th August, 1965
Label: Columbia
Producers: Bob Johnston/Tom Wilson
Standout Tracks: Ballad of a Thin Man/Queen Jane Approximately/Desolation Row
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/bob-dylan/highway-61-revisited
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6YabPKtZAjxwyWbuO9p4ZD?si=HuxgIM5nQOyYN4ket9qrRA
Review:
“However, Like a Rolling Stone is often described as the best song ever, not Desolation Row. Like a Rolling Stone is definitely deserving of the title. The chord progression ascends up in an absolute perfect way, showcasing Dylan’s mastery of chord progressions. Never does Dylan refer to a weak link between chords or an imperfect cadence. With the aesthetically pleasing chord progression in place, the mix of guitar, bass, harmonica, and organ make a catchy blend of fantastic, bluesy music. The organ, most noticeably in the chorus, is by far the catchiest part of the music, playing a fantastic counterpart to Dylan’s voice. While the rest of the band grooves on this, Dylan crafts catchy vocal hooks with his longing question of “How does it feel?” His rhyme patterns, again, are perfect all the way throughout. Despite the song revolving around two main progressions, the song goes over 6 minutes, once again never tiring. The Beatles song Help! was the only song that eclipsed Dylan’s song on the charts, mainly because Beatlemania already began its infestation on American society.
In between the brilliant album opener and closer, Dylan makes some undeniably great songs in Ballad of a Thin Man and Tombstone Blues. Ranging from just as they say, a ballad to a blues, Dylan shows his many different voices well. Each song on this album is enjoyable to listen to, although some definitely stand out among others. However, there is no doubt that this album is a classic, and certainly one of the best from one of the greatest artists, in every sense of the word, of all time” – Sputnikmusic
Choice Cut: Like a Rolling Stone
Blonde on Blonde
Release Date: 20th June, 1966
Label: Columbia
Producer: Bob Johnston
Standout Tracks: Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35/Visions of Johanna/I Want You
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/bob-dylan/blonde-on-blonde-f1e99196-5186-4473-8da9-64fe8b1518a9
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4NP1rhnsPdYpnyJP0p0k0L?si=QjHc6UkeTaKK_PmGPuPuFw
Review:
“Even a cursory glance at the highlights would be enough to confirm this first disc’s classic status: the rambunctious stomp of “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”, the shrill punctuation of Dylan’s harp on the surly rant of “Pledging My Time”, a riotous neck-wrung blues soloing on “Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat”, opulent, elegiac verses on “Visions Of Johanna”, the popish affectations and beautiful detail of “I Want You” and “Just Like A Woman.”
Consolidating what he’d begun on Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, the recording of Blonde On Blonde was part of an intense, fertile outpouring for Dylan. One can understand why Dylan and producer Bob Johnston were keen to present as much of it as they could. As a result however, the taut energy of the first disc become somewhat elasticised across the second, “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands”, whose eleven minute length even caught the backing musicians by surprise, being the chief culprit. Of course one person’s prolix poetry is another’s visionary epic.
One point which both sceptics and believers can all agree on however is the extent to which Dylan is utterly at ease with himself here. Credit also, should go to the crew backing him up. And if their backing is at times a little hurried or patchy, the improvisatory nature of their trying to keep up with the man at the microphone is also a part of this album’s overall charm” – BBC
Choice Cut: Just Like a Woman
Blood on the Tracks
Release Date: 20th January, 1975
Label: Columbia
Producer: Bob Dylan
Standout Tracks: You're a Big Girl Now/Idiot Wind/If You See Her, Say Hello
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/bob-dylan/blood-on-the-tracks-ac12f518-f8a2-4218-bbda-0fcf5f24e270
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4WD4pslu83FF6oMa1e19mF?si=ylzel3VIQBODmN4j6c__mA
Review:
“Imagining Dylan as a simple songwriter, the template of Blood on the Tracks—sad boy with an acoustic guitar and a handful of chords—might seem basic, until one tries to replicate anything about it, or even just strum the songs at home. Blood on the Tracks lives alone in Dylan’s catalog, that open “E” tuning (which Dylan refused to explain to his musicians) often preventing the songs from sounding exactly right in the hands of others. It lives on in its own peculiar way. Dylan has seemed to keep “Tangled Up In Blue” in particular to himself, rewriting the song several times, both casually (playing fast and loose with the pronouns), and more formally, including a near-total rework released on 1984’s Real Live. One of the few older songs Dylan has performed consistently in recent years, even newer verses have emerged over the past half-decade. Nobody covers Dylan like Dylan either, apparently.
