Author: Brian Harris

Rank #4. Bringing It All Back Home

Posted on by Brian Harris

(*****) March 22, 1965. Fifth Studio Album.

If you want an archetypal 1960s Bob Dylan album, this masterpiece is it. It’s got classics, “Mr. Tambourine Man;” it’s got love songs, “”Love Minus Zero/No Limit;” it’s got rockers, “”Maggie’s Farm;” it’s got Dylan’s offbeat humour “”Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream;” and it’s got another one of my favorite all-timers, “Gates of Eden.” This is Dylan’s fifth album overall and  first “rock” album, which caused shockwaves at the time, and features a mostly electric side followed by a mostly acoustic side. Personally I don’t notice the difference, he does musically what he thinks works best. (It’s a good album to put on “shuffle” as it will maybe mix the two styles.) His lyrics move away from topical issues and more into the mystical, which I prefer, and the “non-hits” set-up the classics with a jubilant ebb and flow.  Don’t miss this one kids!

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Rank #5. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

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(*****) May 27, 1963. Second Studio Album.

Wow. In only his second album, Dylan starts with the triple whammy of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” — an all-time classic — “Girl from the North Country” and “Masters of War.” Those three, along with “A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall” and “Don’t Think Twice it’s Alright,” can make a career for many singer/songwriters. But the other, lesser-known songs, such as “Oxford Town,” “Corrina, Corrina,” and “Talkin’ World War III Blues,” provide an ebb and flow which make the entire album  a mesmerizing listen.

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Rank #6. Slow Train Coming

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(****½) August 20, 1979. 19th Studio Album.

One of Dylan’s cleanest-sounding albums was the first in his so-called trilogy of “Christian” albums, even though Biblical references, both Old and New Testament, have appeared throughout his career. Recorded at Muscle Shoals Studios by famed producer Jerry Wexler and featuring Mark Knoplfer of Dire Straits on guitar, the album breathes among Dylan’s heartfelt vocals and tight arrangements. While many of the songs could be considered overtly Christian in a narrow interpretation,  there is a more universal feel to many of them. “Slow Train” is more of a protest-like comment on the state of Jimmy Carter’s America in the late ’70s, “Gotta Serve Somebody” shows the equality of mankind regardless of stature, and the closing track “When He Returns” is perhaps one of Dylan’s finest recorded vocals. Slow Train Coming continues an innovative 10-year period from Dylan’s mid-career.

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Rank #7. Another Side of Bob Dylan

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(****½) August 8, 1964. Fourth Studio Album.

I love just about every song on Dylan’s fourth album, which contains one of my (many) all-time favorites, “Chimes of Freedom”, plus classics “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “”My Back Pages,” and “All I Really Want to Do.” The whole album has a bluesy, biting edge to it, along with some comic relief in “”Motorpsycho Nightmare” and “I Shall Be Free No. 10,” and the tender love songs “To Ramona” and “Ballad in Plain D.” Amazingly, it was all recorded in one session, and despite just being acoustic guitar, harmonica and some piano, it rocks.

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Rank #8. Street Legal

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(****) June 15, 1978. 18th Studio Album.

Dylan has worked with background gospel singers before, but never to the extent he did on Street Legal, and with a full band with sax, trumpet, violin,  electric guitar solos, drums and organ, the whole album has a coherent, blues/ballroom/holy roller  feel throughout. Dylan’s lyrics are poignant and his vocal delivery on the money. While not yielding any hits, it does contain another of my all-time favorites, “Journey Through Dark Heat (Where Are You Tonight?) as a raucous closing number. This is an under-appreciated album in the catalog, and while it suffered slightly upon initial release with a  somewhat muddled production, the digital remastering resolves those issues. A great album to listen to outside or driving at night.

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Rank #9. The Times They Are a-Changin’

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  (***½)  January 13, 1964. Third Studio Album.

The title track of this album is another of my all-time favorites, and there are numerous great songs,  including “The Lonesome of Death Hattie Carroll,” “With God on Our Side,” and “When the Ship Comes In.” But the other songs on the album don’t do that much for me, and despite the title track, it is a very mellow album with topical story songs that can get a bit tiresome on repeat listenings. I prefer songs with a more universal feel. The ebb and flow of the record is not as good as others. But still…

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Rank #10. Saved

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(***½) June 20, 1980.

Dylan has flirted with the use of background, gospel singers since the early 70s, and became adept at it with Street Legal. On Saved, Dylan goes full gospel, and while Biblical references abound on many albums, they are the most overt here. It all leads to a rowdy good time, with rocking numbrs “Solid Rock” and the title track, along with the call and response  “Are You Ready?” and the slower opening number “Satisfied Mind.” But perhaps the highlights of the record are the love ballad “Covenant Woman,” which goes beyond any religious motif, and the mini epic “In The Garden,” which should have been the closing number. The album has a similar sound to Street Legal, but I prefer the songs on that album more than Saved, which suffers from a lack of flow throughout, but both are a success.

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Rank #11. Rough and Rowdy Ways

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(***½) June 19, 2020. 39th Studio Album.
The most-recent Dylan album and his first new material in more than eight years, Rough and Rowdy Ways provides a musicality that has been missing in many of his albums from the latter part of his career. While still somber and introspective in a few more places than I would prefer, songs such as “False Prophet” and particularly “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” sound like they could have been recorded during the Blonde on Blonde sessions of the mid-1960s. Lyrically all of the album’s songs are direct yet mystical, and can be interpreted in many different ways. Dylan’s vitriol and humor are in full play, along with a vocal delivery that is biting in many cases. “I Contain Multitudes,” the opening track, seems to be an extremely autobiographical number, but also leaves much to the imagination as well. The double-CD and vinyl releases can really be taken as two separate albums, with the final disc and vinyl side being “Murder Most Foul,” a 17-minute bizarre epic focusing on the JFK assassination and the social, cultural and political  fallout surrounding and stemming from that infamous day in American history. If this ends up being the last new Dylan album, he will have gone out on an enigmatic high, as mysterious and beguiling as ever.

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Rank #12. Oh Mercy

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(***½) September 18, 1989. 26th Studio Album.

As much as a I enjoy a roughshod, one-take, loosely recorded album from time to time, it’s enjoyable to hear Dylan get with a serious producer and create a more-polished release. And with Daniel Lanois of U2 and Brian Eno fame, this album hits the mark. Recorded in New Orleans but with more of a somber, introspective feel, Oh Mercy features strong lyrics, up-front vocals, and atmospheric music that doesn’t get in the way of the singing but rather complements it. “”Man in the Long Black Coat” with its grim-reaper feel, “Ring Them Bells” and the closing, elegant “Shooting Star,” are some of the standout tracks, but all 10 songs are very strong, making it a very coherent-sounding effort. The one rocker, a humorous, state-of-humanity type song, “Everything is Broken,” is my favorite track on the release. 

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Rank #13. John Wesley Harding

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(***) December 27, 1967. Eighth Studio Album.

This album is an enjoyable semi-acoustic tribute to a host of drifters, gangsters and various other misfits as they search for meaning in their lives. It is a departure from both the rollicking blues songs of prior albums,  and also from the strictly acoustic, folksong-type statement songs of his early years. In many ways it is a precursor to the singer-songwriters of the ’70s like Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and the Eagles, or anything you may hear on Adult Alternative radio today. The sound, production and ebb and flow of the recording is excellent. There are no hits per se — although it does include “All Along The Watchtower,” a short concise recording which was forever changed by Jimi Hendrix a few months later — but the “Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest” and “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” are my standout cuts.

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