Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dylan Comes Back Quietly, October 5, 2000
After Bob Dylan had a severe motorcycle accident in Woodstock, 1966, he spent almost two years recouperating. During that time only his first Greatest Hits album was released. When he did finally release an album of new material in late 1968, it moved away from the electrified sounds of Bringing It Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde and returned to his quieter folk roots. On John Wesley Harding, there is no electric guitar, just Dylan's acoustic guitar and harmonica backed with bass, drums and piano. The accident probably made Dylan more reflective on life and death and those themes lyrically permeate this great work. Of course everyone is familiar with "All Along The Watchtower", but there are other songs that deserve high standing in the expansive Dylan catalog. "The Ballad Of Frankie Lee & Judas Priest" has a classic Dylan narrative with cryptic lyrics and is one of his best. "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" finds him in fine vocal form and "I Pity The Poor Immigrant", "I Am A Lonesome Hobo" & "Dear Landlord" has him again singing about the trouble and travails of the little man. There is a country music feel running through the album and it laid the groundwork for his next release, the full blown country album Nashville Skyline.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Simple Album, October 30, 2000
JWH's draw is its simplicity: just three or four guys playing simple instruments simply while Dylan sings simple, powerful, moral tunes evoking Old Testament judgment and irony. Released in 1968 it was thought by some to be a response to the technological one-upmanship of the endless tape-loops of the just-then released Beatles' Sergeant Pepper and the Stones' Satanic Majesty's Request. In truth, Dylan's 1966 near-death experience - which resulted in an almost two-year absence from the recording scene - seems to have caused Bob to "bring it all back home" to both his rural and Jewish roots. (The evidence of Dylan's slowdown first appear in his [and the Band's] 1975 release, The Basement Tapes, which was actually recorded immediately after the motorcycle accident, bootlegged for years, and then released by Columbia.) The result of Dylan's introspection is stark background music with Dylan's voice leading the way through stories with lessons such as "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest's'" "If you see your neighbor carrying something, help him with his load/and don't go mistaking Paradise for that home across the road." While the album is not more or less concerned with morality than any othe Dylan work, it is profund in its concern for personal repentance; there is a noticeable absence of Dylan's "You got a lot of nerve" finger-pointing. Indeed, "The Drifter's Escape" is a warning to the self-righteousness of a narrow society, a reminder that personal repentance does not include Puritanical purges of own's neighbor's conscience. JWH, while musically simple, does not suffer the way Springsteen's Nebraska does from its spare arrangements. Unfortunately, Springsteen's successful imitation of the dusty monotony of life on the plains does not make for interesting music; JWH, on the other hand, is a great piece of work because simplicity is inherently valuable while boring is, well, boring. Evocative of the Biblical books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, JWH is one of rock's great works, a moral retreat set to music, something to make one close the Wall Street Journal and consider the lilies of the field, the mate and children of one's heart and home.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Remaster no good? Stick with the original..., February 1, 2005
After hearing NOTHING good about the remastered version of this CD, I decided to stick with my original copy. But all remasters aside, this album from 1967 (less than a week from 1968) now stands as one of Dylan's greats. Some consider it his last GREAT work ("Nashville Skyline" followed it, and then "Self-Portrait" and "New Morning"). At the time his core fans must have thought something was a little off. The monumental "Blonde on Blonde" preceded it in 1966 with its raucous mood, catchy incredibly Dylan-drawled melodies, and burgeoning instrumentation that lashes out like solar prominence from speakers and headphones. Juxtaposed with the full frontal attack of "Blonde On Blonde", "John Wesley Harding" seems introverted, introspective, and exceedingly pared down. Of course Dylan was just being the never repetitive Dylan. And of course he was also in a horrific motorcycle accident following the release of "Blonde On Blonde". Nonetheless, according to Dylan's amazing "Chronicles Vol. 1" he was still seeking escape from his reputation as a "prophet" and "savior" in 1967. Many big names at the time, including Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and Phil Ochs, were publicly calling on Dylan to stop flirting with the mainstream and "lead them". Dylan didn't have the same calling. He withdrew. Maybe "John Wesley Harding" is a manifestation of this withdrawal and introversion?
The album is pared down. It is laid back. It is anything but raucous. It even feels lonely. Dylan's voice is very different than on "Blonde On Blonde". The lyrics focus on the down-and-out, the have-nots, and the deprived. They glisten with Dylan's usual lyrical brilliance. The instrumentation is minimal: acoustic guitars, bass, harmonica, piano here and there, understated drums, and Dylan crooning over the mix. Dylan produced nothing else like it before or after. It isn't quite country, but it presages "Nashville Skyline". It is, in the end, a transitional album, and one of Dylan's many. Like "Another Side of Bob Dylan" and "Bringing It All Back Home" it points to the future and has almost nothing to do with the past. The last song, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight", supports this, and provides an open door to Dylan's full blown country phase (it could have fit very well onto "Nashville Skyline").
After "John Wesley Harding" Dylan never went back. He kept on developing and changing, leaving his works behind him like a massive treasure trail. He never reappropriated them for artistic or commercial gain. He even said that he never could play "All Along the Watchtower" the same again after hearing Jimi Hendrix's 1968 version. So the version here was very short lived. In retrospect, "John Wesley Harding" fills out Dylan's 1960's output appropriately. And it remains one of his best. Hopefully he'll write about it in "Chronicles, Vol. 2".
One last thing: the cover. It's probably one of Dylan's strangest and most cryptic. Dylan wears the same jacket from the cover of "Blonde On Blonde". And legend has it that on the original British pressing one can clearly see the faces of the Beatles upside-down in the tree under the letters "le" (the CD obscures this, unfortunately). Rolling Stone supposedly stated "Dylan Record Puts Beatles up a Tree". The photo was taken in Woodstock (supposedly Sally Grossman's backyard) with two men from Bengal (called "The Bauls of Bengal") and a local carpenter who happened to be there. Why Dylan used it for an album cover who knows? Something more for "Chronicles, Vol. 2", I guess.
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Bob Dylan: "The 'Queen of the Folksingers,' that would have to be Joan Baez... The sight of her made me high. All that and there was her voice. A voice that drove out bad spirits. It was like she'd come down from another planet." Read more musical excerpts from Chronicles, Vol. 1 on our Music You Should Hear page.
album John Wesley Harding 
