You know, Ben, I wouldn't have bought this when I did if it hadn't been for you. I guess it would have been late '83 or possibly early '84, and I think I might have got it from the WH Smiths in Woking (the £2.99 CBS Nice Price is still stuck on the inside of the cover). You sat me down with a coffee and, in answer to my polite enquiries about what made Dylan so special, said, "Listen to this".
You drew my attention to the best lines, as we sat — though I always thought your selections were slightly off-beam. "Flesh-coloured christs that glow in the dark" was a favourite of yours, I remember. A year or two later, you tried to persuade me that Elvis Costello must be great on the grounds of the couplet, "She's filing her nails / and they're dragging the lake". I spluttered at the time, and then got good mileage out of reminding you of this eccentric lapse of judgement. (I have to get that little jibe in now because to this day I've never bought anything by Elvis Costello, so it won't come up again.)
Listening again now, I noticed one other naff line in It's Alright, Ma: "Propaganda, all is phony" (sounds like some stoner mumbling from Easy Rider). I don't know exactly when this album came out, but I always like the line "he not busy being born is busy dying", since, give or take a few months, I was busy being born just about then.
I envied you your ability to sing and play It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. It was one of your best. I can play it now, too; but not as well as you.
Twenty years ago I preferred Bringing It All Back Home to either Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde on Blonde, and I think I probably still do. Side 1 cracks along at incredible pace: so many great songs, so diverse in their arrangements and moods, crammed into 24½ minutes. Then Side 2 is exactly the other side: different texture, density and pace.
Listening to It's All Over Now, Baby Blue again this morning, I thought the arrangement, with just the guitar and bass, was probably influenced by Odetta's approach on Odetta Sings Dylan, some of which I've been playing recently on my iPod — but then I checked and they both came out in 1965, so maybe it wasn't that way round.
![]() Wikipedia entry for this album |
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