Is Bob Dylan overrated?

Isn’t there some story of Ronnie Hawkins saying to him something like “I know a few hundred guitarists worse than you but none of them make a living at it”?

― Harper Valley CTA-102 (James Redd and the Blecchs)

Also said about his piano playing, which I adore like an ugly child.

anyway, Uncle Greil answered the question last week:

What Dylan has, as the late Ralph J. Gleason was probably the first to point out, is swing. He can move rhythm. He has country time. At his best he can’t be followed. As with his piano playing on “She’s Your Lover Now”—no actually existing piano player could, as the word serves, accompany his singing. It was him or no one. It’s the same with rhythm guitar playing—listen to the simple, but essential counting in “Like a Rolling Stone.” And then there’s his early 1990s shift–when he decided, in his fifties, to become a lead guitarist, and suddenly his songs, in terms of how long they went on, became two thirds instrumental, one third sung.

He is, at bottom, a folk singer, which means he does what’s necessary to find the song and seal it. Often that isn’t much. Often it’s just a little more than what the Blue Sky Boys do for “Down on the Banks of the Ohio” on guitar and mandolin. Isn’t it enough?

new pearl jam drummer seems to be working wonders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oehJDt5Uag

wow, that was taken down fast

anyway, search: Not Dark Yet, Irvine, California, oct 11 2019, Matt Chamberlain on drums

https://youtu.be/wU9cnKOXMv4 new upload

damn, that's spellbinding

Underrated

his stuff in-between Desire and Time Out of Mind def. underrated

Matt Chamberlain on drums

― corrs unplugged, Tuesday, October 15, 2019 11:25 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

matt chamberlain or matt cameron? the latter is pearl jam's drummer, the former is tori amos' drummer (who filled in for cameron once with soundgarden)

yeah not the pearl jam drummer. seeing bob tomorrow in Denver for the first time in a couple years. excited!

i mean i'm still gassed that it's chamberlain, incredible drummer

love the feeling of that "not dark yet"

Chamberlain is great, he's played with everyone from Pearl Jam to Jon Brion.

He's not on Ten, but I think he was an early touring drummer. He's in that live video for Even Flow, iirc. Or maybe Alive? Anyway, love him.

you're right! quite a resume ... bill frisell, bowie, neko case, tori, fiona, broooooce ....

haha wow talk about super session drummer

having both Perfume Genius and Eric Clapton on your resume

wow this arrangement of not dark yet, so vibey and spacious

pretty much a new song, haha

going to see him next Thursday, even more excited now

always fun to have the oooooh shit that's (insert title here) at the 2 minute mark

awesome, let us know if he does some cool versions!

there's a new guitar player on board too, guy from the TooM sessions

matt chamberlain or matt cameron? the latter is pearl jam's drummer, the former is tori amos' drummer (who filled in for cameron once with soundgarden)

good thread idea: similarly named musicians who play the same instrument and are also connected in other ways

Is Bob playing guitar in that clip?

show in denver last night was great! bob is looking incredibly spry -- maybe the most animated I've ever seen him, whether he was standing at the piano, pounding the keys, or prowling the stage. weirdly, the performer i thought of most was mark e smith, haha. "simple twist," "masterpiece," "not dark yet" and "girl from north country" were all highlights ...

https://scontent.fapa1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/72842292_2648404011905072_1224765703194673152_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&_nc_oc=AQm06c6AvfhcxwuTcuCPHifFrENw1Ijovh5BSMpgR5q7rcuaD0jwwu2YrTne3Jjg8xA&_nc_ht=scontent.fapa1-1.fna&oh=f8b9ca195e1ab750252c6d1c1b63e251&oe=5E2B2ADF

I assume arthritis = no guitar playing, and it's been that way for awhile, yeah?

he actually played guitar on the opener — "things have changed" — and pulled off some surprisingly solid lead lines. but that was it ... yeah, i don't know if it's arthritis, back problems, or just that he's not into it.

how's the voice?

really good! obviously still gravelly, but he's not barking things out — phrasing is dead on target.

cool I was hoping the relative improvement from Tempest (which was really getting rough) to the standards records was reflected live?

do you remember where you were when Bob Dylan didn't die
and everyone who ever listened learned he lived a lie
they had reflected on their mortality
apparently entirely needlessly
while his Cadillac cruised down the backroad not leading to the sky

I was never the biggest dylan fan but I saw him this week partly out of "see this legend before it's too late" obligation despite not knowing much about his live shows. It was different/better than I expected and holy shit is Matt Chamberlain fun to watch.

this tour has been really excellent

I don't think I've seen this mentioned anywhere on ILM as yet: anyone else listened to this Dylan podcast? https://isitrollingbobtalkingdylan.podbean.com/

It's naturally dependent on the guest but the dudes are the right side of obsessive and it's engaging enough. Can recommend the Jonathan Lethem and Geoff Dyer episodes.

