“Well, I've already had two beers
I'm ready for the broom
Please, Missus Henry, won't you
Take me to my room?
I'm a good old boy
But I've been sniffin' too many eggs
Talkin' to too many people
Drinkin' too many kegs
Please, Missus Henry, Missus Henry, please
Please, Missus Henry, please
I'm down on my knees
And I ain't got a dime.”

Dylan had impacted every aspect of popular music by 1967. He was already a cultural icon, an avatar, a musical signpost. He had gone through the zeitgeist as he had gone through folk, rock n roll, and superstardom. And what exactly did he have to report? What else was there to do, to prove, to move through?

The period between 1967 and 1973 seems to have been one of reassessment and rejuvenation. While the youth culture was extolling “flower power” and other kooky new age hokum, Dylan was reading the Old Testament and chasing hippies out of his Woodstock home with his rifle. All Along the Watchtower indeed.

           “See you later crocagater, after while Allen Ginsburg…”

The music world was exploding with a technicolor blossom of anything-goes possibility. The psychedelic sound. The acid tests. Meanwhile Dylan was spending his time writing and performing idiosyncratic old-timey sounding music with The Band (nee the Hawks) in a basement in Woodstock New York. Some of the tunes were old standards. Some were new. Some were goofs. As Robbie Robertson told Howard Sounes “I couldn’t tell which were the songs that (Dylan) wrote and which were the old songs.”

The Basement Tapes finds Dylan searching the past, pondering the present, and having fun with no deadlines, no agendas, no pressure. Pure music.                                         

                                    

                         

 

                “The comic book and me, just us, we caught the bus.”

After the laidback reefer dream of the Basement Tapes and the terse sepia-toned Biblical/criminal parables of John Wesley Harding, Dylan moved even further into the country with the smiling and genteel Nashville Skyline, and later with the (for many of his fans) scandalous and reactionary Self Portrait.

                                        “Is it rolling Bob?”

Dylan went back, revisiting songs as disparate as the 19^th century goldminer tune “Days of 49” to the Ronettes’ “Da Do Run Run,” writing light, tuneful pastoral pieces like “Country Pie.” It almost seems as though he was consciously separating himself from the hippie era, playing it straight, recording with people like Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Charlie Daniels. He cut his hair. He began crooning. He zigged while his fans were all zagging.  

It is perhaps no coincidence that when the Woodstock Festival came through, Dylan left town.

“Nothing is better, nothing is best. Take care of yourself, and get plenty of rest”

Of course many of his fans felt as though he’d abandoned them. He’d become a musical Howard Hughes—cut off and musically distant from his fans. Given the craziness of his cultural ascent perhaps he was purposely tamping down expectations, shutting the pop world away for his own sanity and well being. However much fans might have been disappointed in Dylan’s musical direction, and wanted him to say Big Important Things (or whatever), it should be no surprise that the “country-rock” music he crafted during this period would have a profound impact on the pop world. We’ve been here before; without even trying Dylan changed the music world.

                 “Time passes slowly when you’re lost in a dream…”

And then in 1972 Dylan began to emerge again. He found himself playing cowboys and outlaws in the Mexican wilds of Durango. Directed by the legendary and irascible Sam Peckenpaugh and starring Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, and Slim Pickens, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid would find Dylan acting in his first (non-documentary) big-time movie. At the urging of Peckenpaugh, Dylan wrote the music for the film.

           “Mama put my guns in the ground, I can’t shoot them anymore”

Considering the musical and stylistic changes Dylan had gone through over the preceding 10 years, it’s fitting that his character (a strange friend of Billy’s) was called ‘Alias.’

You know, ‘Alibi’ would have worked too.

Dylan ended this stage of his career in much the same way he’d began it—jamming with The Band. Things were a little different now—gone were the country jams of Woodstock (Dylan had relocated to Malibu), and the music was being prepped for a studio album—and there was talk about a tour, Dylan’s first in 8 years...

_{Dylan's performance on The Johnny Cash Show (1969)}  

Capsule Reviews (Albums)—1967- 1973:

·      The Basement Tapes

·      John Wesley Harding

·      Nashville Skyline

·      Self Portrait

·      New Morning

·      Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (soundtrack)

The Basement Tapes

This is greatest unreleased collection of music in rock history. Sure, a truncated version was released in ’76, but that has nothing on the expansive and beautiful whole.  Dylan leads the band through 128 songs ranging from covers like "Belle Isle" and "The French Girl" to stunning originals like "This Wheel’s on Fire" and "I’m Not There (1956)". Recorded (mostly) in the basement of the famous pink house that members of The Band were living in, the recordings exude a raw, good-time, earnestness that reveal a pureness of musical expression—even on the goofs (sometimes especially on the goofs). Music and cultural critic Greil Marcus wrote The Old, Weird America(The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes), which culturally connects the Basement Tapes to the Anthology of American Folk Music and the “secret history of America.” Best piece of musical criticism I’ve ever read.

There are various complete Basement Tapes bootlegs available, the most well known being “The Genuine Basement Tapes.” Personally, I recommend “A Tree With Roots.” –info here!

