matt tomiak #1
By: Matt Tomiak
Bob Dylan's fifth studio LP Bringing It All Back Home is perhaps the ultimate 1960s rock album. It marked a seminal point in Dylan's transition from an earnest young folk singer into a fully-fledged cultural innovator, freeing him from the restrictions and limitations of what had previously constituted popular music and creating a sound that was little short of revolutionary. The title itself appears to represent the brilliant, brazen claim that this album represents a musical 'year zero'; Dylan is gathering all the elements that have constituted 'pop music' up to this point, discarding them and creating something radical in their wake.
What is often overlooked is Dylan's youth at the time of these recordings, and the speed at which his music was progressing. Incredibly, he was still two months short of his twenty fourth birthday when it was released in March 1965. In many ways the album encompasses the decade as a whole; it is rebellious, provocative, and utterly startling. The best songs on the album- 'Subterranean Homesick Blues', 'Maggie's Farm', 'Mr Tambourine Man' , 'Gates Of Eden', It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue'- were unprecedented in the field of popular music. 'Bringing It All Back Home' is completely disdainful of convention and tradition. This tone is neatly encapsulated on the track 'Bob Dylan's 115th Dream'- a few seconds in, Dylan stops playing and starts laughing hysterically, almost manically, throwing the first-time listener completely off-balance. It is almost as if Dylan is mocking anyone who might believe he was still just a straightforward 'songwriter.'
The album also marked the introduction of the non-linear narrative into popular song, affecting music much as the Modernist authors had re-shaped literature in the 1920s. These apparently impenetrable characteristics to a large extent alienated his original audience. The public had seen precious little like this before, and it caused shockwaves across the world: As Paul Nelson wrote after seeing Dylan's newly 'electrified' performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Dylan was 'no longer a neo-Woody Guthrie...he had stopped singing talking blues and songs about 'causes'- peace or civil rights.' This transition is evident throughout Bringing It All Back Home, although it met with a famously hostile reception at the Newport Folk Festival of summer 1965. Dylan seemed quite content, and maybe even more than just that, to provoke such controversy and widespread outcry: he claimed at the time to have 'felt great' about the negative audience reaction.
This album was followed five months later by Highway 61 Revisited, often seen as a similarly ground-breaking companion piece. But I have chosen to focus on the earlier release here as its initial impact was so groundbreaking in 1965, and still sounds so inventive and resourceful today. The album's opening track, 'Subterranean Homesick Blues,' is surely one of the most staggering, groundbreaking tracks in modern popular music. Its relatively short length; just under two and a half minutes, is reminiscent of Dylan's earliest folk rock hits. This seems to contribute to its astonishing power- its duration is just about the only traditional thing about it. The track abandons the standard verse-chorus-verse structure, with Dylan's stream-of-consciousness -driven sound bite dialogue, not even 'lyrics' in the conventional sense, is astonishing. What he is actually saying seems so much more assertive and threatening than anything contained on his previous four albums. 'Don't follow leaders' he declares; just three words, completely unequivocal and totally insurrectionary. In a similar vein is the statement 'you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blow,' emphasizing Dylan's brash rejection of authority figures. This is a particularly striking line, invoking as it does his early hit 'Blowin' In The Wind.' These sentences are stark, unambiguous and far more confrontational than his early 60s lyrics.
This new, highly defiant attitude is a recurrent theme throughout the album's most famous songs- the narrator declaring he 'ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more', and imploring to be 'taken on a trip' in 'Mr. Tambourine Man.' The actual subject or specific meaning of this song has been much debated, but simply as an ode to escapism and non-conformity it remains extremely potent. The influence of drugs and the expansion of the mind resurfaces in 'Gates of Eden.' He acknowledges the rules and institutions of society and discards them. He sings disdainfully of the 'preachers (who) preach of evil fates' and the materialist aspirations that western education instills in its pupils; 'Teachers teach that knowledge waits/ Can lead to hundred-dollar plates.' In a provocative affront to the elder generation and their insistence on unyielding respect for authority, Dylan announces that 'even the president of the United States/ Sometimes must have/ To stand naked'- questioning the highest power in America and calling into question the entire American way of life.
It is almost as if his earlier folk style had become redundant; Dylan now seeing it as uncomplicated and almost trivial compared to the places he now wished to travel musically. Bringing It All Back Home sees Dylan realising he had shrunk away from addressing the major issues of the day more directly and attempting to rectify this, or at least, deciding that he had to broaden the scope of his songwriting. The album ends as it began, on a highly striking tone. 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' underlines the radical stance Dylan has adopted. Here, he announces to his subject they must 'forget the dead you've left/they will not follow you'- apparently, a reference to the stick-in-the-mud Greenwich Village scene and his erstwhile followers. This final track seems to be asserting Dylan's commitment to pursuing a brave new path true to his own vision, regardless of public opinion.