Thanks for this. I've just listened to Robyn Hitchcock. Good stuff

I've got that one lined up. Favourites have also included Andrew Male and Michael Gray. Billy Bragg was hard going.

To celebrate BD's bd, somebody recently tweeted tbis---haven't checked all its links to prev coverage & excerpts ("lone verse" presented here is bad not good, but he did discard it):
https://www.nodepression.com/bob-dylans-three-blood-on-the-tracks-notebooks-not-just-red/

I've been talking to some older, discerning listeners who have listened to Dylan since the '60s and more or less followed what he's done since then. It's kind of interesting to see how expectations of Dylan have evolved over time, and how they really went off a cliff in the late '70s.

For example, the late '60s and early '70s look like a lost period to me. There is enjoyable music to be found, even great music, but he was at best making pleasant but thin albums, nothing approaching what he did before. That seems to be a popular sentiment even then, but it doesn't sound like he was written off as someone who couldn't deliver anymore either. As bad as Self-Portrait and Dylan may have been, the latter was considered a malicious release that was never approved by Dylan while a lot of naysayers viewed the former as an anomaly. More importantly, people just assumed he lost interest in fully pursuing his music career. So when he "came back" in the mid-'70s, it seemed to reaffirm the most optimistic view people had on him. For starters, he was once again madly prolific - at the start of 1974, he launches a high profile reunion tour with the Band, their collaborative album comes out a few weeks in, and later that summer, just a few months after the tour ends, the live album comes out. A few months after that, he records Blood on the Tracks, and even though the release is delayed to January due to re-recording, the original version leaks out by Christmas. Regardless of how people feel about them now, each one was greeted with a lot of good will which seemed to grow exponentially with each album. Then when next summer comes up, the "Basement Tapes" are officially released (albeit in incomplete and tampered form), which eventually tops that year's Pazz & Jop poll. By the fall, he's already doing the Rolling Thunder Revue to much (if not universal) acclaim. Desire comes out in January, and he does another leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour (albeit to less acclaim) followed by an appearance at the Band's farewell show. So for a lot of people, he was still a major, vital figure mid-decade, and at that point, it's not too kind to say that the only broad consensus of an outright failure he's had is Self-Portrait.

Then comes the alimony tour. And the widely derided Street-Legal (at least in the U.S. - the British press is more receptive), and then the highly polarizing evangelical years, and then we're into the '80s where the albums spiral into a black hole. The growing number of detractors who turned on him or thoroughly mocked him really appear around this time, and it doesn't seem like you can overstate how abysmal the '80s were for him. He still had fans of what he was doing during this time, but even they get criticized for overrating his work, either for putting value into garbage or elevating so-so albums to the level of masterpieces.

I'd say he permanently rights the ship with Time Out of Mind - it goes platinum within a year (much better than any album he's done in decades), finally gets him an AOY Grammy (meaningful only in what it says about how he's viewed within the industry), tops the Pazz & Jop poll, and despite missteps like a bad film, the three "Sinatra" albums (or the occasional oddity like a Christmas album), he's firmly a revered institution now, at least when you look at how well he does on the road (more impressive considering how many shows he puts on every year - he packs them in EVERY night) and how generous the press is to him.

The early ‘80s (Infidels, Empire Burlesque) and late ‘80s (Oh Mercy, Wilburys) were both strong for him, though. I feel like his real “lost decade” was the ‘90s.

1) New Morning is one of his greatest albums

2) the Another Self Portrait box totally changed the conventional wisdom on that period, it's up there with the best Bootleg Series

3) Street Legal owns

I've been talking to some older, discerning listeners who have listened to Dylan since the '60s and more or less followed what he's done since then. It's kind of interesting to see how expectations of Dylan have evolved over time, and how they really went off a cliff in the late '70s.

