One Dozen Essential Dylan Albums

Bob Dylan has released over 40 albums. Several of them are classics of the genre, many are very good, and there are a few that he probably should have re-considered. Here is Wade's list of the one dozen Dylan albums (excluding compilations) that he views as the most essential to own.

1. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Released 1963.

After a first album that sold only about 5000 copies and didn't make many waves, Dylan delivered a tsunami for his sophmore effort.  Vocal-wise "Freewheelin'" still has Dylan in his "son of Ramblin' Jack Elliot" mode but he uses it to great effect on some of his most lasting and admired songs.  Here we have the wonderful "young-man's poem" (Allen Ginsburg's words) called "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" - a waterfall of symbolic images of America that cascade down on the listener until you nearly drown.  The lost love classic "Girl From the North Country" and the bitter "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" are here as well along with the campfire classic "Blowin' in the Wind" (made popular at the time by Peter, Paul, and Mary).  It also includes Dylan's angriest anti-military-industrial-complex song, "Masters of War."  The album was the first Dylan that many 60s folk (such as the Beatles) were exposed to it and influenced a slew of artists.

2. Another Side of Bob Dylan. Released 1964.

This album caused a huge controversy when it was released.  It seemed like a conscious move away from the protest songs of the album that preceded it ("The Times They are a-Changin'") and seems to me to date better than that one.  At the time, however, that move seemed to many to be a betrayal of the folk music revival.  It was this album, and not his "going electric", that drove Irwin Silber to write his famous "Open Letter" to Dylan in November of 1964.  It was the fact that he was writing from such a personal point of view, that seemed to be the problem.  Songwriting became, on this album, a mode of self-expression.  This is the album, more than any other, on which Dylan gave birth to the "singer-songwriter" genre.  It features just Dylan (no band) but someone he gets it to feel like a rock album anyway.  Something about the rhythms or attitude or something, I don't know what, but it is there.  It includes his classic denial of responsibility "It Ain't Me Babe," one of his most perfectly written songs "To Ramona", a song that became an anthem for Amnesty International for a time "Chimes of Freedom" and a number that became a highlight of his rock concerts of 1966 "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Have Never Met)".  He includes a couple piano numbers along with his normal guitar songs.  For those Alfred Hitchcock fans among us (which includes Wade) there is a take off on the movie "Psycho" called "Motorpsycho Nitemare."  The album ends with a song that seemingly distances Dylan from the folk-protest movement, "My Back Pages," in which he sings "But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."  It is true that Dylan was a young man at the time and had sounded a lot older on his first three albums.  On "Another Side" Dylan returned into himself to an extent and became the young man he never had been.

3. Bringing It All Back Home. Released 1965.

"Bringing It All Back Home" (BiaBH) began a series of three mid-sixties albums that would prove to be Dylan's most influencial and well regarded work.  Easing into the electric arena, the album's first side (remember when albums had "sides") featured Dylan backed by an electric rock band and featured the almost rap-like "Subterranean Homesick Blues" along with "Maggie's Farm" and "Love Minus Zero/No Limit."  The second side was all acoustic and perhaps even better.  It began with "Mr. Tambourine Man" (a much better version than the Byrds' cover) and continued with the surreal imagery of "Gates of Eden" and the sixties rant of "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." The latter is the song Jimmy Carter quoted (incorrectly) in his 1976 Democratic Convention speech.  The side ended with "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" which some read as Dylan's kiss off to the folk music scene.  It was a classic, but not destined to be his best album of the year...

4. Highway 61 Revisited. Released 1965.

In this highly productive year (1965) Dylan released "Bringing it All Back Home," conducted an acoustic solo tour of Britain (during which D.A. Pennebaker's film about Dylan "Don't Look Back" was shot), electrified the Newport Folk Festival with a loud folk/rock performance (he was booed and would not return to that festival until 2002), toured with a rock band in the United States and recorded and released a second classic album "Highway 61 Revisted" which contains his biggest commercial "hit" to date "Like a Rolling Stone."  "Highway 61 Revisited" had a fuller, more complete, band sound than "Bringing It All Back Home."  Dylan was no longer channeling the voice of Woody Guthrie through Ramblin' Jack Elliot - he was his own complete creature.  Bruce Springstein once said that when he heard Dylan sing "Like a Rolling Stone" on the radio he knew he was hearing the toughest voice he had ever heard.  There is something special about Dylan's voice on this one.  He sounds completely like he is talking to you, communicating to the audience through the subtleties and nuances of speech, and yet also singing accompaniment to a rich rhythmic sound unlike anything that had been heard before on popular radio.  And then there was the songwriting.  The songs were long, strange, angry, and brilliant.  To Dylan and his peers the world in the 60s seemed turned upside down and insane.  That world is evoked with astonishing clarity in these songs - even to those of us not yet born when he was singing them.  The frustration with authority in "Ballad of a Thin Man", anger at former friends or lovers in "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Queen Jane Approximately," the sheer insanity of the world in "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Tombstone Blues," the defiant despair of "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "Desolation Row" added up to a listening experience many were not ready for in 1965.  Today the album still seems modern.  Wade's favorite Dylan album and a true classic that influenced a generation of popular musicians.  Most critics however, don't consider it Dylan's best.  That honor generally falls to...

