One of the most pivotal albums in the evolution of rock music, few other recordings have had more impact than the 1965 Bob Dylan classic, Bringing It All Back Home. In the mid-sixties, rock music was about to explode into psychedelia, prog and jazz fusion. Meanwhile, Bob Dylan had made an enormous impact on songwriting with his first four all-acoustic albums. He had created a different way of writing songs, by embracing themes such as civil rights, anti-war protests and social issues, which lifted the subject matter from teenage love songs to serious poetic works of art, rife with symbolism. But with Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan shot his lyrics through with surreal hard-edged beat poetry while the music contained both acoustic songs and blues-based loud electric rock. It alienated him from many of his peers in the folk community but nonetheless contains classic cuts like ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ ‘Maggie’s Farm’ and ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’. Dylan had opened the door to experimentation. The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Doors, Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Cream all listened and responded. In its wake, Songwriting rose to new heights with few boundaries. After Bringing It All Back Home, music was forever changed.
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Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) Paperback
Bob Dylan is the magician who sprinkled poetic fairy dust on to the popular music of the early sixties and his songwriting sparked a revolution and changed rock music forever. The diminutive poet/singer claimed he was merely a ‘song and dance man’ but Dylan altered popular music from intellectually bereft teenage rebellion into a serious adult art form worthy of academic study. Dylan headed for the sixties as a Little Richard rock ‘n’ roller but soon turned acoustic folkie and after absorbing the music and words of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson and Brecht, he became a vagabond social troubadour. Basking in Rimbaud he transformed into a poetic symbolist before later immersing himself in lysergic beat surrealism. The chameleon of Dylan in the sixties was bewildering to his followers. His first album was a raw debut folk/blues. Then followed three acoustic poetic gems, three ground-breaking surreal ,electric wonders and four that were more mundane and country-tinged. But by the mid-sixties he was a strung-out polka-dotted rock star. He crashed (physically and mentally) before leaving the sixties as a clean-cut country crooner. Dylan had mutated more times than a trilobite. Dylan’s ground-breaking music changed the world and his amazing story is revealed by exploring the eleven albums that he released between 1962 and 1970.
Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home
Introduction
I can confidently state that Bringing It All Back Home is, without a doubt, one of the most important albums in the entire history of rock music. I will explain why.
Not only was it ground-breaking in the way that it fused elements of blues, folk, rock and poetry, but it was also incredibly influential on the sound and writing of the major acts of the time. Without Bob Dylan and the album Bringing It All Back Home, there would not have been the impetus for bands such as The Beatles, The Stones or The Beach Boys to later construct hugely influential albums, or, at least, they would not have been as experimental and adventurous. Neither would we have had the incredible bodies of work by major singer-songwriters like Neil Young, Roy Harper or Bruce Springsteen. The sixties underground scene would not have happened without its explosion of styles, from psychedelic and heavy metal to prog rock, country and blues, its anti-war and civil rights protest and complex poetic songs. This album changed the face of rock music. ‘Artists from the Beatles to Bruce Springsteen have cited Bob Dylan as one of the most important influences on their music making and songwriting, noting that Dylan helped them see the possibilities of a different kind of lyric writing that was more intimate, personal, and autobiographical than what they found in early Rock and Roll songs.’ Stephanie Mooneyhan
Paul McCartney said: ‘I’ll never be able to write like Dylan. He thinks of these fantastic word combinations. It doesn’t matter if you get lost in one of his compositions, you can get hung up on just two words – the man is a poet.’
The album came out at a crucial point in time. This was 1965, the midpoint of the sixties, a turning point, and Bob Dylan was the fulcrum on which rock music turned. Before Bringing It All Back Home, we had rock, R&B and blues-based beat music (as with The Beatles and The Stones) and, lyrically, more sophisticated folk music. After Bringing It All Back Home, we had a new world of possibilities. The album opened up a theatre of opportunity by melding together the two distinctly different genres, and, in the process, creating an entirely unique style of music, a different way of songwriting and a different structure to popular music. With new sounds, new ideas, and a new attitude, nothing would ever be the same.
The new, polka-dotted, shade-wearing, long, curly-haired, skinny-trousered, booted pop star, with a white strat hanging around his neck, cut a mean figure. Just like James Dean or Marlon Brando, he oozed charisma – confident, articulate and uncompromising. Rock music had a new rebel, and this time, he had a cause. This wasn’t just a new sound; it was a new genre, a new style, a new vibe and a new culture.
