HOW TO LISTEN TO DYLAN - JUST GETTING STARTED

Now, that your appetite has been whet with Bringing It All Back Home, it’s time to seal the deal with Dylan’s trifecta of stellar albums from 3 different decades. They are as follows:

2. Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

What can you say about an album that starts off with what Rolling Stone magazine deemed the “Greatest Rock Song of All Time”….it’s none other than ”Like a Rolling Stone.” From the first strum of his electric guitar this song permeates the soul with all that is Dylan—enough said. But the swagger doesn’t stop after cut #1. The listener is led down a path of complete rock songs that challenge the establishment (“Ballad of a Thin Man”) and rain down with surrealistic imagery (“Highway 61 Revisited”). Outside of the more well-known songs there are those “filler” songs that just won’t quit such as “From A Buick 6” and “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”. Some argue that Dylan saved the best for last in this album’s sequencing. He leaves the listener with an apocalyptic epic called “Desolation Row.” One can only wonder as they listen over and over again to a song that tells of a world filled with characters like Cinderella, Robin Hood and Ezra Pound. We put this album as #2 because we don’t think it offers quite the breadth of “likeability” for the Dylan neophyte that Bringing It All Back Home does. But, many have argued this is Dylan’s greatest masterpiece.

• Studs: Like a Rolling Stone, Highway 61 Revisited, Desolation Row
• Duds: N/A

3. Blood on The Tracks (1975)

This album also starts out with a stone cold classic-- “Tangled Up in Blue.” There’s not much not to like about a song in which each verse chronicles a year in a failed relationship. Genius, really! The album then curves its way through songs of break-up (“Simple Twist of Fate”), heartache (“If You See Her Say Hello”) and meaninglessness (“Buckets of Rain”). Dylanophiles know Blood on the Tracks as the “divorce” record because Bobby penned it in the midst of his divorce from Sara Lowndes. It’s his best album from the 70’s for sure …because there is very little of the 70’s in it. No cheesy synthesizer, disco beats or bad guitar solos. Arguably, the only thing to turn off a novice Dylan listener is the bluesy “Meet Me in the Morning” and the lengthy “Jack of Hearts”.

• Studs: Tangled Up in Blue, Shelter from the Storm, You’re a Big Girl Now
• Duds: Meet Me in the Morning, Jack of Hearts

4. Time Out of Mind (1997)

This is the album that put Dylan back on top just when people thought he was done. Reviewer Rickey Wright said “this album tops anything Dylan’s done in the studio since Blood on The Tracks” and we think Rickey is Wright (bad pun intended). This album will give the now initiated Dylan contemplator a lot to like. There’s everything here: love lost (“Love Sick”), blues (“Dirt Road Blues”), quaint little love songs (“Make You Feel My Love”), and even a haunting description of mortality (“Not Dark Yet”). The only warning we have is that Dylan’s voice is pretty tired-sounding on this record compared to his 60’s and 70’s albums. However, we feel the songs make the album strong enough to overcome any vocal objections one might have. Daniel Lanois did a great job of custom fitting the instrumentation to smooth over Dylan’s vocal limitations. We hesitated a little bit to put this album at #4 for the new listener but in the end good sense and good songs prevailed. We’re confident this will keep any vacillating Dylan neophyte on the road to more.

• Studs: Love Sick, Not Dark Yet, Cold Irons Bound
• Duds: Til I Fell in Love With You, Can’t Wait