Customer Reviews

Bringing It All Back Home (Reis)

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By the time of this 1965 release, Dylan had already proven himself a lyrical master and a new legend in the folk universe. With his electrified performance at the Newport Folk Festival, and this half-electric/half-acoustic LP, he showed that he was not only far from done with pushing the envelope, but that he'd really only begun. In particular, his music and subject matter were now catching up to his revolutionary words and lyrical structures.

The album opens full-bore with the blistering word-puzzle "Subterranean Homesick Blues." Backed by a vamping electric blues band, Dylan is at once a protesting outsider, a sardonic social critic, and a free-associating poet. It stands on its own as an incredible piece of rock music, but as the introduction to Dylan's fifth LP, it was something of a warning shot. The electric blues return for the near-rockabilly arrangement of "Maggie's Blues" and a Chuck Berry (ala "Memphis") styled "Outlaw Blues." In between, Dylan crafted extraordinary ballads, including the acidic "She Belongs to Me" and one of his best-ever love songs, "Love Minus Zero/No Limit."

Side two (tracks 7-11) retreats to mostly acoustic presentations, but even here Dylan expanded upon his earlier work, with the surreal story of "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" and the poetic folk-rock standard "Mr. Tambourine Man." The latter stretches to over 5-1/2 minutes and includes a trio of verses dropped by The Byrds in their hit cover. One of the album's most effective cuts is the 7-1/2 minute "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding," a song Dylan had been performing live for several months before recording it. Though recorded with only an acoustic guitar, the venomous lyrics spare no target in their criticism, providing as much fire as any of the electric tunes on side one.

All in all, this is as good a portrait of Dylan's inventions as can be found. It's a showcase for his brilliant writing, his evolving musical exposition and his ability to parlay an unconventional voice into some of the world's most expressive and effective vocals.

This is a brilliant album: wonderful songs, beautifully executed. This can't be said for all Dylan albums.

It's easy to overlook, 42 years later, how original this material was when it came out. It was in the months leading up to this album's creation that the Beatles motivated Dylan to move on from his acoustic-folk music, and he motivated the Beatles to move on from their "Twist and Shout" type crap. They moved on to "Revolver" and "Sgt Pepper" and became a brilliant studio-only band, and Dylan moved on to "Highway 61" and "Blond on Blonde" and became an icon. It can be said that this album marked the beginning of modern rock music.

"She Belongs to Me" and "Love Minus Zero" are wonderful love songs; "On the Road Again" and "Dylan's 115th Dream" are hilarious satires; and "Gates of Eden" and "It's alright Ma" are dark, deep cynical masterpieces. How could a 23 year-old put all this together on one album?

People who have been introduced to Dylan by "Time out of Mind" and later material have no idea what a voice he used to have. It has never sounded as good as it does here, especially "It's all Over Now, Baby Blue". I will never get tired of this song.

I have a big part of Dylans output and I think this CD showcases his voice and his songwriting best. "Highway 61" has a kind of garage-band sound that you have to be in the mood for, and "Blonde on Blonde" has a bit of filler, but "Bringing it all Back Home" has no weaknesses.

Critics have been trying to interpret the songs on this album for over 40 years now, especially "It's all Right Ma" and "Gates of Eden", attaching huge significance to words that Dylan himself chose simply because they rhymed. He wasn't trying to change the world; he was just trying to write songs people would enjoy.

So get this CD and enjoy it - there isn't a weak song on it. Make sure you get the digitally re-mastered version, released in '03 - the sound is much better than on the older analog CD (ADD vs AAD). Look for the date on the back.

It seems hard to believe now both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). It is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.

Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan's role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to comment on a couple of songs here. Obviously, no one will ever really unravel what the meaning of Subterranean Homesick Blues is about except that it has produced one of the most famous lines of the 1960's- `you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows' (although if the truth be known you do) that I am fond of using anytime I get a change to use it as a political cutting edge. Love Minus Zero No Limit is one of the great modern love songs that will along with a few others define what love, longing and companionship meant for our generation ('my love is like some raven at my window with a broken wing' says more above love than half the sonnets every written).

Needless to say Gates of Eden is the modern equivalent of John Milton's Paradise Lost (and I do not mean to use that praise hyperbolically). If Milton was explaining the ways of god to man in the aftermath of the defeat of the English Revolution then Dylan was attempting to give his take on the eternal verities for modern times.

This is IT.
This is where, in retrospect, it all started. I didn't realize it at the time but I do now. There were two sixties, the early 60-64, Beach Boys, Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, early Beatle "I Want to Hold you Hand", crew-cut, clean-cut, A-line dress, beehive hair, Bass Weejun, khaki, American Graffiti sixties, and the other sixties, the Revolver, Sgt Pepper, Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Cream, United States of America, hippy sixties that everyone today thinks was the sixties, happened AFTER 1965. And it all started with this album!

