Bringing It All Back Home
Bob Dylan-Bringing It All Back Home *****

This is it. Dylan hinted at greatness previous to this but Bringing It All Back Home did just that when originally released in 1965. This set Dylan on a role of classic albums that wouldn't stop for nearly a decade. With minor exceptions of course.

What is most notable about Bringing It All Back Home is that not only did Dylan go electric but he learned the meaning of melody. Songs like graceful wanderer that is 'She Belongs To Me' the almost controversial, and always misunderstood 'Mr. Tambourine Man' and the elegant closer 'Its All Over Now Baby Blue' all carry melodies that would make The Beatles or The Beach Boys blush.

Controversially speaking Dylan plug in his guitar for this album, and thus becoming 'JUDAS' to the folk community. Laughable yes, but these 'peaceful folkies' were serious. The electric guitar took Dylan to new heights and plateaus in his career. Reaching places he would have never reached without it and would have been a fool not to embrace it. A fool Robert Zimmermen is not.

Lyrically this may be his strongest of all time. 'Live Minus Zero/No Limit' is beyond genius. 'Bob Dylan's 115th Dream' is otherworldly. 'Its Alright Ma' is eerie. The Politics of 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' and 'Maggie's Farm' often go over the casual listeners head though are political satire at it's best. Most importantly though is dark 'Gates Of Eden.' An epic to destroy your favorite epic. Without a second thought, 'Eden' is by far Dylan's best.

Bringing It All Back Home did just that, and with force. If it isn't the mans best album it is a very close second. Essential

The most important musician's most important work
Wow. Where do you bein with this? How can you even put into words what this album has done not only for music, but for society in general? Without getting too far into the non-musical relevance of Dylan's 1965 masterpiece, it is important to atleast realize that this album began the phase of Dylan's career that essentially turned the music world upside down and inspired generations of musicians, poets, and artists of all sort who came after...

Musically, this album marks the transition of Bob Dylan from a clever folk singer into a rock icon. About half the tracks here are the acoustic folk Dylan everyone was accostomed to, and the other half are the recently plugged-in, electric Dylan that everyone saw for the first time at Newport. The album kicks off with the famous "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and gets better track by track. You have "She Belongs To Me" which is a beautiful acoustic piece about a woman who, through her methods and existence, has complete control over Dylan. Not the other way around as the title would suggest. Next is "Maggie's Farm", a piece about how various institutions- religion, government, corporation- can and will enslave you if you let them. "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" is one of the most poetic love songs ever written, and features many beautiful observations such as "She doesn't have to say she's faithful/yet she's true like ice, like fire." A lot of classic Dylan imagery in this song, used to explain what his lover is and is not. "Outlaw Blues" and "On The Road Again" are two bluesy numbers that really show a side of Dylan that no one had seen before, and many believe to be inspired by Kerouac's "On The Road". "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" is an extremely surreal narrative about a stranger in a strange land. It speaks on American imperialism and what one would encounter and feel like if they had recently came to the country for the first time. Lyrically, the song is so complex in its metaphors and illusions that it may make your head cave in. "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "It's Alright, Ma" follow next. These are 2 of Dylan's most famous songs- the former a whirlwind of images about escape through music and the latter a personal account of feeling deprived, disappointed, cheated, neglected, and frightened (yet brave in the face of this adversity) by acts of society across all mediums. Finally, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", a soft acoustic gem about change and moving on wraps up the album.

All in all, one of the most amazing recordings I have ever heard. Stunningly poetic and very deep. It just may change the way you look at the world.

There Are No Sins Outside The Gates Of Eden
It seems hard to believe now both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). It is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.

Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan's role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to comment on a couple of songs here. Obviously, no one will ever really unravel what the meaning of Subterranean Homesick Blues is about except that it has produced one of the most famous lines of the 1960's- `you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows' (although if the truth be known you do) that I am fond of using anytime I get a change to use it as a political cutting edge. Love Minus Zero No Limit is one of the great modern love songs that will along with a few others define what love, longing and companionship meant for our generation ('my love is like some raven at my window with a broken wing' says more above love than half the sonnets every written).

Needless to say Gates of Eden is the modern equivalent of John Milton's Paradise Lost (and I do not mean to use that praise hyperbolically). If Milton was explaining the ways of god to man in the aftermath of the defeat of the English Revolution then Dylan was attempting to give his take on the eternal verities for modern times.

1965 masterpiece marking Dylan's transition from folkie to rocker
1965 masterpiece from Bob Dylan marking his transition from folk singer to rocker. Contains not only his greatest song "Mr. Tambourine Man" but other works of genius "Subterranean Homesick Blues", "Maggie's Farm", "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" and finishes appropriately with "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". Dylan was on fire at this time and was to follow this up just five months later with "Highway 61 Revisited". Great album cover as well.

Trivia: This album has been released in some countries as the more prosaically titled "Subterranean Homesick Blues".

Bob Dylan Invents Folk Rock
This Record chronicles a change in Bob Dylan's style. The poetry is still here, but now Dylan has hired a band, and a darned good one to boot. He's gone electric and he's invented folk rock. This turned off many of his fans, but apparently it got him even more, because with this record, Dylan has finally broken into Billboard's top ten.

Apparently Dylan didn't want to completely turn off his old fans, because half of this album is acoustic and half electric, however we won't see another acoustic album from him for twenty-seven years when he does a beautiful album, covering traditional songs called Good As I Been to You. Though he does a great original acoustic song, "Dark Eyes," on Empire Burlesque, but that is still way off in the future. And, of course, a few left over acoustic songs come out on compilations and there are those three songs recorded with Happy Traum on Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, but really, this record was the last of the folky Dylan. From here on out he records with a band, aiming for the top spot on the charts, his only competition in the minds of many, the Beatles.