Bob Dylan – On Track – 1962 to 1970 every album, every song
This is the start of the introduction:
Introduction
I was fortunate to be introduced to Bob Dylan’s music at the young age of thirteen, though I did not fully appreciate that at the time.
A good friend of mine by the name of Charlie Mutton had purchased Bob’s debut album shortly after it was released and he was smitten. That was peculiar. Up to that time we had been listening to chart material and old rock ‘n’ roll. Heaven knows where Mutt picked up on Dylan’s first album. I don’t remember it being either popular or available in my neck of the woods. We weren’t big on ‘folk’ music. However, my ears weren’t tuned in to the raw, nasally sound of Bob’s folk-blues and, although I listened all the way through and even appreciated a number of the tracks, I was not greatly impressed. Mutt was more clued up and assured me that Dylan was going to be huge and if he’d only release a single it would be a top ten hit. I remained quietly sceptical.
Mutt was incredibly prophetic. Subsequent albums and the ‘Times They Are A Changin’’ single did just as he had predicted. Bob Dylan went on to become one of the most important figures in the history of rock music. Not only did he change the face of rock music but he also had a profound effect on the direction of youth culture. Once I’d ‘got it’, and my ears became more accustomed, I too was utterly smitten.
As with Dylan I was caught up in the zeitgeist of the time. These were the days of great divisions in society, a rising rebellious youth, the threat of instant annihilation from nuclear war, great changes in attitudes. The traumas of the second world war were still fresh but the economy and world were opening up. Change was in the air. Our parents represented something we did not want to be. Bob was riding that wave of change.
The 1950s Beats may have cracked the façade of the rigid conformity and strict hypocritical morality of the prevailing post-war 1950s culture. Rock ‘n’ roll and r&b may have liberated youth into a temporary hedonistic frenzy, but it was the 1960s generation who blew the whole structure to smithereens. Peculiarly, Robert Zimmerman found himself, sometimes unwillingly, right at the forefront of those shifts in the tectonic plates of society. Who could have predicted that?
Who could have known that this young middle-class Jewish kid from a decaying nondescript town in the middle of nowhere would create a persona and develop the skills to take the whole world by storm?
In Search of Captain Beefheart – A Rock Music Memoir
Preface
Jack White launched into the searing riff that was the intro to ‘Death Letter Blues’. It shot me straight back to 1968 and the thrill of seeing and hearing Son House. Son’s national steel guitar was more ragged than Jack White’s crystal clear electric chords, and nowhere near as loud, but the chords rang true and the energy and passion were exactly the same.
Meg pounded the drums and the crowd surged forward.
It was Bridlington Spa in 2004. White Stripes were the hottest thing on the planet. The place was packed and the atmosphere electric. I was right near the front – the only place to be at any gig – the place where the intensity was magnified.
It was a huge crowd and they were crazy tonight. I could see the young kids piling into the mosh-pit and shoving – excited groups of kids deliberately surging like riot cops in a wedge driving into the crowd and sending them reeling so that they tumbled and spilled. For the first time I started getting concerned. The tightly packed kids in the mosh-pit were roaring and bouncing up and down and kept being propelled first one way and then another as the forces echoed and magnified through the mass of people. At the front the crush was intense and everyone was careering about madly. My feet were off the ground as we were sent hurtling around. I had visions of someone getting crushed, visions of someone falling and getting trampled. Worst of all – it could be me!
For the first time in forty odd years of gigs I bailed out. I ruefully headed for the balcony and a clear view of the performance. I didn’t want a clear view I wanted to be in the thick of the action. It got me wondering – was I getting to old for this lark? My old man had only been a couple of years older than me when he’d died. Perhaps Rock Music was for the young and I should be at home listening to opera or Brahms with an occasional dash of Wagner to add the spice. I had become an old git. Then I thought – FUCK IT!!! Jack White was fucking good! Fuck Brahms – This was Rock ‘n’ Roll. You’re never too old to Rock! And Rock was far from dead!
The search goes on!!
Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home: Rock Classics – part of the Intro
Introduction
I can confidently state that Bringing It All Back Home is, without a doubt, one of the most important albums in the entire history of rock music. I will explain why.