Bob Dylan, the antiwar, civil-rights, Woody Guthrie-imitating darling of the folksingers, the Voice and Conscience of his Generation, after penning "Blowin in the Wind", and "The Masters of War", stunned his purist followers with "Bringing it All Back Home". Electric instruments and a turn from trying to change the world by preaching at it to a bemused surreal satire. This, and "Revolver" are the two most influential albums of the sixties, maybe of music history. I remember.

The Beatles were wildly popular with younger listeners, but generally dismissed by music critics of the time as being a wildly sucessful but totally Pop phenominon. Dylan said they were "Bubblegum". Dylan's friend Al Aronowitz (sp?), said that the Beatles weren't that bad. Dylan and friend were introduced to the Beatles at a certain party in Manhattan AUG 64, whereat someone offered Lennon his first smoke. Lennon "took a drink from Dr Robert's special cup". Dylan and Lennon talked and found they had a lot in common. Dylan suggested Lennon should put more of his feelings into his songs. Following this party, the Beatles became much better, more introspective, and a few months later "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver'!. See DVD "No Direction Home" directed by Martin Scorsese for details...

"Johnnies in the basement
mixing up the medicine,
I'm on the pavement
Thinkin' about the government...

...Maggie comes, fleet feet,
Face full of black soot
Talkin the the Heat put
Plants in the bed, but
The phones tapped, anyway,
orders from the D.A.,
say they must bust in early May...

"...Keep a clean nose,
Watch for Plainclothes,
You don't need a Weatherman
To know which way the wind blows!...

...Please her, please him.
Twenty years of schoolin'
and they put you on the Day Shift"...

How that for starting off with a (paranoid) bang? The first rap song about being surveilled in a police state.

(and where are those Weathermen, now that we need them...?)

or how about the heartfelt:
"...She's got everything she needs
she's an artist
She don't look back.
she can take the dark out of the nighttime
and paint the daytime black..."

or the workaday world of:
"...He hands you a nickel,
He hands you a dime,
He askes you with a grin if you're having a good time?
And he fines you every time you slam the door.
I aint gonna work on Maggie Farm no more..."
(have you had bosses like that?)

or the surreal 115th dream:
"I was riding on the Mayflower when I thought I spotted land
I yelled for captain Arab, I'll have you understand,
Who came running to the deck, said 'boys, forget the whale
we're goin over yonder, cut the engines, change the sail' ...

...I think I'll call it 'America' I said as we hit land.
I took a deep breath, I fell down, I could not stand...

...A telephone was ringing, it just about blew my mind,
When I picked it up and said 'Hello', this foot came through the line...

...I repeated that my friends were all in jail with a sigh,
He gave me his card, he said 'call me if they die'..."

"...I said,'you know, they refused Jesus, too'
he said 'you're NOT Him'..."

or from It's all Right Ma, I'm only Bleeding:

"...While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked..."

(I can't wait for George Bush standing naked to be judged by the American people)
Anthony Soprano (the teen) in the last Sopranos episode, comments "there it is, Dylan said it ALL and he did it 40 years ago!"

Now those are lyrics!

Pure poetry, funny, insightful. The sheer volume of Dylan's genius is so overwhelming you can only get it in small amounts - I remember I didn't understand all at first. I still hear new ideas in these songs after all these years. Notes from the Underground.

And the backup band isn't "The Band", as I always thought, it's blues guitar great Michael Bloomfield and Al Kooper, trying to learn organ.

After this brilliant album, Dylan met and influenced the Beatles. The folkies (who had played for years in coffee shops where they learned to play and sing harmony and write meaningful songs) all picked up electric instruments. Country Joe and the Fish, Lovin Spoonful, etc. The Byrds did an electric version of his Pied Piper song "Mr Tambourine Man" ("...take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind..."). Then came Donovan's "Sunshine Superman", Vanilla Fudge's "You Keep me Hangin On". After that, there was a sea change in culture and in popular music. There was an explosion.

It started here.
This album cannot be recommended too highly (despite the fact that Dylan doesn't have a singing voice like Jim Morrison or Frank Sinatra).

Long having denied the implication that he created the folk-rock genre, rather giving the credit to Gene Clark of The Byrds, this release by the Bard from Hibbing would undoubtedly serve as the cornerstone of folk-rock through the ages! "Bringing It All Back Home" continues Dylan's introspection from "Another Side Of Bob Dylan" while adding electric instruments to the mix (a fact that, for some reason, would be acceptable to fans on record but not live at Newport). Here, Dylan can be at his most romantic one minute, with the Baez-inspired "Love Minus Zero / No Limit" or "She Belongs To Me," and simultaneously prophetic and surreal the next!

