Bringing
It All Back Home, the 1965 album in which Bob Dylan broke free from the
shackles of acoustic music and began his gradual drift away from the
out-and-out protest song, represents a perfect marriage between two genres
which, up to the record’s release, had never been brought together in
such a way. To fans of Dylan, this is no revelation – Bringing It All
Back Home is, after all, commonly held up as the album that gave rise to
the ‘folk-rock’ movement. But it is not for its influence on a host of
mid-sixties bands that this album is significant. Roger McGuinn did not
base the Byrds’ distinctive music on Bringing It All Back Home; he based
it on a combination of Dylan’s lyrics, the Beatles’ sound, and his own
unique guitar
skills and techniques (and beyond the Byrds’ early music, folk-rock was
and is too broad a category to be pinned down to one founding record). No
– Dylan’s first electric album is important more because of its place
in Dylan’s own canon.
In fact, we should first take a
step back, and remember that Dylan first performed several of the songs
that were to feature on Bringing It All Back Home during his 1964 acoustic
tour. He had already recorded Another Side of Bob Dylan, an album which
took him away from his straight protest song period and into a more
reflective song-writing phase, in which he penned introspective love songs
as well as more complex political songs (for example Chimes of Freedom).
But Another Side of was still exclusively an acoustic affair, and the
first songs he wrote for its successor were initially played acoustic as
well – for instance Mr. Tambourine Man, and It’s Alright, Ma (I’m
Only Bleeding).
Such songs feature on side two
of Bringing It All Back Home – where Dylan actually plays acoustic, but
with subtle electric touches. In this sense, Bringing It All Back Home
acts as some sort of precursor to Blonde on Blonde, in which Dylan
achieved his goal of “That wild, that thin mercury sound”. But
Bringing It All Back Home was recorded without the guitar sensitivities
that Robbie Robertson would bring to Dylan’s 1966 recordings, and it
must be considered as an album in its own right – not as a rehearsal for
what came later. Because such songs are notable less for their musical
arrangement, and more for the sheer poetry and vision contained within.
Mr. Tambourine Man needs little
introduction, but the familiarity with which it is regarded – by Dylan
aficionados and casual music followers alike – means that it is often
over-looked as a work of art. The song is some kind of trip, but also a
plea – Dylan recalls the writings of the Beat Generation poets as he
seems to reach out for the fulfillment of a dream, which fuses a very
personal empire, bleak historical visions and the simple pleasure of
dancing beneath the starlight. Quite where he is going, nobody can say –
setting a pattern for much of Dylan’s future work.
It’s Alright Ma is evidence
of a more mature and nuance approach to politics – Dylan aims broadsides
at the phony morality of teachers, preachers, religion and the press (to
name but a few) – but he can find less in the way of concrete solutions,
instead resigning himself to his own internal self-confidence and leaving
others to get on with their inadequate lives.
