1963: Bob Dylan: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Regular readers of the blog could almost certainly have guessed both the album and the artist to follow Blur (and not just because I actually told the most regular reader of the blog who was coming up next). There's not much between Blur and Bob Dylan in the alphabet (I'm neither a big enough fan of Bo Diddley or Boards of Canada) and, with the Beatles having already gone, there's really not much else in my realm from 1963.

So Freewheelin' it is. The first great Bob Dylan album. The start of the singer-songwriter. Pretty much the start of everything, albeit 'Please Please Me', the Beatles' debut album, was a couple of months earlier.

Another wonderful wonderful album cover. Young Bob in love with Suze Rotolo, arguably the most important of the many muses throughout his career. What might Bob Dylan have been without Suze Rotolo? One more thin gypsy thief ...

The first Bob Dylan album, 'Bob Dylan', is fine. Some very nice folk covers and a couple of tentative attempts at writing. I don't believe it set the world on fire at the time.

Why did Bob Dylan start writing his own songs? Because no one else had written the songs he wanted to sing.

There is a certain disappointment when one delves into the life and times of Bob at what that "songwriting" often entails. Recently, we know he's been borrowing a few words, and early on, he used a lot of pre-existing melodies. It's no secret, and it's also not true to say that Dylan never came up with any great melodies. As his career progressed, there are many, many melodies of his own, great Bob Dylan songs of all different kinds of styles and patterns. It irritates me if anyone says otherwise.

But 'Freewheelin', great as it is, is basically Dylan learning how to speak his mind over old tunes. The result is several songs which are classics to this day, so not many are complaining.

I think I prefer 'The Times They Are a Changin' which came a year later. It's more austere, more serious, sadder and harsher, but to me the songs are even more breathtaking. On that album, there's 'With God on Our Side', 'One Too Many Mornings', 'When the Ship Comes In', 'Boots of Spanish Leather' and 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' - the latter alone is, to me, one of the greatest works of art of the 20th century, and I'll stand by that.

What's on Freewheelin?  The tracklistin' is
Blowin in the Wind
Girl from the North Country
Masters of War
Down the Highway
Bob Dylan's Blues
A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
-
Don't Think Twice it's All right
Bob Dylan's Dream
Oxford Town
Talkin' World War III Blues
Corrina, Corrina
Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance
I Shall Be Free

Come on, it peters out a bit, doesn't it? It could lose at least two, arguably four.

But just imagine hearing it when it came out. Especially the first half. Just imagine. There are all the song types which well be the template for his career, in excelsis.

The idealistic, questioning one
The nostalgic, romantic one
The angry one
The richly metaphorical one
The sweetly, slyly, bitterly cynical one
The funny one


They're all there.
I'd been listening to Dylan for maybe a year or two, in the form of a couple of mixed up compilations before I bought this, along with Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks when I was 18. A favourite can't be picked from these 4, but I think this may have made the earliest impression. I knew the first, second and sixth track already, but they worked far better in their right context.
Don't Think Twice It's All Right was the biggest winner for me, I couldn't believe how pretty it was (here was a particular disappointment when i later discovered it wasn't Bob's own melody).

I did love the two talkin' songs on the second half, Talkin World War III Blues and I Shall Be Free - how fabulously silly, surreal and smartass he could be.

And Masters of War, well it seems a bit basic and unnuanced now, but jeez it was powerful back then when I heard it, so again, just imagine how powerful it will have been at the time.

Perhaps it would be silly to think that "political" "adult" songwriting in the pop charts wouldn't have come about anyway without Bob Dylan, but, you know, maybe it wouldn't. What would have happened to the Beatles? Would they have stayed fun, got boring and would rock'n'roll have died a fairly quick death? It's not a ridiculous question.

This was a cultural phenomenon that did need to gain momentum in the early 60s, it hadn't really gone anywhere for a few years, and this album was unfathomably important in that.

It still sounds great. Just great.

I saw Dylan at the Albert Hall last week. My view was terrible, right in the gods, and so the sound was hard going. He didn't play anything from Freewheelin', sadly, indeed he hardly played anything from the 60s, which is pretty bold. He plays a lot of his recent stuff, and the fact is that's the stuff that wounds best and often gets the best reaction now.
I've seen him play 'Blowin in the Wind'  and 'Hard Rain' and that may be about it from this album. He probably has a pretty good idea of which songs from his back catalogue he can do justice to. These songs deserve to be sung by a young guy with an old voice and an acoustic guitar. 50 years on, it's incredible that Bob Dylan can still perform new songs that people want to hear.

Oh, and I realise I didn't do a Bob Dylan compilation. Got to keep it to 20 songs. I toyed with imposing one from each album but then, how about non-album tracks? So this would be my Bob Dylan compilation, with no restrictions.

Like a Rolling Stone
Lay Down Your Weary Tune
Idiot Wind
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
Isis (Live)
Mississippi
Workingman Blues
To Ramona
Boots of Spanish Leather
Visions of Johanna
Simple Twist of Fate
When the Ship Comes In
I Threw it All Away
She's Your Lover Now
Hurricane
One Too Many Mornings
Not Dark Yet
Positively 4th Street
Love Minus Zero
Every Grain of Sand

Something like that, anyway