Introducing classics like "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Maggie's Farm" alongside concert stalwarts "Gates Of Eden" and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," this release would be the first of a trilogy ended all too soon by Dylan's supposed "motorpsycho nitemare." The other two albums in this trilogy are, of course, "Highway 61 Revisited" and the double-disc "Blonde On Blonde."

Many will say that this is Dylan at his finest, placing the artist into an uncomfortable categorization or time capsule, but he would continue to produce highly creative and innovative work both with The Band and The Traveling Wilburys, as well as via his solo career throughout the 1970's and 80's. "Bringing It All Back Home" merely brings folk-rock to the forefront, introduces his audience to "Another Side Of Bob Dylan," and provides some excellent entertainment for the unsuspecting yet open-minded listener.

Released in 1965, Bringing it All Back Home is a pivotal moment in the history of rock `n' roll, a sparkling jewel in the Bob Dylan catalogue, and one of the greatest albums ever recorded. The record combined the earthy poetics of folk music with the freeform, electrified joys of rock, birthing a whole new sound in the process. The music is by turns gritty, dreamy, propulsive and beautiful, an intoxicating swirl of acoustic and electric, of driving rhythms and rolling melodies. The lyrics are pure poetry, a series of mind-bending verses and stark dreamscapes, a vast mixture of poignancy, humor, anger, and longing. Classic Dylan, if I do say so myself.

In its original (vinyl) incarnation, the record was split right down the middle: Side 1 of the original LP was devoted to amped up, blues-soaked folk-rock, while side 2 featured nothing but acoustic ruminations. Both sides were totally awesome. The electric half featured classics such as "Subterranean Homesick Blues," a hard-drivin' blast of electrified blues-rock boogie, with s rhythm that is pure Chuck Berry. The lyrics are a head-spinning surrealist ramble with some deliciously subtle social commentary and warped character sketches. "Maggie's Farm" is a broken-down protest number with a mutilated honky-tonk vibe. "Outlaw Blues" and "One the Road Again" are gin-soaked ramblers with some fantastically bizarre lyrics, and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" is a just-plain hilarious slab of distorted Americana. "She Belongs To Me" and ""Love Minus Zero/No Limit" are gentler numbers, with lilting melodies and nuanced vocals.

The acoustic side is, somehow, even better. "Mr. Tambourine Man" is one of Dylan's most stunningly beautiful songs- it's a dreamy, ethereal reverie with lyrics that ring with love, longing, and nostalgia. It communicates an uncanny amount of emotion, mapping the contours of pain and joy with an unbelievable finesse. And then there's "Gates of Eden," a haunting labyrinth of sound and poetry. The lyrics feature some of Dylan's most striking imagery. "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" is a post-modern protest song, an apocalyptic epic that sees Dylan firing shots at the hollow, materialistic pitfalls of modern life, while his guitar radiates pure tension. Closing out the album is "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," a rolling ballad that manages to be both mournful and scathing. Nice. So yeah, it's a masterpiece. Get it.

I was skeptical when the remastered Dylan CDs hit the shelves a year ago. I asked myself, "CBS/Columbia/Sony/Bob wants me to buy his CDs all over again - on top of his vinyl/cassettes?" True, some remasters shine: Layla by Derek & The Dominoes, The Beatles Yellow Submarine Songbook CD, the Zeppelin catalogue. However, others are cynical cash grabs that offer minimal improvement in sound (namely, the Stones reissues). Only after a year did I finally try one of the Bob remasters, one of my favourites, Bringing It All Back Home.

The verdict? Excellent.

Every track gains from remastering. Each song rings with warmth and detail. In the original 1990 CD issue, the instruments are lumped into one muddy, joyless mass of sound. Here, the lead guitar, bass, organ and drums speak are distinct. You can hear actually hear each instrument, each guitar lick, each drumbeat, each bass pattern and keyboard note. When blended together into a simple, but exciting mix, the instruments mesh perfectly with Bob's vocals. In other words, the songs rock.

That's clear from the opening notes of Subterranean Homesick Blues to the blues raunch of Outlaw Blues and Dada juggernaut of Bob Dylan's 15th Dream. The improved sound is also evident on the sublime love songs, She Belongs To Me and Love Minus Zero/No Limit which flow with a newfound grace.

The remastering has wiped the grime off of Dylan's vocals which are now are pungent and warm throughout, especially on the acoustic B-side starting with Mr. Tambourine Man.

It's a cliché, but Dylan has never sounded so good. It used to be chore to listen to the heavily compressed, flat Dylan CDs from the 90s, but now this music is a pleasure, whether on speakers or headphones.

Even the cover is sharper and more colourful than its predecessor. The booklet is more generous, but it shamefully omits the names of Dylan's session players, the men who helped Dylan go electric and revolutionize rock music. (If anyone from Sony is reading this, why?)