Not only was it ground-breaking in the way that it fused elements of blues, folk, rock and poetry, but it was also incredibly influential on the sound and writing of the major acts of the time. Without Bob Dylan and the album Bringing It All Back Home, there would not have been the impetus for bands such as The Beatles, The Stones or The Beach Boys to later construct hugely influential albums, or, at least, they would not have been as experimental and adventurous. Neither would we have had the incredible bodies of work by major singer-songwriters like Neil Young, Roy Harper or Bruce Springsteen. The sixties underground scene would not have happened without its explosion of styles, from psychedelic and heavy metal to prog rock, country and blues, its anti-war and civil rights protest and complex poetic songs. This album changed the face of rock music. ‘Artists from the Beatles to Bruce Springsteen have cited Bob Dylan as one of the most important influences on their music making and songwriting, noting that Dylan helped them see the possibilities of a different kind of lyric writing that was more intimate, personal, and autobiographical than what they found in early Rock and Roll songs.’ Stephanie Mooneyhan
Paul McCartney said: ‘I’ll never be able to write like Dylan. He thinks of these fantastic word combinations. It doesn’t matter if you get lost in one of his compositions, you can get hung up on just two words – the man is a poet.’
The album came out at a crucial point in time. This was 1965, the midpoint of the sixties, a turning point, and Bob Dylan was the fulcrum on which rock music turned. Before Bringing It All Back Home, we had rock, R&B and blues-based beat music (as with The Beatles and The Stones) and, lyrically, more sophisticated folk music. After Bringing It All Back Home, we had a new world of possibilities. The album opened up a theatre of opportunity by melding together the two distinctly different genres, and, in the process, creating an entirely unique style of music, a different way of songwriting and a different structure to popular music. With new sounds, new ideas, and a new attitude, nothing would ever be the same.
The new, polka-dotted, shade-wearing, long, curly-haired, skinny-trousered, booted pop star, with a white strat hanging around his neck, cut a mean figure. Just like James Dean or Marlon Brando, he oozed charisma – confident, articulate and uncompromising. Rock music had a new rebel, and this time, he had a cause.
This wasn’t just a new sound; it was a new genre, a new style, a new vibe and a new culture. Bob Dylan was matchless. He put poetic lyrics to a novel kind of rock music and coupled that with style and attitude. The result was devastating. In the process, he blew both worlds apart, sent the music media into a spin and broke through into the world of serious academic consideration. The sober world of the adult mainstream media was beginning to take note. What had been considered a juvenile entertainment of no intrinsic worth was now being written about, reviewed and discussed in pillars of the establishment, such as The Times. Rock music had come of age. His poetry was analysed in universities. His views were taken seriously.
Where Robert Johnson was fabled to have stood at the crossroads at midnight, selling his soul to the devil in exchange for becoming the best blues musician on the planet, Bob Dylan chose to stand on a motorway intersection in the stark noon sun daring all the gods and devils in the universe to take him on. He required no divine intervention.
New things do not come out of nowhere. They ferment out of various sources, slowly bubbling and fuming in nascent juices until they burst forth in naked inspiration. Thus, it was with Dylan’s new baby. He gathered the ingredients, allowed them to stew and marinade until they were ripe, then boldly, gleefully and even recklessly, thrust this new progeny into the spotlight.
Into the gumbo soup of Dylan’s electric storm, the various ingredients had been brewing for years. All that was required was the spark of genius to ignite the inferno. Like Shakespeare’s witches, he threw in the ingredients: the eye of rock ‘n’ roll, the newt of folk, the heart of Beat poetry and the glands of social comment. Hubble bubble toil and trouble, rhythms click and poems double. Out of this cauldron of fusion, something vital and highly original emerged to send rock music, and youth culture, reeling into the latter years of the sixties revolution. Dylan was the catalyst and Bringing It All Back Home was the vehicle.
Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track – Part of the intro
Introduction
I was fortunate to be introduced to Bob Dylan’s music at the young age of thirteen, though I did not fully appreciate that at the time.
A good friend of mine by the name of Charlie Mutton had purchased Bob’s debut album shortly after it was released and he was smitten. That was peculiar. Up to that time we had been listening to chart material and old rock ‘n’ roll. Heaven knows where Mutt picked up on Dylan’s first album. I don’t remember it being either popular or available in my neck of the woods. We weren’t big on ‘folk’ music. However, my ears weren’t tuned in to the raw, nasally sound of Bob’s folk-blues and, although I listened all the way through and even appreciated a number of the tracks, I was not greatly impressed. Mutt was more clued up and assured me that Dylan was going to be huge and if he’d only release a single it would be a top ten hit. I remained quietly sceptical.
Mutt was incredibly prophetic. Subsequent albums and the ‘Times They Are A Changin’’ single did just as he had predicted. Bob Dylan went on to become one of the most important figures in the history of rock music. Not only did he change the face of rock music but he also had a profound effect on the direction of youth culture. Once I’d ‘got it’, and my ears became more accustomed, I too was utterly smitten.
