Dylan's John Wesley Harding vs. nothing in particular

"There are three general remarks to be made about this album. One is the consistent use of the capo. Several of the songs (John Wesley Harding, All Along the Watchtower, The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, As I went out one morning, I pity the poor immigrant), are played with the capo around the 5th fret, which produces the high, ringing guitar sound that is so typical of this album (if it's successful is another question: it also creates a very thin, open sound-scape, with the bass and the guitar far removed from eachother and from the drums - they all stand very much alone; maybe he should have gone back to the studio and added some tracks with the Band as he originally planned).

The other is the very simple chord progressions in many of the songs (The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, The Drifter's Escape, The Wicked Messenger, not to mention All Along the Watchtower). That these songs nevertheless stand out as some of the most effective on the album is a testimony of Dylan's superb singing on this album.

His harmonica work is also outstanding. A year of wild touring with the Band may have come close to killing him, but his harp playing certainly became more expressive - and this is the only album where it shows directly, IMHO."

also, to those who mentioned groove: I think Charlie McCoy's bass playing here may be the best of any rock album, and Kenny Buttrey's drumming isn't far behind.

(Ditto what everyone here has said about Charlie McCoy and Kenny Buttrey. It's not for all tastes, but McCoy and Buttrey's work on J.J. Cale's Really is quite impressive as well.)

And what's with the cover of this record? Dylan wearing that goofy grin, standing beside two Indians and a stolid-looking white guy?

But the only Dylan I can take is "Basement Tapes." I love that stuff. I admire the Nashville session guys' musicianship but those post-'67 records don't make it for me. The Band, in my op., were his best backup group by a country mile.

He should have gone to Memphis and used those guys, I think, it would have been much more interesting.

As songwriter, Dylan is A+; as performer, I just don't know...

I don't know Dylan's '80s stuff. Anything worthwhile there? I do know "Lenny Bruce" which I put on a tape of shit that DOES NOT work but seems compelling nonetheless...

I've been tempted to get this reissue (among others) just because I like the album so much, but musically it is one of the more spare Dylan recordings, so I'm not sure it will be as revelatory as say the "Blonde on Blonde" re-ish.

Well would I?

Has anybody remarked on the amazing resonance of "Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" with Hank Williams' Luke the Drifter stuff?

"ballad of frankie lee and judas priest" is one of his top 5 songs ever.

don do you like "the nashville sound"? "nashville skyline" is kind of "the nashville sound" denatured...

This is my favorite Dylan album by a country mile. It unsettles me.

What an odd record for a guy to make while still in his 20s.

Yup, he was old/wise beyond his years. Van Morrison recorded "Astral Weeks" when he was only 23/24, which rivals Dylan as far as recording a mature work at such a young age.

JWH actually reminds me of Oar by Skip Spence more than it does a lot of other Dylan records...they both have sort of a murky, mysterious, bass-y quality to them...hillbilly dub or something.

I love how Dylan went in a completely different direction than the other big artists at the time. Compare pretty much any other 1967 releases: Sgt Pepper, Axis Bold As Love, Forever Changes, Sell Out, Satanic Majesties, Something Else, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Strange Days, Younger Than Yesterday. Etc. This of all things was his follow up to Blonde on Blonde - total shift of gears. It's like he decided, why be bombastic when you can slay with a soft shuffle? For just one example, I Pity The Poor Immigrant is as damning as any of his classic vitriol songs, but with that understated delivery it's just devastating.

(boy, I used to drink a lot of coffee back then: "wheee, I can type!")Good point, dad a; he stole the show, or the scene, to some extent, by going that way. And I certainly rode much furrthurr with JWH than all those others you cite,combined. Good as they were and prob still are (though I still haven't heard Satanic Majesties, despite digging what Paul Williams said about it in Outlaw Blues). Sort of like BOOM SIZZLE, pre-suck-jazz-rock! And then... Miles slips in... (but he did that on his own records, upstaging even the JWH Effect). "Dear Landlord" is still one of his most beautiful, with that thing that happened when he slipped into his piano (and speaking of that, Planet Waves has the great "Dirge," and many other fine tracks; I'd still take it over Nashville Skyline. It's kind of like if Sir Douglas Quintet were from Minnesota and Canada--) "Dear Landlord" has always seemed kind of Kind Of Blue, too. Did Aretha cover it, or did I just dream that?

it is kind of a weirdly evocative record in a bunch of different ways isn't it? for me, all of the songs are kind of like dreams of folk songs -- songs that appear to be in the trad format, but then you listen to them and they don't add up. Like "St. Augustine" -- it's this heavily emotional track ("I put my hands against the glass and hung my head and cried," is the end) but then you wonder what exactly the song is actually about, what it's doing. I think it's kind of impossible to say. The folk form Dylan's borrowing has trained you to expect a payoff, a moral or something, at the conclusion of each song, but most of the tunes leave you with something a lot more ambiguous. I mean, he sings: "The moral of this story, the moral of this song/ is simply that one should never be where one does not belong / If you see your neighbor carrying something help him with his load / and don't go mistaking paradise for the home across the road." All well and good sentiments, but (to me at least) they have very little to do with the song that precedes them. It's a shaggy dog tale, but a shaggy dog tale that resonates in this uncanny way. Don't know if any of this makes any sense, but it's an album that -- despite its austere sound -- is bottomless.

I second BIG HOOS on his O. Nate props, a few months ago. That was one of those posts that justifies all the "Nu-ILX Wahhh!" outbursts that show up here occasionally.

So many people on this really very good thread analyse John Wesley Harding so much better than I can, yet I do have to add my own peculiar synesthetic response to this album. In a word, it is airless. In a lot more words, this means (to me, as someone who occasionally suffers -- thankfully -- from relatively mild asthma) that there's a bank of still air, filling the vast space from bottom to top -- the surface of the earth to the high but iron-dense cloud cover -- and it is waiting, expectant like the neutral air before a summer storm, and it is difficult to draw into my lungs, in spite of the fact that it seems so clear and uncluttered. Suddenly, this feels like a dream, and an ominous one at that. My own subjective undercurrent of panic beneath these ostensibly folkie ditties lends them an inescapable darkness, and the incongruous swing is like some trickster gleefully cavorting over my ridiculous misgivings. Then I wake up. Maybe.

Ha ha, no, I really am trying, and failing (I should probably add), to find a way to express in language the feeling this record gives me.

I can understand now why John D loves this album – at his best his own records use the "implied menace" of the best JWH songs. "I put my hands against the glass and hung my head and cried" and the way in which it's sung and placed in the song is a verse I can imagine John using.

Also great is how "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" works as a coda. For a long time this was my goodnight lullaby to my kids. On the heels of "Down Along The Cove" it's like you've entered another record, where the king of overspill shows that he can pare things down to Tin Pan Alley levels. The ambiguity of the record isn't resolved, it's just set aside. Which is as it should be. All the foreboding leads into genuine sweetness, which in a way is more unsettling than any more portents of doom.

that all sounds so good, nicely put.
one thing i was reading recently was the 1968-ish interview with bob by happy traum and john cohen, which is one of the more lucid (tho still pretty non-lucid) interviews w/ bob I've read. can't seem to find the whole thing online, but there is a bunch of good JWH-related stuff in there. as opposed the rolling stone interview from the next year, dylan seems to take his interviewers and their questions seriously (at least to some extent).

man this thread rules