10. Self Portrait

It took me a lot of time to start writing this one. There was no urgency: I am relistening to the albums of Dylan I have listened to so far, and apparently that is more than enough to keep me busy. I simply didn't feel the need to write so that I could allow myself to start listening to the next album. And I notice that some of these albums already have assembled lots of connotations - for example, Dylan's first album is connected to a camping in Denmark and the world football championships of 2014 (Holland loosing the semi-final).

That is not to say I kept relistening to Self Portrait. Rather, I kept returning to the Big Three: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and especially Blonde on Bonde. Occasionally, the earlier acoustic work (I am currently listening more to that) and John Wesley Harding. The span in years of those albums is approximately the span in years of the complete work of The Beatles - and although there is no way to compare both 'oeuvres', it is amazing in both cases that only in some eight years' time a singer or a band can come up with such a body of work.

Having said that, the strangeness of this album makes that I am not attracted to listening to it too much. There are songs I like - the laid back 'Alberta #1' (yes, there is a #2), 'Days of 49'. There is very lightweight but nice music - the Hawaiian tinge of 'Early Morning Rain', or 'Belle Isle' with its humming strong orchestra. There is the instrumental 'Woogie Boogie'. There are completely outrageous songs, like 'In Search of Little Sadie', the remake of 'Little Sadie' also on the album, with all its bizarre modulations just out of reach of Dylan's vocal capacities. And there is the polished crooner's voice of songs such as 'Let It Be Me' and Blue Moon'. And then there are the live versions of Highway 61's 'Like a Rolling Stone' and of 'The Mighty Quinn', and there is a cover of Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Boxer'.

It sounds completely haphazard, and probably that was the idea at the time - to stop being Dylan-the-Saviour and to become Dylan-Just-Another-Musician. The opening song, 'All the Tired Horses', with an absent Dylan (at least I don't recognize his otherwise rather recognizable voice), is telling. He was well on the way of deliberately erasing himself. Which is, having read the biography, admirable in its own right.

9. Nashville Skyline

"Coming back I quickly recorded what apeared to be a country-western record and made sure it sounded pretty bridled and house-broken. The music press didn't know what to make of it. I used a different voice, too. People scratched their heads. [...] Journalists began asking in print, "Whatever happened to the old him?" They could go to hell, too."

That's what Dylan writes about this album. Of course, one notices the changed voice and the flatness of the material on this album immediately. Nevertheless, after some listening I just had set myself a New Project: keep listening to this album until it becomes meaningful to you.

Then I read the above, from Dylan's "Chronicles Volume I", his autobiography. I realized that this album cries out: "'This is not Bob Dylan." As Dylan explained, he did not want to live up to his audience's expectations anymore, who saw him as the Big Rebel, if not the Saviour of the World ("All code words for Outlaw", writes Dylan). And then I became not interested anymore - why listen to albums which were made with the purpose not to show the singer?

But I relistened to it, and I guess in time I will, in spite of myself, build up a relationship with this album or some of its material, in spite of the flatness of it all. Because I guess one builds up relationships by listening in spite of oneself, and because listening is so contextual. For example, I listen to the first song, Girl of the North Country. A duet with Johnny Cash. And through the messy rendering (on purpose?) I hear the greatness of the earlier version Dylan sang, and when Cash starts to sing I hear the absolute greatness of his voice and his possible - unrealized - interpretation of the song. In Country Pie, I am remembered of the Beatles' Honey Pie, and of their Savoy Truffle. Peggy Day reminds me of Ringo Starr's Step Lightly. In To Be Alone With You I hear the excellency of the accompanying band, referring to earlier Dylan albums. Et cetera.

I am now listening to Beatles albums again. Every song is great to me. I know, Across the Universe and The Long and Winding Road could have done without the orchestras and the choirs. But I got attached to them, because I have lived with them most of my life.

And so it will go with Nashville Skyline.

And so I am looking forward to hearing Dylan's next album, which is an album of covers, ironically named Self Portrait.

Is this the album about which Dylan says: "I released one album (a double one) where I just threw everything I could think of at the wall and whatever stuck, released it, and then went back and scooped up everything that didn't stick and released that, too."?

8. John Wesley Harding

It took me lots of time to start writing this entry. Not because listening to and getting acquainted with John Wesley Harding has been a huge task; but because I kept also listening to Blonde on Blonde, and to Highway 61 Revisited, and to Bringing It All Back Home.