As with Dylan I was caught up in the zeitgeist of the time. These were the days of great divisions in society, a rising rebellious youth, the threat of instant annihilation from nuclear war, great changes in attitudes. The traumas of the second world war were still fresh but the economy and world were opening up. Change was in the air. Our parents represented something we did not want to be. Bob was riding that wave of change.
The Memoir of a Rock Music fanatic. In Search of Captain Beefheart.
Blurb
The sixties raged. I was young, crazy, full of hormones and wanting to snatch life by the balls. There was a life out there for the grabbing and it had to be wrestled into submission. There was a society full of boring amoral crap and a life to be had in the face of the boring, comforting vision of slow death on offer.
Rock music vented all that passion.
This book is a memoir of a life spent immersed in Rock Music. I was born in 1949 and so lived through the whole gamut of Rock.
Rock music formed the background to momentous world events – the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, Iraq war, Watergate, the miners’ strike and Thatcher years, CND, the Green Movement, Mao and the Cultural Revolution, Women’s Liberation and the Cold War.
I see this as the Rock Era.
I was immersed in Rock music. It was fused into my personality. It informed me, transformed me and inspired me. My heroes were musicians. I am who I am because of them.
Without Rock Music I would not have the same sensibilities, optimism or ideals. They woke me up!
This tells that story.
The Early Life of Bob Dylan (An extract from my Bob Dylan On Track book)
The Early Life of Bob Dylan (An extract from my Bob Dylan On Track book)
Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) : Opher Goodwin: Amazon.co.uk: Books
Looking back to the early John Bucklen tapes – recorded in 1958 on a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder – of a young Robert Zimmerman, seventeen years old, still at school, pounding out his homage to his idol Little Richard, there was no inkling of the folk legend he was shortly to become. He wanted to become a rock star. That teenage Dylan was a rebel, assuming an image based on James Dean and Marlon Brando. He formed several loud rock ’n’ roll bands, the Golden Chords and Shadow Blasters being two, in which he pounded the piano oblivious to audience response. In the first of his chameleonic changes, he assumed the name and wild persona of Elston Gunn. Despite his naked enthusiasm, the bands didn’t take off – they had nowhere to go – but they did bring him some local notoriety and attract the girls. He was very much into girls and rock music was both a magnet and an aphrodisiac. A big motivator. This increasing rebelliousness led to fractious relationships with school, the tight-knit Jewish community and his father.
By the age of eighteen, he’d wrung the little Minnesotan iron ore town of Hibbing dry. He’d learnt the rudiments of guitar and piano, formed several bands, and absorbed a huge range of musical styles and traditions from rock ‘n’ roll, r&b, country music and standards – the mainstay of the local radio station, all of which were going to contribute and inform his progressions over the course of the ensuing years. Groundwork was being laid. Bob’s tastes were eclectic – his first musical heroes being Hank Williams and Little Richard.
Here we must begin to unravel the man from the myth. Robert Zimmerman was already outgrowing the little mining town of Hibbing in Minnesota. As soon as he was able, he looked for a way out of there. A fresh-faced boy, looking younger than his years, not yet needing to shave, set off on the start of his adventure.
He did not exactly run away from home as seek out an excuse to leave. No, he hadn’t already absconded from home seven times (at the age of ten, twelve, thirteen, fifteen, fifteen and a half, seventeen and eighteen). No, he hadn’t spent six years with a travelling carnival. No, he hadn’t ridden the freights as a hobo from Gallop, New Mexico, to New Orleans. No, he wasn’t an orphan. It was all much less colourful than that. He’d been brought up in a Jewish family with a middle-class upbringing and led a rather uneventful life in a small town, but he was obsessed with music and determined to have a life in music. Apart from girls, it was all he cared about. Remarkably, as a young kid, he managed to secure a gig or three backing Bobby Vee on the piano when he’d appeared in the local area. That must have been a real buzz. In 1959, looking for a way of getting into the music business, he persuaded his mother to help him out. Using a course at Minnesota University as an excuse to leave Hibbing, he gained the help of his mother (his relationship with his more conservative father being difficult). She arranged for him to go to Minnesota by organising with his cousin Chucky to put him up. Chucky sorted him a room in the frat house at the university where he could stay for free in the summer. Not exactly as exciting as riding freights and touring with carnivals, but it did set him on the road. Upon arriving on the greyhound bus, he immediately swapped his electric guitar for an acoustic Martin Double O so that he could set about playing in the local coffee houses. It was the start. What he did next was to seek out like-minded people, hang out with musicians, and have the time to develop, learn and evolve. The liberal arts course at the University of Minnesota was not scintillating enough. Bob focused more on his music, staying up late to play, listen, drink and party. For the young Robert, girls, dope and booze were more interesting than studying and he soon dropped out.
