Bringing It All Back Home

 


This starts with Subterranean Homesick Blues - possibly the first music video?  It's great, but there are a number of these jokey stream-of-consciousness songs which I can live without.  Maggie's Farm is OK, but is a bit too similar to SHB for my liking.  Outlaw Blues, On The Road Again, Bob Dylan's 115th Dream...they are all OK.  The love songs on side 1 are (shocking!) all...OK too.

For me, this album is all about the second side.  Mr Tambourine Man...why did the Byrds miss half the verses out??  Dylan can build a world in a single song and he really does it here.  Hypnotic.

Gates of Eden: austere, mysterious, wonderful.

It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding): I seem to hold my breath during this song.  I knew this song already: think a friend from university put it on a tape compilation thirty years ago.  I am a slow learner!  Staggering.

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue: what an ending to an album.  In a number of his "finger-pointing" songs he can be quite ambiguous.  Is he accusing, describing the facts, sympathetic, loathing...?

You can tell he is heading into his imperial phase here...


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