Excerpt – Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home: Rock Classics

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Excerpt – Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home: Rock Classics

Introduction

I can confidently state that Bringing It All Back Home was without 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 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 later albums of hugely important bands such as the Beatles, Stones or Beach Boys, or, at least, they would not have been as experimental and adventurous. Neither would we have had the incredible bodies of work of major singer-songwriters like Neil Young, Roy Harper or Bruce Springsteen. The sixties underground scene would not have happened with 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.

   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 Stones) and lyrically more sophisticated folk music. After Bringing It All Back Home we had a new world of possibilities.

   Bringing It All Back Home 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 song writing, a different structure to popular music. New sounds, new ideas, new attitude; nothing would ever be the same.

Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home: Rock Classics: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523140: Books

Extract: Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track

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Extract: Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track

   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 and dramatic 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?   

That early Dylan was a chameleon, a sponge, a mirror, a driven force, who was searching for identity, acceptance and fame. He absorbed everything around him with an unquenchable thirst, then reflected it back a hundred times brighter. He took on his surroundings and magnified them. For that young Dylan, integrity was all that counted. Authenticity and cool were the only important things. Robert Zimmerman was an empty vessel into which he poured the ingredients that created Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) : Opher Goodwin: Amazon.co.uk: Books

Extract from Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track

Posted on by Opher

Extract from Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track

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 a number of 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 Gunnn. Despite his naked enthusiasm the bands didn’t take off, indeed, had nowhere to go, but they did bring him some local notoriety and attract the girls. He was very into girls and rock music was both a magnet and 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 a number of bands, and absorbed a huge range of musical styles and traditions from rock ‘n’ roll, r&b to 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 have to start 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.

Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) : Opher Goodwin: Amazon.co.uk: Books

Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home: Rock Classics Paperback

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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.

Bringing It All Back Home – Bob Dylan

Posted on by Opher

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.

Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home: Rock Classics: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523140: Books