My only caveat is to buy these CDs at a good price. It's fair to say that most customers of these reissues already own the original CDs and shouldn't pay more than say $11 (Canadian) per disc. At that rate, I'll buy them all.

Bringing it All Back Home is, in my humble opinion, the best record ever recorded. On it there is Bob Dylan at his acoustic best with songs such as "Gates of Eden" and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding). Also on this album is Dylan as he was first heard playing electric with the outstanding "On the Road Again" and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream." And if you can get though "115th Dream" without realizing Bob Dylan is just about the greatest American poet who ever lived, well you should go back to school and study literature. This album also includes three of my favorite Dylan songs, almost acoustic, just a little electric with that beautiful guitar playing along with his young voice, and they are "She Belongs to Me," "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." And of course you gotta listen to that song that includes the no good, rotten, doctor commie rat,"Maggie's Farm." This is the Dylan record everybody should own. It's just fantastic.

Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisted" and "Blonde On Blonde" are considered by many to be his best albums. But, in some ways, this was his most momentous and important. It is here that Dylan "goes electric", with the first side of the album made up of blues based rockers and sardonic ballads. The second side is acoustic. But here too Dylan is transfroming, reaching a new level of lyrical and musical artistry.

Prior to Dylan rock and roll was considered by many, incuding some in the counter-culture, to be bubblegum pop music. But Dylan changed all that by combining the depth and substance of his words with the rhythm and energy of rock to create something entirely new and better. American music, and perhaps American culture itself, would never be the same.

This album is chock full of classic songs like "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "Maggie's Farm". "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" is perhaps my favorite love song of all time, with lines like - "My love she laughs like the flowers/Valentines can't buy her." Forget this bling-bling nonsense, that is what real romance is all about!

"Mr Tambourine Man" and "Baby Blue" have Dylan experimenting with surrealistic word play and imagery, a type of song writing that would go on to influence the Grateful Dead and many other great rock bands. But "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is perhaps the most glorious of all the songs here. The music providing a powerful underpinning for radical, extradorinary lyrics like "If my thought-dreams could be seen/they would probably put my head in a guillotine."

Some called Dylan a "sell out" for turning from folk to rock. But the truth is that he was actually just taking it to the next level of artistic accomplishment, still willing to challenge mainstream society but now going beyond mere political rhetoric to explore what it means to be human in the heart and soul as well as the mind. Yes, it was Dylan who took music to the next level and we are all the better for it.

Like most Dylan fans, I find it hard to pick a favourite among the three masterpieces Dylan recorded in the mid-60s. To be fair, Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde and Bringing it all Back Home can all lay claim to being Dylan's finest release. My special fondness for Bringing it all Back Home likely has to do with the fact that it was the breakthrough to Dylan's electric period coupled with the fact that the album (the first in the series) is something of a hybrid, boasting both electric and acoustic tracks.

By this point in his career, Dylan's song-writing had taken a decisive turn away from the overtly political offerings of his third album: The Times They Are A'Changing. The follow-up to that album, the transitional Another Side of Bob Dylan contains at least two tracks (It Ain't Me Babe & My Back Pages) in which Dylan all but renounces his role as spokesman of his generation. That delightfully quirky album, however, in no way prepared Dylan's fan for the album that shortly followed.

In its original LP form, Bringing it all Back Home was divided between an acoustic side two and an electric side one. It was, of course, the electric side that came as the surprise, gaining Dylan new fans even as it lost Dylan some of his loyal folk-music-following. Call the music on that first side rock, call it folk-rock, call it electric folk: call it what you please, but none of Dylan's previous work could have led anyone to anticipate the sheer power of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and that of many of the tunes that follow. (Personal favourites include the well-known "Maggie's Farm", the boisterously funny "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream", and the hauntingly beautiful ballad, "She Belongs to Me").

And yet, to this listener's ears, the album's true highlights are found on its second side. Perhaps as a result of his experiments with electrified music, perhaps as a result of his rejection of straightforward "message" songs, Dylan's writing seems to have taken a leap forward, with the four selections on the original side two of this album representing the richest fruit of that forward leap. "Baby Blue," "Tambourine Man," "Gates of Eden" and perhaps especially "It's Alright Ma" represent the young Dylan at his most hauntingly lyrical and musically rich.

It's the juxtaposition of the electric and acoustic Dylan that will always lead me to hold Bringing it all Back Home in especially high esteem. That's why I regard this album as a terrific starting point for those who only know Dylan through one or more of the Greatest Hit packages that have been released over the years. For anyone wanting to take their next step in becoming acquainted with the work of this wonderful American artist, look no further: Bringing it all Back Home is a wonderful place to begin.