Watershed.
Suddenly, Dylan's music becomes rock 'n' roll. Well, suddenly... Of course I hear the continuous line in the albums thus far, but still, the full band on most of the songs of the album is a shock. I guess the upheaval about his appearance with an electric guitar on the Newport festival, some months later, was not so much because the electric guitar was a big surprise - everybody could have heard that coming - but rather because it was an insult to a folk audience.
May I suggest, by the way, that 'the folk audience' - which I know extremely well because I have been part of it for such a long time now - may be the perfect illustration of Adorno's 'Ressentimental Listener'?
I read somewhere this album was recorded in three days only, and that Dylan did not like to rehearse but rather just started playing and hoped the band would play along. Maybe that gives this album its fresh sound. It also makes that there is a false start at 'Bob Dylan's 115th Dream', and that I seem to hear in the opening song, 'Subterranean Homesick Blues', that the bass player (I always focus on the bass player while listening to pop and rock music) really has to grope his way around, waiting for the exact moment when the chords change. Dylan is a master in writing lines of uneven length, but playing such lines in a session is quite a nightmare, especially if you are supposed to lay a firm foundation as a bass player.
Lots of 12-bar blues forms. Check the timing of the mouth harp substituting the 4th line of every 6-line verse in 'On the Road Again' - clever. Check the piano on 'Bob Dylan's 115th Dream' - great.
And again hardly choruses - Dylan doesn't seem to like choruses.
Dylan sings with two voices: one high, the other low. The high-voice songs are driving along with great power. The low-voice songs are more reflective - I love that sound of 'She Belongs To Me' or 'Love Minus Zero/No Limit'.
Of course, great lines: "You don't need the weathermen to know hich way the wind blows" is surely one of my favourites. ''She knows too much to argue or to judge". "He not busy being born is busy dying". Sometimes I catch myself listening to Dylan as if being a 15-year old schoolboy listening to records of my favorite artists and drinking in their words as if they are the gospel.
Some Dylan songs for me are less attractive to listen to. On this album 'Mr. Tambourine Man' - an incredible song, but I have heard it too often, I guess, to be able to really concentrate.
And one song stands out for me: 'It's Allright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)'. The descending melodic lines in the guitar accompaniments of the verses below the sustained singing line; the chord changes in the 'chorus'; the extremely long lines with lots of alliteration. It is chilling.
By the way. I bought a ticket for Dylan performing in Amsterdam in November. Egoistically, I secretly pray he holds on till then... I might also have chosen to go and listen to Paul McCartney; the Beatles are my favorite band of all times, surely. But I decided for Dylan - I guess the only musician I would have preferred over him would have been John Lennon, really.
And by the way. This afternoon I was in an asylum seeker's centre, they had open day and my son has friends there. I was sitting, drinking tea with my wife and looking around, and saw a - probably - Syrian young man walking around wearing a Dylan T-shirt. The man is everywhere.
