at a glance...

Hometown: Duluth, MN
First Recordings: 1962

Members:
Bob Dylan -vocals, guitar, harmonica, production
Sly Dunbar -drums, percussion
Robbie Shakespeare -bass
Mark Knopfler -guitar, production
Mick Taylor -guitar
Alan Clark -keyboards
Clydie King -vocals

Notes:
Born Robert Allen Zimmerman, raised from the age of six in Hibbing, MN. While studying art at the University of Minnesota, he began to perform folk music at local coffehouses as Bob Dylan, a name he reputedly borrowed from poet Dylan Thomas. In January 1961, he relocated to New York, quickly making a name for himself on the folk circuit as a disciple of his idol, Woodie Guthrie. An opening gig for John Lee Hooker brought him to the attention of Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond, who recorded Dylan's debut, which consisted of only two originals surrounded by folk and blues standards. In 1963, Dylan released his breakthrough collection of original compositions The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, the beginning of a career marked by a devotion to his own vision and craft that continues to this day, with an excellent new release, Time Out Of Mind.

This is Bob Dylan's reggae album, which is evident from the first tumble of Sly Dunbar's drums to open up "Jokerman." Using Sly & Robbie as Dylan's rhythm section was a brilliant move by co-producer Mark Knopfler, because reggae is urgent music, and this is Dylan's most urgent set of songs since Blood on the Tracks. Hell, ol' Rasta Bob even pens a side 2 tune called "I and I." Did we see this coming? Not after Shot of Love or Slow Train Coming. And yet here's "Jokerman," mystical and political and elusive like all late (and early and middle) Dylan, but with all the urgency of Marley or Tosh, both of whom Dylan influenced heavily. He growls and he spits and he almost sounds like he's testifying on a Jamaican street corner: "Freedom, just around the corner from you/But with truth so far off, what good will it do?"

You have to give a lot of credit to Knopfler, not what you'd call your most mellow and irie sort of fellow, who really holds himself back, letting sound bang around a little bit; even his solos, when they come (as they always will), are understated and to the point. Knopfler's homeys Alan Clark and Mick Taylor are sympathetic rather than blustery, and musically the album really goes down smooth as rum. Any 17-year-old out there named "Dylan" was probably conceived to "Sweetheart Like You," as smooth a lover's rock as the 80s produced, and even the uptempo numbers have zest and finesse.

But if the music is rum, the lyrics are welcome firewater. I have read a couple of semi-convincing essays claiming that this is his "return to Judaism" album, and the whole Ras Tafari/Lost Tribe of Israel thing makes some sense in numbers like "Neighborhood Bully," which seems to be about Israel's shaky position in the Middle East. But this is just as much an album about America as Israel. "Union Sundown" is a surprising piece of anti-union sentiment from former U.S. Lefty #1, but it's more against unions capitulating to companies who move American jobs overseas than against the working man, so it's okay. (Great piece of anti-NAFTA propaganda, only about 15 years before NAFTA was signed.) "License to Kill" is aimed right at the heart of the American gun-nut thing and the man's-dominion-over-animals thing, a country ballad that would never survive at the Opry.

And why couldn't the woman Bob's trying to seduce in "Sweetheart Like You" be our own beloved Statue of Liberty? "By the way, that's a cute hat/And a smile so hard to resist/What's a sweetheart like you/Doin' in a dump like this?" seems pretty innocuous at the beginning of the song, but by the middle he's saying something else: "You could be known as the most beautiful woman who ever crawled across cut glass to make a deal." And if this is just another woman in a bar, why does Mr. D try to pick her up with lines like these: "They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings/Steal a little and they throw you in jail/Steal a lot and they make you king" ? Oh, there are depths here to be plumbed, songs to be argued about, lines with ambiguity and force and wit. This is the Bob Dylan we signed up for, and this album is where he starts delivering the goods again after a 10-year wait. So push play and let the intellectual skanking begin.

If you like Bob Dylan, check out:
Bob Dylan Blonde On Blonde
Bob Dylan The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks
Bob Dylan The Bootleg Series
Bob Dylan Desire
Bob Marley and the Wailers Catch A Fire
Elvis Costello and the Attractions Armed Forces
Public Enemy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Dire Straits Making Movies

-- Matt Cibula