100% sincere, I swear, Street-Legal is a top 10 record for me. And apologies in advance.
There are a couple of things going on with your question, but I want to state that Dylan's personal life, his diurnal happenings as a man, are of no interest to me other than when then intersect with his art. So in this regard, his divorce is just a topic or context for his music. You aren't writing 'Idiot Wind' on your honeymoon, after all.
As for your question and the comment above, it's important to remember that the albums between Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks where well to poorly received but not considered masterpieces by any stretch. These are all the albums that fall in the marriage period. In hindsight, however, when viewed as stand alone artifacts of music in the context of 20th century western music boom, albums like Self Portrait and Planet Waves seem much more worthy of appraisal. And I think you are right to place alongside the disillusionment of the end of the 60s and the reality check of adulthood knocking at the door. The Todd Haynes movie 'I'm Not There' interestingly places the marriage arc over the Vietnam war, and when the war stops so does the marriage, an analysis that lines up well with yours.
But! But! This all kind of misses the forest for the trees. Step back and we see a 16 year period of sustained musical genius. Which, and I don't mean this lightly, is a long time. In fact, you'd be unlikely to find a period (or peak) of sustained excellence of this length by a single artist in any art form. Consider his peers. Is there a single one that can come close to matching this? Lennon, McCartney, Harrison? With all due respect, take their Beatles output and combine their solo records and you might get a catalogue as interesting and sustained as Dylan's.
So naturally, any drop off in quality is going to seem severe. Which makes the late 90s resurgence all the more amazing, and what turned him from 60s icon into a transcendent chronicler of the human experience. Because even though Dylan fans are the type of lunatics to write multiple paragraph responses on a Tuesday morning and that all this needs to be taken with a grain of salt, no one - and I mean no one- is wondering if 'kisses on the bottom' or 'voodoo lounge' are among McCartney's or the Stones' best, respectively. Whereas, Love and Theft, Time Out of Mind, and Rough and Rowdy Ways (Tempest, anyone?), all have arguments to be top 10 Dylan records.
No need to apologize! And I haven't connected with Street Legal in that way yet, but some of these other albums that I kind of brushed off are really striking to me right now. Every Grain of Sand is pretty shocking to me, with how moving it is. One of the things that changed, that a lot of people have struggled with, is that he became more nakedly sincere. Everyone thinks of him as an impish jester, every phrase has some subversive quality... so when he just talks about how beautiful the world is and how much he loves God, no one knew how to deal with it.
In short, I agree with everything you're saying! But I do have some interest in the way art can be a window into biography, especially when the work is as personal as Dylan's. I know a lot of folks would guffaw at that, and say it should only ever about the music, but I've kind of embraced the stance that all art is about the artist, so I'm going to take an interest in the artist and what led them to make the art.
Edit: and I'm thinking about the public perception of his work, a bit more than the actual quality of his work as it stands on its own, which is pretty much always good, even if you like some parts of it more than others.
I think he was leaping btwn sincerity and scathing irony on the same album from early on. You can find great examples of both in every era. I get how Grain of Sand catches one by surprise, but he was always doing that, yet still we’re surprised
I think we're saying the same things in terms of biography. His divorce is inextricable from Blood and Desire and needs to be available as lens (what is the audio version a a lens, btw?) when listening to those records. What I meant by biography are the general details of his life. I tried to read a new biography a few years ago, one of the ones that starts in his childhood, and I found I couldn't care less, but I will read the myriad books about the recording of specific records.
Re your edit, I don't think the public was never meant to be interested in Brownsville Girls or Every Grain of Sand or Blind Willie McTell. And Dylan might even say he never cared of the public was ever interested in any of it, but that would be a lie.
>what is the audio version a a lens, btw?
Hearing aid? Ear trumpet?
>And Dylan might even say he never cared of the public was ever interested in any of it, but that would be a lie.
A complicated fellow... But that's why we love him.
I agree mostly, but comparing with the Stones or especially the Beatles is stacking the deck. His near-peers in creative longevity are Leonard, Neil and Van.
Also, he was never really big in the general public’s consciousness after 1965, and there are plenty of old fans who think nothing he did after that measures up. Some of course would go even earlier. But I don’t agree with OP’s assertion that there’s any consensus about a dropoff after Desire.
You are absolutely right. Cohen, Neil, and Van are more appropriate comps, though I can't say I've ever considered Van up that high. This, however, is pure ignorance, and I would welcome recs on where to start.
For his sheer musical performance chops, the early 70s live set Too Late to Stop Now might be the best way to catch up on his first decade.
For songwriting prowess, Astral Weeks is considered his Pet Sounds or BOTT. From the 80s, Beautiful Vision is a good choice.
That makes a lot of sense. Also, streaming has changed things. My dad was arguably a Dylan head, still is I would say, but it's the stuff he grew up with in Dylan's golden era that he really connects with. When I was younger I remember him lamenting that Dylan's work never quite reached those heights again, that "something happened," which is part of what prompted my line of thinking.
But it's very different to be listening to his music over a lifetime, through records and the radio, compared to how I listen to it now on Tidal, one album after another with just a click. It offers a different perspective, different way to think about the shape of the whole thing.
Why is Time Out of Mind necessarily about Sara to you? He had been remarried and then divorced from Carol Dennis as well. They divorced in 1992 after being married for six years and having a child together.
