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John Wesley Harding (1968)
John Wesley Harding As I Went Out One Morning I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine All Along the Watchtower The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest Drifter's Escape Dear Landlord I Am a Lonesome Hobo I Pity the
The musicians:
Notes.·
[TOP]
Reviews:
From The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia by Michael Gray:
"JohnWesley Harding [album, 1968] The eighth album, not counting greatest-hits compilations.
This quiet masterpiece, which manages to sound both authoritative and tentative (a mix that gave
it a highly contemporary feel), is neither a rock nor a folk album—and certainly isn’t folk-rock. It isn’t
categorisable at all. The back-upmusicians are pared down to three: bass, drums and, on two tracks only,
pedal steel. Plus Dylan on guitar, harmonica and piano. Economy, in fact, is the key to this huge
change of direction. There could be no greater contrast between consecutive albums than that between
Blonde on Blonde’s richness and the taut asceticism of John Wesley Harding. This album is no
cheap thrill. It is, though, a most serious, darkly visionary exploration of the myths and extinct
strengths of America; its Calvinist spirit gives it an eerie power in mixing the severely biblical with a
surreal 19th century, American-pioneer ethos. Dylan comes across like a man who has arisen from armageddon
unscathed but sobered, to walk across an allegorical American landscape of small, poor
communities working a dusty, fierce terrain. The masterpieces within themasterpiece are ‘I Dreamed
I Saw St. Augustine’, ‘All Along the Watchtower’ and ‘I Pity the Poor Immigrant’. Then there are the
last two tracks of the album: the a` la JERRY LEE LEWIS ‘Down Along the Cove’ and the brilliant
country-pastiche song ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’. With these, Dylan was serving notice of the next
sharp shift in direction that was to come from him. John Wesley Harding was to be Dylan’s last
masterpiece of the 1960s—and in spirit it was most markedly not a part of the 1960s world at all.
It is the most underrated of Dylan’s great albums: a record that everyone puts in the pantheon but
few embrace. Yet how especially pleasurable it is to revisit now that so many years have passed
since it was new: to bathe in the relief of remembering that Dylan is not just the flailing old bruiser
of the Never-Ending Tour, whose patchy virtues must be snatched from rough, loud, swirling chaos
and carelessness, his intermittent inspiration lobbing out of the aural fog as he stumbles down his
road. It’s salutary to be pulled away from picking through concert bootlegs for these rare and shaky
treats and re-directed towards the Bob Dylan who gave us John Wesley Harding, throughout which he
insists upon the virtues of calm and silence, of less-is-more, of exquisite precision and particularity,
carved out with blade-sharp, unwavering certainty. Here, there is no floundering search for some
intangible juiced-up mystic rock’n’roll moment: there is instead the artist standing naked, with a
very particular vision in his sights, and illuminating it with the intuitive alertness of his genius."
Rolling Stone review ...
Best Song: Every album's got one.,,
"I Pity the Poor Immigrant". (and we all are..)
According to Alias
Favorite Lyric:
"Who fills his mouth with laughing
And who builds his town with blood,
Whose visions in the final end
Must shatter like the glass"
According to Alias.
.
John Wesley Harding As I Went Out One Morning I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine All Along the Watchtower The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest Drifter's Escape Dear Landlord I Am a Lonesome Hobo I Pity the
The musicians:
[TOP]
Reviews:
From The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia by Michael Gray:
"JohnWesley Harding [album, 1968] The eighth album, not counting greatest-hits compilations.
This quiet masterpiece, which manages to sound both authoritative and tentative (a mix that gave
it a highly contemporary feel), is neither a rock nor a folk album—and certainly isn’t folk-rock. It isn’t
categorisable at all. The back-upmusicians are pared down to three: bass, drums and, on two tracks only,
pedal steel. Plus Dylan on guitar, harmonica and piano. Economy, in fact, is the key to this huge
change of direction. There could be no greater contrast between consecutive albums than that between
Blonde on Blonde’s richness and the taut asceticism of John Wesley Harding. This album is no
cheap thrill. It is, though, a most serious, darkly visionary exploration of the myths and extinct
strengths of America; its Calvinist spirit gives it an eerie power in mixing the severely biblical with a
surreal 19th century, American-pioneer ethos. Dylan comes across like a man who has arisen from armageddon
unscathed but sobered, to walk across an allegorical American landscape of small, poor
communities working a dusty, fierce terrain. The masterpieces within themasterpiece are ‘I Dreamed
I Saw St. Augustine’, ‘All Along the Watchtower’ and ‘I Pity the Poor Immigrant’. Then there are the
last two tracks of the album: the a` la JERRY LEE LEWIS ‘Down Along the Cove’ and the brilliant
country-pastiche song ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’. With these, Dylan was serving notice of the next
sharp shift in direction that was to come from him. John Wesley Harding was to be Dylan’s last
masterpiece of the 1960s—and in spirit it was most markedly not a part of the 1960s world at all.
It is the most underrated of Dylan’s great albums: a record that everyone puts in the pantheon but
few embrace. Yet how especially pleasurable it is to revisit now that so many years have passed
since it was new: to bathe in the relief of remembering that Dylan is not just the flailing old bruiser
of the Never-Ending Tour, whose patchy virtues must be snatched from rough, loud, swirling chaos
and carelessness, his intermittent inspiration lobbing out of the aural fog as he stumbles down his
road. It’s salutary to be pulled away from picking through concert bootlegs for these rare and shaky
treats and re-directed towards the Bob Dylan who gave us John Wesley Harding, throughout which he
insists upon the virtues of calm and silence, of less-is-more, of exquisite precision and particularity,
carved out with blade-sharp, unwavering certainty. Here, there is no floundering search for some
intangible juiced-up mystic rock’n’roll moment: there is instead the artist standing naked, with a
very particular vision in his sights, and illuminating it with the intuitive alertness of his genius."
Rolling Stone review ...
Best Song: Every album's got one.,,
"I Pity the Poor Immigrant". (and we all are..)
According to Alias
Favorite Lyric:
"Who fills his mouth with laughing
And who builds his town with blood,
Whose visions in the final end
Must shatter like the glass"
According to Alias.
.
