Wednesday 4th February

For almost 4 years Dylan became almost a recluse.  What started as a minor motorcycle accident in late ’66 causing him to cancel a forthcoming tour became an escape hatch, or a growing doubt of his abilities or simply a rethinking of his entire career.  According to who you speak to that is; Dylan doesn’t enlighten us.  And there right in the middle of the madness of 1967, hippies and California and Woodstock, we still heard nothing.  He settled down to married life and having children, or did he?  After eighteen long months of nothing Dylan slipped out “John Wesley Harding”, but what was it, this new record.  His voice sounded distant, not really there – many of the songs had no chorus or focus, Dylan slipping in and out as if the song had nothing to do with him.  He sung of drifters and outlaws and hoboes, simple guitar, harmonica and background drums.  What was he trying to tell us; this was almost a biblical message, timeless songs.  It was almost saying “You must forget the old Dylan, he is not the saviour, he isn’t anything special at all.”  Trouble was that this silence only served to increase his fans fervour who now sought hidden insights into this completely counter-culture message.  The last song was a pointer to his next direction, “I’ll be your baby tonight” was a pure country ballad and he followed it with a whole country album “Nashville Skyline” with a smiling country Bob on the cover.  Of course everything Dylan touched was brilliant and the quality of the songs shone through. “Lay Lady Lay” became a hit and “I Threw it All Away” is one of his best love-songs ever.  He had also been quietly recording acoustic sings with The Band in the basement of their house in up-state New York.  These were eventually released in the mid seventies as “The Basement Tapes” – an album I have never really rated and one I am sure Bob never wanted released.

As if to completely throw his ever-growing army of fans he released “Self Portrait” in 1970; a double album of various strange songs, some quite beautiful, some quite rough sounding and many covers of other singers and a couple of bad live songs too – a real mixed bag, which actually I quite loved.  Some even worse out-takes were released by Columbia, his record company, a year later when Dylan threatened to leave them.  Whatever Dylan was up to it didn’t work.  The very few live appearances he made were huge events, everyone begging the old Bob, the Electric Bob, the Folkie Bob, the Poet Bob to return.  Eventually he sort of gave in and returned to some sort of conventional recording with New Morning.