As soon as he reached Minnesota, he left behind the image of Elston Gunnn, abandoned rock ‘n’ roll, took up the acoustic guitar and came under the spell of a new genre. His introduction to folk was Odetta: ‘The first thing that turned me on to folk was Odetta – something vital and personal.’ Later hediscovered a new master; Woody Guthrie loomed like a giant on the scene. He was introduced to Woody by Flo Castner, a wacky actress and waitress. On first hearing the songs, his head was spinning: ‘It was like the land parted’. The young eighteen-year-old Bobby was completely blown away. He hadn’t heard anything like it before. Woody songs were ‘All I wanted to sing’. Years later, he wrote in his biography Chronicles: ‘I had been in the dark and someone turned on the main switch of a lightning conductor.’Zimmerman immersed himself in the burgeoning folk-blues scene and the social commentary of Woody Guthrie.
Bob settled into life in Minnesota, living hand to mouth, playing the coffee bars where baskets were passed around for change. This was the start of his freewheelin’ days; cadging meals, renting a small apartment, sleeping on friends’ floors, playing music, listening, absorbing and developing fast.
Minnesota wasn’t big enough. He instinctively craved a bigger canvas and had heard that Woody was still alive but suffering from a chronic illness, the dreadful hereditary disease Huntingdon’s Chorea, and holed up in a sanatorium in New Jersey. There was only one place to be, where the remains of the Beat movement had morphed into a vibrant underground folk scene, and that was Greenwich Village in New York. However, this young man, pretending to be the wild maverick, still had to persuade his father to allow him to drop out and give it a try. His father grudgingly agreed to allow him a year in which to make it.
In 1961, at the age of 20, still looking like a young kid, a nascent Bob Dylan rolled into town, not on a freight, but having secured a lift in an old Buick. Stepping out into the icy blast of a New York winter, Bob had little apart from a bag containing all his possessions and a guitar. He had two major aims: to meet his new idol Woody Guthrie and to break into the thriving new Folk scene. He set about finding a café to play in with a warm place to crash down and get out of the cold. He found it at The Café Wha?. He was allowed to back Fred Neil on harmonica and play the odd set which gave him somewhere to escape the cruel wind while earning a dollar or two and filling his stomach with a greasy burger. The Café Wha? Provided him with a base to learn and grow.
The Greenwich Village scene was based around several small clubs and overrun with a range of musicians all competing for time, money and status – pretty cutthroat. The musicians ranged from old well-versed blues musicians like John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Jesse Fuller and Big Bill Broonzy, seasoned folk singers, Woody Guthrie acolytes, like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger and Cisco Houston, folk groups like the Bluegrass Boys, Clancy Brothers and the new generation of up-and-coming singers Tom Paxton, Mark Spoeltra, Odetta and Richard Farina. The leading light was Dave Van Ronk, a powerful figure, nicknamed ‘The Mayor’ who presided over the whole scene like a brooding grizzly bear.
No naive middle-class novice was going to stand a chance of breaking through into that environment. Robert Zimmerman from Hibbing morphed into Bob Dylan. He intended to drop the Zimmerman and become Bob Allen but thought that Dylan sounded better than Allen, so he adapted it – not so much stealing his name from a notorious Welsh poet as simply preferring the sound of Dylan to Allen. Having a new name, he set about creating a hard-living mythology – an orphaned past, running away numerous times, life on the road, carnivals, and hard times. Bob was constructing a suitable persona and appearance. The black corduroy cap, crumpled shirt, jeans, belt and boots were a carefully choreographed image. There had to be no chink in the armour. From the nasally Woody-esque drawl to the embroidered back story, the whole package had to hang together. Dylan grew into the disguise. What helped was the huge natural talent that Bob was so obviously saturated with.
His act involved Chaplin-esque routines, carefully orchestrated ploys, tuning and fiddling with his guitar and harmonica, all with casual glances and asides, designed to draw the audience in. From the very start, it was apparent that Bob, despite his shyness and boyish looks, possessed a great stage presence. Not only that, but he was already beginning to write his own material and what songs they were!