Though the albums on either side of Blood on the Tracks both made it to #1 and contained hints of the same songwriting territory, via Planet Waves’ “Going, Going, Gone” and *Desire’*s “Sara,” especially, they were only just hints. Some of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks persona remained visible via the two legs of the Rolling Thunder Revue, but the original open tuning never returned, and Dylan would soon bury his vulnerability, too. The surrealism would resurface in full force for 1978’s Street-Legal, but the musical appeal didn’t. It took another few decades for Dylan even to return to the warm string-band sound of Blood on the Tracks, coming closest on his two 21st century albums of standards, Shadows in the Night and Fallen Angels. For a restless musician, it was a combination of factors that only came together once, locking together to transmit themselves through the years.
Even roughly 40 years later, Blood on the Tracks broadcasts hurt and longing so boldly it has become a stand-in, the type of shorthand a song licensor would deploy at the push of a button if it wasn’t so expensive and maybe too predictable. It manages a balance of old pain resolved and wounds so fresh they seem as if they might never heal, brutal personal assessment and doubt, unnecessary cruelties and real-time self-flagellation. While Blood on the Tracks can be a constant companion to listeners during periods of initial discovery, it (and Dylan’s whole catalog) has also become something to be lived with over a long period and put away for special occasions. Functioning like a literal album, the density of the passed time and pressed memories in “Tangled Up in Blue” grow richer with each passing year. As with the narratives of the songs themselves, Blood on the Tracks continues to absorb yesterday, today, and tomorrow, promising it can sustain new listeners as much as new meanings, should it ever have to be called back into service” – Pitchfork
Choice Cut: Tangled Up in Blue
Desire
Release Date: 5th January, 1976
Label: Columbia
Producer: Don DeVito
Standout Tracks: Hurricane/Isis/One More Cup of Coffee
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/bob-dylan/desire-29fd5bed-328c-4fd7-af30-06231ee0255f
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1T8usYsiGEMPMQOLFgJEbE?si=VIWxRFEmRdqg_YqXGjsBiw
Review:
“If Blood on the Tracks was an unapologetically intimate affair, Desire is unwieldy and messy, the deliberate work of a collective. And while Bob Dylan directly addresses his crumbling relationship with his wife, Sara, on the final track, Desire is hardly as personal as its predecessor, finding Dylan returning to topical songwriting and folk tales for the core of the record. It's all over the map, as far as songwriting goes, and so is it musically, capturing Dylan at the beginning of the Rolling Thunder Revue era, which was more notable for its chaos than its music. And, so it's only fitting that Desire fits that description as well, as it careens between surging folk-rock, Mideastern dirges, skipping pop, and epic narratives. It's little surprise that Desire doesn't quite gel, yet it retains its own character -- really, there's no other place where Dylan tried as many different styles, as many weird detours, as he does here. And, there's something to be said for its rambling, sprawling character, which has a charm of its own. Even so, the record would have been assisted by a more consistent set of songs; there are some masterpieces here, though: "Hurricane" is the best-known, but the effervescent "Mozambique" is Dylan at his breeziest, "Sara" at his most nakedly emotional, and "Isis" is one of his very best songs of the '70s, a hypnotic, contemporized spin on a classic fable. This may not add up to a masterpiece, but it does result in one of his most fascinating records of the '70s and '80s -- more intriguing, lyrically and musically, than most of his latter-day affairs” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Sara
Time Out of Mind
Release Date: 30th September, 1997
Label: Columbia
Producer: Daniel Lanois
Standout Tracks: Love Sick/Trying to Get to Heaven/Highlands
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/bob-dylan/time-out-of-mind-90bdafd2-1a75-4141-bd7b-075ba8a746cc
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/185DHT5SvszXRrezx3lOjt?si=bqris7TGThKDlAnSIvLriA
Review:
“Time Out of Mind — alternate title: One Headlight Gone Dead — is produced by Daniel Lanois, who, as he did on Oh Mercy, keeps Dylan’s crypt-keeper rasp prominent while surrounding it with eeriness. Lanois gives ”Cold Irons Bound” a herky-jerky shuffle beat, for example — a rhythm that skeletons might dance to in a graveyard, using a few discarded bones for percussion. (Speaking of which, the secret hero of both Time Out of Mind and Bridges is drummer Jim Keltner, who pops up regularly to yank his fellow geezers in the direction of the beat.)