Honestly there's probably no one who's opinion I trust least than super 60s fans, maybe the early folk crowd

Both groups had this ideal of who Dylan was, something that he never was to begin with and they feel betrayed when he changed

2) the Another Self Portrait box totally changed the conventional wisdom on that period, it's up there with the best Bootleg Series

ums fiercely otm

As a kid, my dad owned only the Christian Dylan albums, since he tended to only play albums with Christian lyrics or instrumental music. So that was the Dylan I heard in my formative years. The first Bob Dylan album I ever listened to of my own volition was Under the Red Sky. I had started reading rock magazines around that time, read a review or two, was curious, and checked it out from the library. I couldn't really see what the fuss was about. A couple of years later, I finally went out and bought Highway 61 Revisited, and my years of serious Dylan appreciation began. I avoided anything after Blood on The Tracks for many years, though I did go to see Dylan in concert in the early 90s, which was fairly disappointing: unrecognizable versions of songs I loved with terrible vocals. It wasn't until Love and Theft really that I was ever interested in a "new" Dylan album.

morrisp, re: the '80s, I wish I could agree. I think "Infidels" and "Oh Mercy" could've been great albums, especially "Oh Mercy," but in both cases arguably the best songs were left out in favor of mediocre ones, and I have reservations about the way they were recorded as well. "Infidels" has a nice polish, but it sounds TOO polished and pretty slick after listening to better renditions of some of those songs. This was discussed in another thread, but while Lanois did a good job with "Oh Mercy," he didn't know when to stop and the results as released can sound overproduced. (I prefer the earlier mixes/alternates of at least a handful of tracks on "Tell Tale Signs.") I tried, but I'll never be a fan of "Empire Burlesque." The Wilburys stuff is a mixed bag for me. "Tweeter and the Monkey Man" is a hilarious song but I can barely stand Jeff Lynne's production. Between "World Gone Wrong" and "Time Out of Mind" (and how much better his live shows became) the '90s do not feel like a lost decade to me at all.

I actually like "New Morning," but there's no way I could call it a great album. It's good, but not THAT good. I think Tarfumes is spot-on about "Another Self Portrait," that was far better than I thought it would be, but "Self Portrait" is still a pretty terrible album and you can ever hear why on "Another Self Portrait" - the best "Self Portrait" cuts are no longer marred by goopy strings, even better songs were left off the album ("Pretty Saro" for one), the Isle of Wight songs are actually mixed correctly, and they even cheat a bit by adding some great "New Morning" stuff, though a few alternate mixes with Al Kooper's overdubs feel like they repeat the same mistakes made on "Self Portrait."

I like some of the songs on "Street Legal," but it also has some of my least favorite music period - tracks through 3 through 5 sound like terrible songs, especially "No Time to Think." I'm sorry, but that track alone is horrendous.

Anyway, in terms of fans of who think an artist should be a certain kind of artist, that's always been bullshit, and that's a problem virtually every great artist has put up with, not just Dylan. As it applies here, it's fascinating to see how Dylan responds to that. Most of the conversations I've been referring to revolve around that - Dylan grappling with nostalgia when he reunites with the Band (everyone involved in that tour was very aware of that), how he engages with the audience in his evangelical period, and struggling with his own loss of interest throughout an active '80s which he's mentioned more than once in recent years.

Gotcha - though I didn't think you were talking about your personal taste, as much as general reception of his work in those time periods... and my point was just that he at least had some critical heat & well respected periods in the '80s (whatever you may think of those albums); vs. the '90s, where he retreated after Red Sky, and nothing much really happened until Time Out of Mind (I guess MTV Unplugged did well).

Coincidentally, I was talking to my kids about Dylan today, and I was actually struggling to convey his importance. I mean, I think I did a good job, but it was a bit like trying to explain why the color yellow is important, you know?

xp It could also be that those two albums of traditional songs each got, like, 4.5 stars in Rolling Stone (I'd have to look it up) -- but I just don't recall much heat around Dylan in the '90s, they feel like the softest decade in terms of his rep.

the hate for street legal completely passes me by

like singling out “no time to think” as a particularly bad song... that song is awesome. the hook gets stuck in my head for days

Yeah, it rules. That album rules. (FWIW, "Is Your Love in Vain?" is the dud.)