Customer Reviews

John Wesley Harding (Reis)

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When this record came out a lot of Dylan's fans were upset, because that singer of songs so complex with images that stayed with you long after the song had end, seemed to have gone country. But it didn't long before they realized that the complexity was still here, even thought the backing musicians had changed. The stories, those incredible stories were still here. Just give a listen to "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" and you'll see what I mean. And the word weaver is still doing his magic here as well, again listen to "Frankie & Judas."

Yes, gone are the rock musicians, replaced by country guys, Charlie McCoy on bass, Kenny Buttrey on drums and they help Dylan deliver a kind of haunting sound that has lasted through the years, making this record sort timeless, holding up as well now as it did way back then.

My personal favorite on this masterpiece of music is "As I Went Out One Morning." To me it seems like Dylan is singing about America and how Tom Paine would be so disappointed if he were alive today. And what would Rock have been like had Jimi not been able to cover the excellent "All Along the Watchtower." Then there is that landlord, that wicked messenger, that lonesome hobo and that escaping drifter. Mr. Dylan conjures images with words the way Van Gogh did with a brush. This album, though a change, is one of the best.

Dylan's move into country was wise and apt, just right for the times. The title track is a legend allegedly about a famous ancestor of the obscure singer-songwriter Tim Hardin. The awesome I Dreamt I Saw St. Augustine is spiritual and moving, All Along The Watchtower has a surreal edge to it and The Drifter's Escape is an interesting story song.

Dear Landlord fits the country style well, I Pity The Poor Immigrant is a touching protest song and I'll Be Your Baby Tonight is catchy country-pop, as proved by the many cover versions. Speaking of which, I first heard many of these classics via other artists' interpretations, e.g. Jimi Hendrix who made a psychedelic anthem of All Along The Watchtower and Joan Baez' splendid versions of St Augustine and I Pity The Poor Immigrant.

It's risky to try rating Dylan's individual albums, but John Wesley Harding is certainly amongst his five best as it is so consistently great as regards the quality of the compositions, the performance and the mastery of the country style. This memorable work with its haunting songs has stood the test of time very well.

I like to listen to the bass on this album. Charlie McCoy. You turn up the bass and it's very relaxing. This is one of my favorite Dylan albums, and didn't used to be. It is important because when it came out, the music that he had started was peaking, and while bands he influenced like THE BEATLES, THE EXPIRIENCE, THE DOORS, you name it, were peaking out, literally, with acid-inspired deeply personal music that had flaming guitar riffs and ten things going on at once, Bob sat down in his rocking chair, and wrote twelve laidback songs, most in a distant third person perspective, all with only a guitar, a harmonica, a piano, a bass, a drummer, and a steel guitar (on two tracks). Dylan wasn't burning up the sky on purpose, instead, he was painting the earth. And NASHVILLE SKYLINE, the next album, goes against the grain he started altogether, as it is a full on country album. But this one if folky, and underrated, and one can listen to it again and again. Great, pure, fantastic Dylan album.

This was Dylan's first album back after the motorcycle crash, and it's a moving, mysterious, and poignant album. The songs are shorter than his previous (and later) albums, and the instrumentation is bare to the bone. A lot of rock acts in the 1960's were trying to outdo one another (The Beach Boys put out Pet Sounds, The Beatles try to one up them with Sgt. Pepper, The Stones had Their Satanic Majesty's Request, Dylan had his Blonde on Blonde), so when Dylan made this simple (though not simplistic) album, the rock world was hugely surprised. Considering the turmoil going on in the country (Vietnam, Woodstock, hippies), this album is so far removed from that. John Wesley Harding is an album that's quite surprising in its depth and maturity. It's quickly becoming a favorite, with kudos going to the great song The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest. I saw Dylan do it in concert once (he did all the verse), and it's always been a favorite. But there isn't one wasted song on this album. This was Dylan's last great album for a while. He followed this with the cute (but slight) Nashville Skyline, the godawful Self Portrait, and the decent New Morning. All those albums had some good stuff on them, but they weren't as dynamic as JWH (and its predecessors) were. Quite a beautiful album.

As a 74 year old woman who loves all kinds of music, I am both proud and ashamed to admit that all those years when I laughingly wondered why the off-key, scratchy-voiced Dylan was such an icon -- those years were wasted times I might have enjoyed listening to him. This album is a delight and taking a new "tour" of his work has been an adventure. Don't look for him to explain anything and don't look for greater meanings. Just enjoy the genius a la Picasso!

In December of 1967 Bob Dylan released his long awaited follow up to the legendary Blonde On Blonde album. For more than a year Dylan was holed up in West Saugerties, New York with a band of Canadians and a drummer/singer/mandolin player from Arkansas. They called themselves The Hawks, (later re-named The Band). Bob was recouping from a motorcycle accident and writing songs that suited the juke-joint feeling they provided as a back-up unit. But what Bob really wanted to do was to head down to Nashville and record with the great session players Charlie McCoy, Ken Buttrey and Pete Drake. The songs he had written were naratives of characters from the old West, Frankie Lee, Tom Payne and John Wesley Harding. There were also figures like Judas and St. Augustine, names familiar to the New Testament. And there were anonymous characters Landlords, Hobos, Immigrants, Gamblers and Drifters, all faceless and nondescript, but worthy of great fear, unfathomable pity and deep respect.