I like John Wesley Harding, though. Dylan's voice starts to change, it is sometimes less gruff, more polished. Musically he leans more towards a country-sound. The funny thing is that when I listen to Blonde on Blonde I am so impressed with the musicians - and those same musicians produce on this album to me an adequate but hardly ever a remarkable sound. If I listen concentrated, I hear great things - but it is not the shere awe of Blonde on Blonde to me.

Many great songs, though, and many sentences I love. A turn towards country (John Wesley Harding) and folk (As I Went Out One Morning) idiom. The great All Along the Watchtower and Dear Landlord. The Beatles' Rocky Raccoon in the shape of The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest (and a sleeve text that reminds one of Lennon's writings - or maybe vice versa?). And that strangely mellow last song, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight".

I am looking forward to the next album. And I wonder how my taste for this album will develop in the times to come.

7. Blonde on Blonde

It is going to take a decennium to finish this blog, if I carry on listening to new Dylan albums in the tempo I do it now. But the thing is: there is no speeding up when utter joy is concerned.

Blonde on Blonde - I have been listening to it for months now, and will keep listening for years. What a great album! There is not one weak song, I feel (although I am not a huge fan of the first track, which I wrongly called 'Everyone Must Get Stoned' some time ago; of course (?) the right name is 'Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35'). And what I especially love are the musicians in the band - listening to the drummer in for example 'One of Us Must Know' or 'Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine' makes me decide I have to take up drumming soon (and what about the long tone Dylan holds on in the chorus of 'One of Us Must Know', one beat longer than you would expect - it is song-writing genius for me), and the organ in the absolute masterpiece of the album 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' is terrific, and 'Visions of Johanna' comes in on a solid second place for me.

Basically, the whole album breathes the blues - 'Pledging My Time', 'Memphis Blues Again' (no blues though - and great Otis-Redding-sound-underwater-bubbly-electric-guitar), 'Leopard-Skin Pill-box Hat' (great timing of the lyrics, again), 'Obviously 5 Believers', they all ask for playing them at high volume while driving the car fast, while the lazy 'Temporary Like Achilles' ("I'm helpless like a rich man's child" - such a brilliant phrase) asks for playing while cruising slowly on a warm summer evening along the lake.

'Absolutely Sweet Marie' reminds me of songs from I-don't-know-who; desperately I try to remember the singer's name for weeks now, he must be quite famous, a 70's pastiche-like song - so it goes, things hook somewhere in the back of your memory, waiting to relate to something in the future or remembered from the past. For me it's all about connections, the brain is filled not with facts but with relationships between facts, which makes me suspect that there is no end to the brain's capacity, because the more there is in it, the more will fit into it, relationship-wise.

I notice that it is easier for me to become a fan of songs I don't know yet - as if I become a fan of them because of the newness of the album to me, and the songs I know from the only Dylan-CD I knew earlier, the Essential Bob Dylan, ('I Want You', 'Just Like a Woman')  resist to share in this fandom-out-of-newness.

I must state as a besides that I just finished reading Robert Hilburn's biography of Johnny Cash. Dylan plays an enormous role in it, and the book states that the common element in both lives is the search for the independent expression of the own voice, regardless of the audience; something both have struggled with, leading to work that distracts from this own voice and work that has found it. Blonde on Blonde seems to be in the second category, as the early (Sun) and late (American Records) work by Cash, I guess; and I am curious to figure out how Dylan sounds in his weaker moments - I have not heard it yet. (As a besides to this besides: I can relate to this idea that life sometimes seems to consist mainly of pedantic attempts to keep to your road with all the distractions from that road the rest of the world offers to you.)

And I will leave you with the immediate recognition I had when I first heard '4th Time Around': that this is the Beatles' (Lennon's, rather) 'Norwegian Wood' in Dylan-remake. Then I stumbled on the Rolling Stone list of 500 greatest rock albums ever (the top 10 contains four albums of my beloved Beatles and two by Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited on 4 and Blonde on Blonde on 9; and none by Cash, I must add), and the following quote from the review of the Beatles' Rubber Soul album (nr. 5 on the list) tells it all: "Bob Dylan's influence suffuses the album, accounting for the tart emotional tone of 'Norwegian Wood', 'I'm Looking Through You', 'You Won't See Me' and 'If I Needed Someone'. (Dylan would return the compliment the following year, when he offered his own version of 'Norwegian Wood' – titled '4th Time Around' – on Blonde on Blonde, and reportedly made John Lennon paranoid.)"

6. Highway 61 Revisited

I saw parts of a documentary on Dylan the other day, spanning mainly the first five years of his career. To me it was amazing to notice how much emotional involvement I have built up the past year, listening to his first six CDs. (By the way, in this tempo it will take me some seven or eight year to finish my project...)