Dylan’s songwriting is at once blissfully assured and gleefully uneven throughout, containing some of his most evocative lyrics and one of the worst couplets written since the death of Sylvia Plath: ”When the wind is blowin’ in your face/And the whole world is on your case.” For all his addled talk of imminent departure (”I’m breathin’ hard, standin’ at the gate/But I don’t know how much longer I can wait”), Dylan sounds lively, even playful — in no way is this album a downer. It sounds as if, at 56, he can’t wait to be a full-fledged old codger.
A decorated codger, to be sure: In December, he’ll be a Kennedy Center honoree, along with Charlton Heston, Jessye Norman, Edward Villella, and Lauren Bacall. (At the State Department dinner, will he dedicate ”Cold Irons Bound” to Al Gore?) Where Mick Jagger holds a six-shooter to the nose of a deceitful lover, Bob Dylan turns one on himself, and, under the gun — to prove himself, to make music while facing mortality — ends up with a great album” – Entertainment Weekly
Choice Cut: Not Dark Yet
Love and Theft
Release Date: 11th September, 2001
Label: Columbia
Producer: Bob Dylan
Standout Tracks: Lonesome Day Blues/Moonlight/Sugar Baby
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/bob-dylan/love-and-theft
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4BcfuxQ4EO07Y53yr6YhAJ?si=gBrFOsn5SdKubBH-007MTQ
Review:
“The groove of the band gives the leader room to kick back and play around with his vocals, and one of the hardest things to get used to about Love and Theft is how funny it is. But the crackpot grin you can hear in his vocals only highlights the emotion of electric blues stomps like “Cry a While,” the pained ballad “Mississippi,” the rockabilly raver “Summer Days,” the banjo-and-fiddle lilt of “Floater (Too Much to Ask).” In “High Water (For Charley Patton),” he revisits the ruined landscape of “Down in the Flood” thirty years later; this crash on the levee sweeps up Charles Darwin, Robert Johnson and Big Joe Turner into an acoustic Delta-blues nightmare while Dylan turns to his traveling companion and calmly suggests, “Throw your panties overboard.” “Don’t reach out for me,” the woman in “High Water” says. “Can’t you see I’m drowning, too?” Cracked and ruined love affairs abound on Love and Theft, finding a mirror in the cities and countrysides Dylan wanders through. “Your days are numbered/So are mine,” he sings in the ravaged love travelogue “Mississippi.” “I need something strong to distract my mind/I’m going to look at you till my eyes go blind.” None of these heartaches can be put to rest. “You can’t repeat the past,” another woman says in the jumper “Summer Days,” to which Dylan replies, “You can’t? What do you mean you can’t? Of course you can.” In the mournful album closer, “Sugar Baby,” Dylan stands with his back to the sun (“because the light is too intense”) to sing to a woman who won’t open her eyes to his love. “You went years without me,” he says. “Might as well keep going now.”
But there is not just heartbreak here, there is also a tenacious clinging to love’s promise, and the strangest and most seductive surprises on Love and Theft come with the easygoing romantic ballads “Bye and Bye” and “Moonlight.” Dylan raised eyebrows a few months ago by covering Dean Martin’s “Return to Me” for The Sopranos, and he pays similar tribute to pre-rock pop all over Love and Theft. He connects the dots between folk, blues and the Forties and Fifties schmaltz standards he loved when he was growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, as a devotee of Johnnie Ray and Nat “King” Cole. He’s been playing with these old-timey pop moves for years — think of “If Not for You” or “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” — but his theft has rarely betrayed so much love. In “Po’ Boy,” he pushes the borscht-belt humor to heroically absurd extremes, jumping over a light acoustic jingle to bite Groucho Marx: “Poor boy in a hotel called the Palace of Gloom/Called down to room service, says, ‘Send up a room.’ ” And that’s even before he gets to the knock-knock joke (“Freddy or not, here I come,” oy gevalt). It’s funny as hell, but it’s no parody: Dylan digs into these antique styles and milks them for all the romance and mystery he hears in them. In “Bye and Bye,” he wears the mask of the song-and-dance man to sing, “The future for me is already a thing of the past.” But the remarkable achievement of Love and Theft is that Dylan makes the past sound as strange, haunted and alluring as the future — and this song-and-dance man sings as though he’s drunk too deeply of the past to be either scared or impressed by anybody’s future, least of all his own. And he sounds like he’s enjoying the ride” – Rolling Stone
Choice Cut: Mississippi
Modern Times
Release Date: 29th August, 2006
Label: Columbia
Producer: Bob Dylan
Standout Tracks: Thunder on the Mountain/Rollin' and Tumblin'/Workingman's Blues #2
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/bob-dylan/modern-times/lp-x2
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6y2WHyqRUCeHrjMXvjnRmD?si=zWVARvvISL-HipaQ1iw5Zg
Review:
“It's easy to take the title of Bob Dylan's latest album, his first since 2001's "Love And Theft," as a joke. There isn't anything particularly modern about Modern Times' songs; their influences stop with the rock and roll of Dylan's youth. The sound also isn't particularly modern, thanks to the clean, plug-in-and-play approach favored by producer "Jack Frost." (Dylan, of course.) But then there's Dylan expressing lust for—or at least a keen interest in—Alicia Keys on the first song, "Thunder On The Mountain." He follows that up by name-dropping Ovid's The Art Of Love, describing an apocalyptic, abandoned Washington D.C., and closing with the desire to go "up north" to work the land. It isn't exactly modern, but the jumble of eternal themes and contemporary references is as much a product of its times as anything Dylan has ever done.
