fine albums: Bob Dylan

Showing posts with label Bob Dylan. Show all posts

2026/07/24

bob dylan: blood on the tracks

album rating: ★★★★☆

Genre

Folk rock and country rock. "Blood on the Tracks" is a cycle of ten songs about loss, anger, longing, and the dissolution of love - written, according to his son Jakob Dylan, as "my parents talking." Dylan has denied the autobiographical reading.

Release

Released on January 20, 1975, by Columbia Records, marking Dylan's return to the label after two albums with Asylum Records. The final album contains five tracks recorded in New York and five from Minneapolis. Shortly before the scheduled release, Dylan abruptly re-recorded five songs at Sound 80 in Minneapolis at the suggestion of his brother David Zimmerman, who felt the album needed a more commercial sound.

Production

Dylan began recording at A&R Recording Studios, New York City, in September 1974, with Phil Ramone as session engineer; the Minneapolis sessions in December were overseen by David Zimmerman, who served as uncredited producer.

Reception

"Blood on the Tracks" initially received mixed reviews but has since been acclaimed as one of Dylan's best albums. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 4 on its 2023 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, describing it as "a masterpiece of American song." AllMusic awarded it a perfect score. The album peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum by the RIAA. The sole single, "Tangled Up in Blue," reached No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Bob Dylan

Robert Allen Zimmerman (born May 24, 1941, Duluth, Minnesota) is a singer-songwriter, artist, and author, widely regarded as the most important songwriter in the history of popular music. He began performing in New York's Greenwich Village in 1961, signing to Columbia Records the following year. His early protest songs — "Blowin' in the Wind", "The Times They Are a-Changin'" - made him the voice of the civil rights and anti-war movements; his electric turn at Newport in 1965 permanently changed the nature of rock music. His catalogue encompasses over 50 years of recording, including "Blonde on Blonde" (1966), "John Wesley Harding" (1967), and the late masterworks "Time Out of Mind" (1997) and "Love and Theft" (2001). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 - the first musician so honoured — and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

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lily, rosemary and the jack of hearts

2026/02/13

bob dylan / the band: the basement tapes

album rating: ★★★★☆

Genre

Roots rock, Americana, and alternative country. Recorded in secret in the summer of 1967 — eight years before its official release - The Basement Tapes captures Dylan and the Band at their most uninhibited and musically exploratory, blending folk, country, blues, and gospel in an atmosphere of creative freedom that Greil Marcus later described as an encounter with "a kind of old, weird America."

Release

Released on June 26, 1975, by Columbia Records, as a double LP in a gatefold sleeve. Two-thirds of the 24 tracks feature Dylan backed by the Band; the remaining eight feature the Band alone. The recordings were made during Dylan's recovery from a motorcycle accident at his home in Woodstock, New York, and subsequently in the basement of Big Pink - the Band's rented house in West Saugerties, New York.

Production

Produced by Bob Dylan and the Band. The original 1967 recordings were made by Garth Hudson. Mixing for the 1975 release was completed at Village Recorders and Shangri-La Studios, California.

Reception

The album reached number seven on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum by the RIAA. Critical response was mixed on release — some reviewers felt the recording quality was uneven — but subsequent reassessment has been overwhelmingly positive. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 296 on its 2023 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Bob Dylan / The Band

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941, Duluth, Minnesota) is the most celebrated songwriter in the history of American popular music, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (2016), and a central figure of the 1960s folk revival and its evolution into rock. The Band - formed as the Hawks in Toronto in the early 1960s under the leadership of Ronnie Hawkins - became Dylan's touring group in 1965 and, following his motorcycle accident, settled near him in Woodstock to collaborate on what became the Basement Tapes. Their own debut album, Music from Big Pink (1968), drew directly on the spirit of those sessions. The Band recorded five studio albums between 1968 and 1975 before their farewell concert — The Last Waltz (1976), filmed by Martin Scorsese — brought the era to its celebrated close.

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crash on the levee (down in the flood)

2025/11/02

bob dylan: blonde on blonde

album rating: ★★★★☆

Genre: Rock / folk rock / blues rock / psychedelic rock. Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, Duluth, Minnesota, 24 May 1941), released as a double album on 20 May 1966 by Columbia Records. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums in the history of recorded music and as the culmination of what Dylan described as 'the thin, wild mercury sound' he was attempting to capture. The album completed a trilogy of electric rock albums — begun with Bringing It All Back Home (March 1965) and Highway 61 Revisited (August 1965) — that collectively transformed the possibilities of popular music. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with the Hawks (later The Band) as backing musicians, but ten sessions produced only one track for the final album — 'One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later).' At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion — and despite fierce opposition from Dylan's manager Albert Grossman — Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper and guitarist Robbie Robertson flew to Nashville to record at Columbia's Studio A on Music Row in February 1966. Johnston removed the studio partitions, positioning the musicians tightly together. The remaining songs were recorded in two blocks of three days each (14–17 February and 8–10 March), augmented by Nashville's finest session musicians: drummer Kenneth Buttrey, harmonica player, bassist and guitarist Charlie McCoy, pianist Hargus 'Pig' Robbins, guitarist Wayne Moss, and others. Dylan arrived in the early evening and wrote or completed songs while the musicians played cards or slept; recording typically began in the small hours. The double album contains fourteen songs, including 'Rainy Day Women #12 & 35', 'Pledging My Time', 'Visions of Johanna', 'I Want You', 'Just Like a Woman', 'Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine', 'Temporary Like Achilles', 'Absolutely Sweet Marie', 'Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again', 'Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat', 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues', 'Obviously 5 Believers', and the side-long 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands', written for Dylan's then-new wife Sara Lownds. Al Kooper described the cultural collision at its heart: 'Bob Dylan was the quintessential New York hipster — what was he doing in Nashville? It didn't make any sense whatsoever. But you take those two elements, pour them into a test tube, and it just exploded.'

Label: Columbia Records (USA), released 20 May 1966 (some sources give 16 May; formal commercial release date on charts was 20 June 1966). Double LP.

Producer: Bob Johnston.

Recording studios: Columbia Studio A, Nashville, Tennessee (principal recording, February–March 1966); Columbia Studio A, New York City (October 1965–January 1966, one track). Mixed by Bob Johnston in Los Angeles, April 1966.

Critical reception: Blonde on Blonde received immediate acclaim. The Village Voice's Richard Goldstein described it as Dylan's 'least esoteric work' and called it 'a gas.' Rolling Stone included it in its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, calling it the record that came 'closest to recreating the thin, wild mercury sound' Dylan heard in his head. The Elusive Disc catalogue quotes Rolling Stone describing it as 'a sprawling abstraction of eccentric blues revisionism' confirming 'Dylan's stature as the greatest American rock presence since Elvis.' Critics routinely rank it among the greatest albums ever made. Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016.

Commercial success: Blonde on Blonde peaked at number 9 on the Billboard 200 and produced two top-20 hits: 'Rainy Day Women #12 & 35' (number 2) and 'I Want You' (number 20). It was the first double LP in rock music by a major artist. A month after the album's release, Dylan was involved in a motorcycle accident near Woodstock that kept him from public life for over a year. The subsequent Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 (18-disc edition, 2015) preserves every take from both the New York and Nashville sessions.

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