I write this to remind myself that the aim of this blog-project is not to write music criticism. It is to report to myself about my particular experiences getting to know the work of Dylan. As those particular experiences involve - in my case, but maybe in yours too - a lot of comparison (it seems to me that in listening to music I am constantly busy to build a 'fit' between my new experiences and my older ones) the result inevitably looks a bit like music criticism, I must admit. But where the critic is supposed to have a sort of de-personalized, professional frame of reference, mine is purely personal. For a music critic, it would matter if he would know the later work of the Beatles much better than the early work; for me it doesn't, it simply is a fact of life making up my personal music biography.

Just a couple of observations on my listening to Highway 61 Revisited. This is a fully band-driven CD; Dylan the singer-singwriter is largely replaced by Dylan the band frontman. The music is heavily blues-oriented (I must remind myself that this album appeared roughly in the same time as the Beatles' Help; the Beatles were on their way to musically grow up, Dylan was grown up by his second album and already had taken a sort of U-turn in his career).

The lyrics are, to my ears, very impressionistic and associative, up to the point of being incomprehensible. As I am a non-native English speaker, this may matter to me in different ways than to native speakers. One of the things happenig to me is that I pick up particular phrases and remember them, rather than orient myself on the complete song or on the exact and deeper meaning of the words.

"They're selling postcards of the hanging" is one of those I pick up (first sentence of Desolation Row). Retaining such a sentence is more meaningful to me than trying to figure out who exactly 'Mr. Jones' from Ballad of a Thin Man is (however much I like the "Do you, Mr. Jones?"-phrase).

Musically, I love the band sound; it sounds fresh and improvized, but that may be because I know - because I have read so - that Dylan didn't rehearse much but simply played through the songs once or twice with the band and then recorded it.

One of the things irritating me is the Siren used in the title song Highway 61 Revisited. It is one of the few things that sound outdated to me in Dylan's work so far - it reminds me of cheap 1960s psychedelics too much (it also reminds me of the one song on the Dylan sampler I won I really don't like, Everybody Must Get Stoned - also because its message is so outdated by now). Indeed the remarks I read in Sounes' biography of Dylan that Dylan avoided references to specific persons and places (singing about "the president" rather than giving him a specific name) in order to make sure his songs would not be too specifically tied to contexts makes sense. As does Dylan's remarks that A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall is actually nót about 'atomic rain', so nót about the actual threat of nuclear fall-out after a nuclear war.

For the rest, it was a joy to listen and relisten to this one. Onwards to the next one!

5. Bringing It All Back Home

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.

4. Another Side of Bob Dylan

Another Side? Really?

I've been listening to this CD quite some time, and what stays with me most is the steady musicianship. The way Dylan sings songs in such a steady intermediate tempo. The lines of irregular lengths he produces within one song, which give his music an air of plasticity and improvisation. In 'To Ramona': Dylan as a singer; in the final syllable of each sentence a little descending cascade of 3, 4 or 5 notes. It comes back in some of the other songs on this album.

Of course there are strong messages, for me tied to who Dylan essentially wants to be: himself, rather than his image in the eyes of his audience. In 'All I Really Want To Do' he says: no need to try to be like me. And in 'It Ain't Me Babe' (one of those songs so harsh they are hard to swallow for me in the beginning): if you think I can be your hero, forget it.

Apart from that, some of those lines Dylan writes stick in my head. In 'My Back Pages': "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Or in 'Motorpsycho Nitemare' (which I would like to cite complete here because it has such funny lyrics, but I'll cite just one line): "Just one condition... That you don't touch my daughter and in the morning milk the cows." 'One condition', yeah - selling the daughter with the cow, as it were. And, in 'I Shall Be Free No. 10', the sarcastic:
"I'm a poet/
and I know it/
hope I don't blow it".

I know the first songs much better than the last songs because I listened to the CD in the car often, starting at the first song but never getting to the end really.

And in 'Chimes of Freedom', I hear, for some reason, Dave Rawlings' 'Bells of Harlem'. I promise I will, at some point, report exactly on how I link the two. If I can, that is: I don't really believe that the outrageously complex grid of musical connections embedded in my body (of which my brain, mind and soul are 'parts') can be explained, generally - far too complex for that.

It dawns on me that Dylan doesn't sing stories. He only sings about "me" and "you". That is: about himself, about his others, and, maybe, about me. As for the last thing, adding: if you think I can be your hero, forget it.