In "Workingman's Blues #2," there's even a near-retreat to Dylan's protest days, though it sidesteps the protest by dismissing the folks that "never worked a day in their life" and touting the simple virtues of marital bliss and a diet of rice and beans. The album is filled with sentiments as sweet as they are hard to take at face value, thanks to Dylan's raspier-than-ever delivery and wry-as-ever sense of humor. It's also filled with hate for love gone wrong. On the blues tune "Someday Baby," for instance, Dylan promises to wring his baby's neck (he rhymes it with "I'll make it a matter of self-respect"). The tension never gets resolved, and the album-closing "Ain't Talkin'," a rambling mystery song in the mold of Time Out Of Mind's "Highlands," answers no questions” – The A.V. Club
Choice Cut: When the Deal Goes Down
Rough and Rowdy Ways
Release Date: 19th June, 2020
Label: Columbia
Standout Tracks: False Prophet/Black Rider/Murder Most Foul
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/bob-dylan/rough-and-rowdy-ways/lp-plus-x2
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Qht64MPvWTWa0aMsqxegB?si=wtX4iYMxT_yvkgOuDYFQjA
Review:
“These are musical areas in which Dylan has worked for years. What sets Rough and Rowdy Ways apart from Tempest or 2006’s Modern Times is the sheer consistency of the songwriting; there’s nothing here that sounds like dashed-off filler, nothing that doesn’t hit home. Dylan nuts have a great line in telling you how hilarious lyrics that seem capable of raising at best a wry smile are – “Freddie or not, here I come”, “I’m not dead yet, my bell still rings” etc – but My Own Version, in which the protagonist turns Frankenstein and builds himself a lover out of bits of corpses, is packed with genuinely funny lines amid the references to Shakespeare, Homer’s Iliad, Bo Diddley and Martin Scorsese, as well as a curious interlude during which Freud and Marx are depicted as “enemies of mankind” burning in hell: “All through the summers into January, I’ve been visiting morgues and monasteries … if I do it right and put the head on straight, I’ll be saved by the creature that I create.”
This is obviously humour of a dark hue: if Tempest’s prevalent mood was one of murderous fury, then here it’s brooding menace and imminent doom. It’s there in the music – the weird tension in Crossing the Rubicon’s muted R&B shuffle and the way the backing on Black Rider keeps lapsing into ominous silence. You lose count of the lyrical references to judgment day and Armageddon, of the mysterious characters that keep cropping up with malevolence on their minds: “I can feel the bones beneath my skin and they’re trembling with rage, I’ll make your wife a widow, you’ll never see middle age,” he sings on Crossing the Rubicon. Of course, grouchily informing the world that everything is turning to shit has been one of Dylan’s prevalent songwriting modes for a quarter of a century – it’s the thread that binds Not Dark Yet, Things Have Changed, Ain’t Talkin’ and Early Roman Kings, among others – but this time the message seems to have shifted slightly: if you think everything has turned to shit now, Rough and Rowdy Ways keeps insisting, just you wait.
This isn’t perhaps the most comforting communique to issue in the middle of a global pandemic, but then the man behind it has seldom dealt in soothing reassurance. And besides, it doesn’t matter. For all its bleakness, Rough and Rowdy Ways might well be Bob Dylan’s most consistently brilliant set of songs in years: the die-hards can spend months unravelling the knottier lyrics, but you don’t need a PhD in Dylanology to appreciate its singular quality and power” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: I Contain Multitudes