5. Blonde on Blonde. Released 1966.

Most critics rate this one as Dylan's best and it is almost always near the top of critics "best of all time" lists.  This was originally a two LP set (one of the first) but is now on a single CD.  It contained Dylan's only "novelty" hit (the very fun "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35") and its fourth side contained only one song: the eleven minute long "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" which was allegedly written about the woman he married around this time, Sara.  Dylan himself once said that individual tracks of the "Blonde on Blonde" album are the closest he has ever gotten to the sound he hears in his mind.  "It's that thin, that wild mercury sound," he said.  "It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up.  That's my particular sound."  It includes an organ, a harmonica, drums and guitars swirling around one another.  His voice flows with the sound (rather than through it) and almost sounds hypotized by it.  There are blues songs here ("Pledging My Time," "Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat"), pop songs ("I Want You"), rockers ("Absolutely Sweet Marie," "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"), ballads ("Just Like a Woman," "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands") and some that don't seem to fit any ready description.  Andrew Motion (England's current Poet Laureate) named one of the song lyrics on this album ("Visions of Johanna") as the best song lyric ever written.  It also happens to be the first album Dylan recorded in Nashville!

6. John Wesley Harding. Released 1968.

Very different from "Blonde on Blonde," Dylan's next album of original material was stripped down and musically bare.  Featuring just an acoustic guitar, harmonica, bass, and a drumkit this album has a very unique sound.  In songwriting terms this may be because it is one of the few albums in which Dylan wrote the words first and came up with melodies later.  In Dylan's words it is "a fearful album ... dealing with the devil in a fearful way...."  It featured simple morality tall-tales capped off by a couple of simple country love songs at the end.  The most famous track is "All Along the Watchtower" which Jimi Hendrix re-did in a famous rock version which became his biggest hit.  Dylan had stopped touring for two years prior to this (allegedly due to a motorcycle accident in mid 1966) and sounded contented with his life at home.  It is Dylan's last 1960s masterpiece.

7. Blood on the Tracks. Released 1975.

After a series of below average (for him) albums, Dylan performed one of music's biggest "comebacks" with this mid-seventies folk rock classic.  It has become the yardstick against which all later Dylan albums are measured - after 1975 the biggest praise any Dylan album gets is "it's his best since Blood on the Tracks"!  The language and imagery in the songs are far less complex and convoluted than on his mid-sixties classics.  His vocal phrasing had matured and "Blood on the Tracks" is probably Dylan's finest moment as a singer.  The album's theme was broken relationships and his own deteriorating marriage is often thought to have been the inspiration for it (though he has sometimes denied that).  The most famous song on the album is "Tangled Up In Blue" which has become a concert staple.  Other highlights include "Simple Twist of Fate," "Idiot Wind," "Shelter From the Storm," and "Buckets of Rain."  Recently the folk rock band "Mary Lee's Corvette" released a live album consisting of the entire "Blood on the Tracks" song set.

8. The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3: Rare and Unreleased 1961-1991. Released 1991.

A "bootleg" refers to an unauthorized release of an otherwise unreleased recording.  Dylan has been one of the most frequently bootlegged popular musicians of all time.  This is partly because Dylan has been notorious for being a poor judge of the quality of his own material and sometimes released music far inferior to the music he holds back.  In 1991 Columbia (his record company) responded with a 3 CD box set full of material of Dylan's previously available only through unauthorized releases.  Sure enough, they found enough good material to make this 3 CD set a classic.  Highlights are present from all the stages of his career and include traditional material like "The House Carpenter," "No More Auction Block," and "Moonshiner;" many original songs such as "Let Me Die in My Footsteps," "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," "Seven Curses, "Farewell Angelina," "She's Your Lover Now," "Golden Loom," "Angelina," "Blind Willie McTell," and "Series of Dreams;" in addition to alternate versions of "When the Ship Comes In," "I Shall Be Released," and "Idiot Wind" among others.

