Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan

I guess I first heard this in your room in Benson Court in 1984 and perhaps didn't hear it again until I bought it in 2002. But you only have to hear Song to Woody once or twice and the tune and lyric stays with you for decades. Listening to the whole album, it's surprising to hear how old Dylan's voice sounds: he's working very hard to imitate the old blues men. (As he later sang, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.") Forty years on, at last, he doesn't have to fake it any more.

House of the Rising Sun is another favourite of mine, because Bob really goes for it on the vocal. Three years ago, I had singing lessons (they came to nothing, of course) and the song I practised with was House of the Rising Sun. My teacher would have liked me to give it was much welly as Bob, but I couldn't even get near Marianne Faithfull's more restrained approach. I like the story in No Direction Home about Dave Van Ronk being accused of taking Dylan's arrangement of the song, when in fact it was the other way round and Dylan just made Van Ronk's arrangement more popular. Then Dylan got his comeuppance when The Animals made the song even more popular, and many assumed that he'd got it from them.

MusicBrainz entry for this album