The Best Dylan Album?

For me Dylan is one of the great artists of the 20th century, and I believe history will point to this. The two that stand out are Highway 61 Revisited and John Wesley Harding.

Jonny Come Lately said:

I agree that Highway 61 Revisited is wall-to-wall brilliant, but I think Blood On The Tracks will always be special to me as it was the first Bob Dylan album I ever listened to. I absolutely love Tangled Up In Blue, You're A Big Girl and Idiot Wind and the rest isn't exactly bad either, to make a great understatement. It stands as perhaps the greatest breakup album ever made and as the benchmark by which most other breakup records are measured.

I should probably clarify I have only listened to five of his albums in full - these being the first two I mentioned, Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde On Blonde and Desire although I am familiar with most of his other 'big' songs (Blowin' In The Wind, All Along The Watchtower, Knockin' On Heaven's Door and classics of their ilk).

One song I really like on Blonde On Blonde apart from those already mentioned is Rainy Day Women #12 & #35, can't help but laugh at 'everybody must get stoned'.

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BOTT is a great intro to Dylan and can spoil a person!

One thing i've read about Rainy Day Women is that Dylan insisted on getting the musicians drunk and high for the recording to set the proper mood. Mission accomplished!

I didn't know that about the recording of Rainy Day Women. It figures though!

One think I've thought about Blood On The Tracks recently is about how Lily, Rosemary and The Jack Of Hearts might have sounded had he saved it for Desire. I'm sure Scarlet Rivera would have added some interesting violin parts to it. It was probably a good idea to include one 'story' song on BOTT though, it does lighten the mood (slightly, a song which ends with a hanging isn't exactly light is it?) when put on the same album as Idiot Wind and If You See Her Say Hello (probably the most painful breakup song I've ever heard in a good way).

I know Bob himself says he can't understand why anyone enjoys listening to the album but I think it's top-notch songwriting by any standards and there's easily a big enough range of emotions and thoughts to avoid being one-dimensional - compare the mood of the two songs I just mentioned, the former is angry and bitter whereas the latter is much more reflective.

I'm personally glad he included Lily, Rosemary... on Tracks. i think it fits in as a song about romantic shenanigans and recriminations. Also, i love the simple accompaniment with the organ, though i can also imagine Rivera's fiddle finding a place. I'd say everything came together just right for the album, including Dylan's decision to re-record some of the songs in Minnesota.

What i wonder, if Sara was a musician, what would be her musical reply? But i often wonder about those things. When i hear Jagger ripping a woman in a Stones song (Under My Thumb or Out of Time, for example), i want to know the woman's side of the story.

I've also read where Dylan says he can't understand why people enjoy Tracks. Maybe he's thinking of the pain attached to the break-up of his marriage, though he has continued performing songs over the years. It's not too-too personal that it can't also be universally understood. As you suggested, great music has a way of doing that.

Johnny-Too-Good said:

For me Dylan is one of the great artists of the 20th century, and I believe history will point to this. The two that stand out are Highway 61 Revisited and John Wesley Harding.

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I think history is already pointing to Dylan in this way. He's won a Kennedy Center award, a Pulitzer and his name has even been bandied about for a Nobel Prize (not that i think he would win that one). A wave of books in recent years, not only biographies but analysis of his lyrics and his place in American culture. History is looking to be very good towards Bobby.

"Blood On The Tracks" is my favorite.

Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks and Desire are my favorites. However, these I tend to just play his songs random over all years or a live bootleg.

Heck of a lot of great albums under his belt but the best one has got to be Bringing It All Back Home. Really caught him at the peak of his powers where he still had an angry, folk edge but his music was much more lushly formed than in his bare bones days and his sound had gone from protest to zeitgeist. You look at Bringing It All Back Home and it's like you almost forgot how many of his best tracks are on here: It's Alright Ma, Baby Blue, Tambourine Man, Homesick Blues, Maggie's Farm. It's the sole record that really merges the best attributes of Dylan's various styles over his first decade.

The only contender I'd really put up there is Blood on the Tracks. The 70s were a huge renaissance for Dylan and I think that's where he hit, by far, his stride as a musician and performer as opposed to a writer. The instrumentations were gorgeous and his singing has never been better, playing heavily with dynamics (starting soft, going loud), he was able to turn a generally rudimentary voice into an exquisite piece of the music -- There're a lot of great covers of Dylan's early work but you won't find many artists capable of adequately matching Dylan's sound in the 70s. Blood on the Tracks was easily the pinnacle of that period with richly emotive ballads like Tangled Up In Blues, Shelter from the Storm, and A Simple Twist of Fate, the kind that instantly pierce the heart.

Dylan's resurgence in the mid-70s was a big deal. He looked like a spent force in the early '70s, then hit the world with Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks and Desire. I count the late '90s as another resurgence, beginning with Time Out of Mind and continuing with Love and Theft, while Modern Times and Together Through Life are good ones. One difference is that his voice was in top form in the '70s, while reduced to a hoarse croak on the more recent albums.

Blonde

I would go as far as to say One Of Us Must Know is one of the 10 greatest Bob ever made, very under rated song.

1. Blonde On Blonde
2. Blood On The Tracks ( 1 and 2 are almost interchangeable )
3. Highway 61 Revisited
4. John Wesley Harding
5. Nashville Skyline