9. Time Out of Mind. Released 1997.

After "Blood on the Tracks" Dylan went into an artistic decline that stunned critics and fans alike.  He went from producing classic after classic to producing the occassional great album amid mediocre (or even downright bad) ones, to then producing some of the worst music ever made by a major recording artist.  In the late-eighties his muse seemed to come back to him to some degree in the very good album "Oh Mercy" but then left again for several years.  Then in 1997 he turned it all around with an album nearly as strong as "Blood on the Tracks."  "Time Out of Mind" seems almost to be a late life sequel to "Blood on the Tracks."  Rather than the fire of a recent broken relationship, Dylan sings here about regret over a lost love that the singer could never get out of his mind.  It is also an album about growing older and coming to terms with the end of life.  Produced by Daniel Lanois, Dylan's hard ruminations are surrounded by a murky musical soup.  A modern updating of the "Blonde on Blonde" "thin mercury" style - only thicker.  Dylan's voice is cracked and broken, but that only seems to make him sound better.  Unlike a large part of his mid- to late eighties and early nineties music, Dylan seems to put his full conviction into these vocals and he has rarely sounded more honest and convincing.  Highlights include "Tryin' To Get to Heaven," "Not Dark Yet," and "Highlands."  "Time Out of Mind" was the first Dylan album to win a grammy for "Album of the Year."

10. The Bootleg Series Volume 4: Live 1966. Released 1998.

Columbia's official release of the concert that became the most famous bootleg record of Dylan's career.  Bootlegged as the "Royal Albert Hall" show, Columbia confirmed that the concert had actually been recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall.  Dylan's shows at the time consisted of a first set featuring him playing his acoustic guitar and harmonica alone and a second set backed by the group that would later become known as The Band.  Audiences, ticked off that Dylan was "going electric" would applaud politely during the acoustic section and then boo and protest the electric set.  This particular concert is famous for an incident occuring between Dylan and an audience member before the band began the last song of the evening.  While the group is preparing to begin the song an audience member yells out "Judas!"  The crowd begins to mumble and talk among themselves and as the band begins Dylan says "I don't believe you! You're a liar!"  Then someone (probably Dylan) is heard saying "play f***ing loud!" and the band breaks into a very loud and very angry "Like a Rolling Stone."  Dylan seems to relish singing the line "you're just gonna have to get used to it!"  The acoustic set is impressive as well with Dylan actually improving on some of the tracks from "Blonde on Blonde" such as with a "Fourth Time Around" that will make you forget all about the studio version.  The electric set, though, is the famous one and the band is so in tune with Dylan and so responsive to his needs that you almost get the feeling that he and the band are one.  A beautiful sounding recording of one of Dylan's best and most controversial performances.

11. Love and Theft. Released 2001.

Dylan continued his artistic comeback with this brilliant new album released (horribly enough) on September 11th, 2001.  Dylan steals lines, melodies, and general inspiration from the old time music he loves, to create a virtual tour of early styles of American music.  Some of the themes of lost love and mortality from "Time Out of Mind" are revisited here (one song, at least, was written and recorded for "Time Out of Mind" but not used there - the song "Mississippi" was re-recorded for this album) but here the singer has added confidence and seems to come to us from a position of strength rather than quiet despair.  "Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum" is a high energy rocker with imagery that reminds one of Dylan's mid-sixties work.  "Summer Days" has the feel of a fifties-era rock and roll tune and contains on of my favorite lines from the album "She said 'you can't repeat the past'/ I said 'what do you mean you can't - of course you can!'"  "Mississippi" and "High Water (for Charley Patton)" are highlights though this is an album with few (if any) "low spots."  "Sugar Baby" provides the requisite "lost love" song and "Floater (Too Much to Ask)" is a hoot of a lyric sung to a jazz melody from the early part of the century.  A masterpiece of songwriting and vocal phrasing, the songs on the album are sung like no other artist could in a voice broken by years and hard experience.

12. The Bootleg Series Volume 4: Live 1975. Released 2002.

In 1975 Dylan conducted a tour with several of his friends from the sixties called the Rolling Thunder Revue.  During the tour he also filmed a (very bad) movie eventually released as "Renaldo and Clara" in 1977.  The movie tanked, but the music was some of the finest of Dylan's concert career.  Several concerts were recorded by Dylan for the movie and this is a collection of those recordings.  It is much better than the 1976 live set he released ("Hard Rain") from the second Rolling Thunder Revue tour.  It is a set of fine quality recordings and features several duets excellent duets with Joan Baez.  The music was rag-tag and loose - perfect for Dylan to sing and improvise to.  He also includes several solo acoustic performances that are highlights - I am especially fond of "Simple Twist of Fate" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue."  Other highlights include wonderful versions of "One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)," "It Ain't Me, Babe," "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," and lovely duets with Baez such as "I Shall Be Released" and "The Water is Wide."  The initial pressing of the CD also includes a DVD with a couple of concert scenes ("Tangled Up in Blue" and "Isis") taken from "Renaldo and Clara."  The version of "Tangled Up in Blue" is the same as on the CD, but the version of "Isis" is a different (and superior) one.  (It was not put on the CD in this case because it was released in 1985 in the box set "Biograph.")