The audience was slow to react to this quiter, gentler Bob Dylan. Teens and young adults who were weaned on the likes of Highway 61, Subterranean Homesick Blues and Like A Rolling Stone felt betrayed. Like the "folkies" at Newport who wanted more of Blowin' In The Wind and The Times They Are A Changin'. They couldn't recognize him and didn't want their hero to change. Just who was this stranger surrounded by weird looking figures on the album cover? And what exactly was Bob saying about "plow-men digging my earth" and "Immigrants who wished that they had stayed home"? What was this "Watchtower" inhabited by princes, thieves, bare-foot servants and Jokers? And who was this "fairest damsel that ever did walk in chains"?

The following year Bob released Nashville Skyline, a more mainstream country album. Fans and critics alike were unanimous in their approval. "Lay Lady Lay" became a top forty hit. Why even country icon Johnny Cash engaged in a heart felt duet on "Girl From The North Country". The Byrds too had gone country with "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" and a new genre called "country rock" was born. So John Wesley Harding was largely forgotten and reduced to a footnote. It's the record Bob released between two landmark albums, "Blonde On Blonde" and "Nashville Skyline". John Wesley Harding never gained traction with hard-core Dylan fans and never got it's due. But I strongly believe it contains some of Bob's greatest songwriting. Yes, "John Wesley Harding was a friend to the poor"....And anyone who cares to listen and give him a fair shot. Don't pity him or fear him. Don't send him "Down Along The Cove" with that "Wicked Messenger". Just listen and take the time to hear his story. Remember "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke"..."But let us not talk falsely now. The hour is getting late".

I remember the surprise upon hearing this album when it came out in December of 1967. It was Dylan's first LP since "Blonde on Blonde" and was preceded by a horrific motorcycle accident and, then, a reclusive hiatus of nineteen months at Dylan's home in Woodstock, NY. "John Wesley Harding" signaled a major turning point in the mercurial artist's career, a downturn from the rock music of "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde" toward an acoustic minimalist country genre of guitar, bass, drums, mouth organ and, of course, that nasal Dylan voice.

Aside from its powerful pioneering force upon other artists of the era, this album stands alone as an artifact of genius and originality. There is no doubt that some of the lyrics tend toward the ridiculous. For example, we hear that John Wesley Harding "traveled with a gun in every hand," and in "As I Went Out One Morning" we hear, "Depart from me this moment, I told her with my voice," and, "I beg you sir, she pleaded from the corners of her mouth." Moreover, the swear euphemism "Judas Priest" seems corny in "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest."

But so what? There are stories to be told here, and the fact that they remain veiled in meaning and, at times, use weird phraseology, endears them to the listener all the more. In any case, superb musicianship makes this album a star more than anything else. The haunting riffs of Dylan's mouth organ, the punctuating rhythm of Charles McCoy's bass, and the uncanny stick magic of Kenny Buttrey's drums absolutely mesmerize the listener, especially if he's wearing headphones. Buttrey's virtuosity alone makes this album worth every penny. Just put on the headphones and focus on the drumbeat in "As I Went Out One Morning" and "All Along the Watchtower." Buttrey died in 2004 of cancer, but he left an unparalleled legacy of material as a session drummer, and his contribution to "John Wesley Harding" shines on.

Bob Dylan wrote his best song ever for this album: "All Along the Watchtower." Ten months after its release, Reprise Records came out with Jimi Hendrix' "Electric Ladyland" with Hendrix' immortal cover of "Watchtower." Dylan himself recognized Hendrix' cover as better than his own version, and it stands today as the most dazzling masterstroke of rock music history. So there is a lot to be had in this underrated and under-appreciated album. It has stood the test of time and begs to be played over and over and over. I heartily recommend it.

With simple melodies (which are not country songs at all) and perfectly clear vocal renderings (the clearest maybe on any Dylan album, especially around that era), the strange stories and solitary images stand out like statues in a desert. Even the black-and-white cover depicts weird characters that seem altogether misplaced and awkward, and somehow haunting.

... two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl...

The two cheerful and melodic love songs to close the album seem almost unreal, almost like wishful thinking, in this context.

Recorded with a set of Nashville musicians, this is one of Bob Dylan's best albums. The music is superb and the lyrics draw you right in. These are songs with a story, with a purpose. and there is even a love song thrown it, "Down Along the Cove" and to my way of thinking its one of the best love songs ever written. Coming out after his long hiatus after "Blonde on Blonde" (supposedly because of his motorcycle accident) the way it did, his fans were probably starving for music and they snatched this one right up (or so I'm told). Still, it must have been a little bit of a shocker to his fans, you know, the direction his music was taking. A few years later they would be shocked even more, because Dylan is not your basic static musician, he's ever growing, ever changing and this incantation of the never the same Bob Dylan is truly one of the best.

This album often gets lost in the shuffle of Dylan idolatry. And while it's often said of this album that it was a transition to the country of "Nashville Skyline," that shorts the achievement of this work. Which is a shame. Some of Dylan's most striking and enigmatic images are in the lyrics from this album.

"The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" tells the story of a friendship that feels doomed from the opening verse when, over the strumming of a lonely accoustic guitar, Dylan announces that Frankie and Judas were the "best of friends." And, over the next five and a half minutes, he spins out the story of their undoing, wrapped in the double entendres and sharp images that are so prevalent in his earlier albums from the 1960's. Some of the strongest examples of those images are here.

What makes this album sharply different from "Blonde on Blonde" and "Highway 61 Revisited" is the spareness of the instrumentation. It is basically an accoustic album. But beyond that, the instrumentation is never given over to anything soaring, like the organ on "Like a Rolling Stone." And there is beauty in the simplicity.

This album will probably never be considered in the top tier of Dylan's work, but it is strong, and it stands on its own without being seen as a transition towards "Nashville Skyline."