John Wesley Harding

This wonderfully terse collection of songs celebrates the sinners and the saints (Saint Augustine, John Wesley Hardin). The album is the exact opposite of  the type of music everyone else was making during this era—short, to the point, utterly moralistic. It’s as if the Biblical Ezekiel were re-imagined as a taciturn folksinger busking on a country road somewhere outside the land of Nod.

Hard, brilliant, and elemental stuff.

Nashville Skyline

180-degree turn from JWH, Dylan sounds happy and content on this slight collection of countryish songs. Notable for the hit song "Lay Lady Lay", this album disconcerted many longtime fans. Is that Dylan crooning?--(the infamous Dylan-croon)-- Sure, there’s nothing earth shattering here—definitely not his most inspired album— but, hey, it’s charming, a good sunny summer back-porch listening album. And besides, he jams with Cash here, which is about as cool as it gets.

Self Portrait

If Nashville Skyline perplexed longtime fans, then Self Portrait drove them to collective apoplexy. Dylan releases a double album of covers like "The Boxer", "Blue Moon", and "Let it Be Me". And he’s still crooning. Now think about the era—1970, up against the wall motherfucker, revolution hanging heavy in the air—and Dylan’s belting out mainstream tunes like "I’ve Forgotten More Than You’ll Ever Know".

There are a ton of conspiracy theories as to what Dylan was doing here—

• It was an elaborate joke on his fans
• He was trying to stick it to his manager (who collected money from Dylan’s publishing)
• He was being brainwashed by Nixon.
• Or perhaps Dylan just likes well-crafted songs, enjoyed singing them, and saw these songs as formative to who he became (hence the title).
• Or yeah, maybe it was just a big fuck you to the fans after all.  

Whatever it was, I enjoy the Self Portrait. Yes, it could have been probably shaved down to a single album, but for the most part these are great songs performed with care.  I guess I can’t say I’d recommend this album to anyone who wasn’t a rabid Dylanhead, but I personally find the album has a certain charm. Either this collection represents a portrait of an artist and his influences, or it’s the hippest fuck you album ever. Either way, it’s cool with me…

New Morning

Heralded as Dylan’s “comeback” album, New Morning isn’t as good as the critics proclaimed back in ’70—they were just happy to put Self Portrait and the Dylan-croon behind them, I think.

That being said, this is a strong, and assured album—somewhat more searching Nashville Skyline, but still firmly in the relaxed mood of the past few years. Musically it’s more ambitious, which probably has something to do with new producer and old cohort Al Kooper’s presence. Dylan even explores his jazzier side on a few tunes. Outside of The Basement Tapes, New Morning is definitely my favorite studio album of this era. Dylan is rarely as laidback and chill as he is here.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Soundtrack)

This is a really effective soundtrack—nice themes and musical interludes like Billy, and the "Cantina Theme" that really serve the film. Of course the gem here is the stone classic "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door". 

Dylan (1973)

Scraps from Self Portrait released by Columbia in response to Dylan’s shacking up with Geffen’s Asylum label (for Planet Waves). Hear Dylan sing "Mr. Bojangles" and Joni Mitchell’s "Big, Yellow Taxi"! (Hmmm...)

_{Dylan and Cash recording in Nashville 1969--One Too Many Mornings. This is the coolest thing you'll watch today.}

Bootlegs

(Once again, this is just a short list of a couple of bootlegs from the era I enjoy—see bobsboots.com for a comprehensive list of Dylan boots)

Note: Although the Basement Tapes are technically a bootleg, the historic nature of the album demanded it be placed with Dylan’s proper albums. 

Nashville 1969 (with Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins)

The recording sessions that produced the famous duet with Cash of "Girl From the North Country" found on Nashville Skyline. The recordings were kind of sloppy (but in a good, homey kind of way), so the planned album never panned out. But hey, it’s Bob Dylan cutting an album with Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins—that’s pretty frickin’ rad. And so is this boot.

Isle of Wight (1969)

Outside of a performance on The Johnny Cash Show and a memorial for Woody Guthrie, Dylan’s only big concert performance for this era was the Isle of Wight festival. He performed recontexualized/countryish versions of his rock songs in the late 60s Dylan-croon with The Band to an underwhelmed crowd. Interesting and historical boot that unfortunately suffers from major technical issues.

Almost Went to See Elvis

Taken from the many 1969/1970 recording sessions (Nashville and New York) that produced Self Portrait, Almost Went to See Elvis finds Dylan, with compadres like Charlie Daniels, George Harrison, and Carl Perkins, rambling, shambling, and having a whole-lotta fun. This is a decidedly shaggy affair, with Dylan and Co. shooting the shit between neat covers of songs like "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and (Perkins’) "Matchbox", weird covers of "Yesterday" and "All I have to do is Dream", and cool reinterpretations of his own songs like "Song to Woody" and "Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues". (And Gates of Eden here is wicked sick).

Peco’s Blues

Outtakes from the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid sessions. I honestly listen to this a lot more than the official soundtrack—great instrumentals; great jam on Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s "Rock Me Mama". 

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