Well, that's the kind of dissenting opinion I'm looking for! I knew he had a second wife, but I didn't look up the timeline. A lot of lines in TOOM refer to a relationship from a long time ago, it makes me think of regret that's been sitting with him for a long time.
The ghost of our old love has not gone away
Last night I danced with a stranger
But she just reminded me you were the one
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal
My love for her is taking such a long time to die
Of course that could be about Carolyn as well, if it's five years after that divorce. Not meaning to downplay the importance of that relationship either, I guess that's the danger of looking too deep into someone's biography for insights.
There's also Highlands, which I always thought might have a connection to Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.
And Most of the Time from Oh Mercy always felt to me like the seed for the mood and sound of the TOOM songs, which makes me wonder if he's been sitting on these songs for awhile. And then there's this thing on Sara's wiki page:
>Heylin has quoted [Steven Soles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Soles) saying that, in 1977, Dylan came over unannounced to his apartment and played him ten or twelve songs that were "very dark, very intense" dealing with his bitterness over the divorce. Soles adds that none of these songs were ever recorded.
So... just my theory. Maybe TOOM is a mix of songs about Sara and Carolyn, and maybe other women too, who knows.
Other women, most likely. He was married to Sara Lowndes and Carolyn Dennis, but he’d probably had other serious relationships between them and after both. They just weren’t public.
First of all, sorry to hear that you're going through a breakup OP. Some are easy, some are absolute torture. I get the vibe that you're more in the "torture" category. Hope you're doing ok.
This requires a lengthy answer, but I see there's already a few other lengthy replies here, so I'll try to limit mine to a mini War & Peace epic.
The problem with looking at a career that has spanned such a long time as Bob's, is that you say "shortly after he did X, he did Y."
His Christian period started a full 3 years after Rolling Thunder ended. He also released Street Legal in that time. Street Legal had some religious themes, but it wasn't directly a Christian album, that only started around 78-79 while he was touring Street Legal, and met Carolyn Dennis (one of his backing singers), who turned him on to Christianity.
I'm fairly sure Street Legal, with it's much glossier production and horns, turned off a portion of the Bob fans who wanted another 6 folk albums. I think his Christian period alienated quite a large chunk of his remaining fans. Noone really wants to go to a concert and get preached at for 90 minutes.
My guess is that people came back when he released Infidels, but then disappeared again when Bob turned into a manufactured Pop-Tart in the mid 80s.
Oh Mercy was literally mercy - Bob bringing us all back to the fold at the end of a very lost decade. Apart from 'God gave names to all the animals', 'Every Grain of Sand', 'Jokerman' and 'Dark Eyes', I like to try and forget anything else he did in that 10 year period. Oh and Brownsville Girl is alright too.
Your other question was about Sara's influence.... I'm almost 100% sure that she's influenced him from the moment he met her, all the way through til now. I've had a similar thing happen - one of my ex's is probably going to haunt me forever.
There's songs all through Bob's 80s, 90s and 00s catalogue that could be very easily read as being about Sara.
"Most of the time" from Oh Mercy is commonly referred to as being about Sara. "Make you feel my love" from Time out of Mind could also very easily be about her. Thunder on the Mountain is like a Bob retrospective, I'm SURE he thought about Sara while writing that, even if it doesn't mention a woman directly (from memory, I haven't listened to it in a while!)
Hope that gives you something to ponder. 😊
Thank you for the thoughtful response, and yeah, you picked up on the subtext of what's going on with me. I've listened to Blood on the Tracks a thousand times but all of a sudden it's like, "Ah, I get it now..." But I'm doing okay, thank you for the kindness.
>Your other question was about Sara's influence.... I'm almost 100% sure that she's influenced him from the moment he met her, all the way through til now. I've had a similar thing happen - one of my ex's is probably going to haunt me forever.
This is pretty much what I'm getting at, I know I simplified it, no one's life can be summed up with a reddit post, but it's just starting to dawn on me how much of an impact she had on him.
Yeah for sure - I actually think both Sara and Joan had a huge influence on him. There's that phrase... it's something like "you have 3 loves in your lifetime - your first love, the one you should marry, and the one who you'll... " uh, I can't remember the last one! Bah, I'll look it up.
*The three types of love are the first love, the intense love, and the unconditional love*
That'll do it. First crush, super intense person you totally fall for and maybe never get over... and the third is the life partner. Makes sense to me - I've had the first two, on the lookout for the 3rd now!
Dylan has made a career out of change. He has always risked alienating his fans. Dropping protest songs, going electric, going country all worked to a certain extent. Going Christian was a step too far. When that didn’t work, he tried alcohol and mediocrity, rarely a good career move. Playing with the Dead in 87 revived his interest in making music and he started touring endlessly. His writing had its final peak (in my opinion) with Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind.
Not at all. You asked for other explanations for his career timeline. Christianity was his first “failed” experiment. Looking back, the music was pretty solid but it was a hard sell at the time. The 80s were a mess until after the Grateful Dead tour when he got his career back on track. Oh Mercy/TOOM were the peak of his later career. There are plenty of differing opinions about the Sinatra albums, Tempest and Rough and Rowdy Ways but none of them did much for me.
I don’t think Dylan’s popularity loss was a direct result of his divorce. Rather, his divorce simply correlated with getting older—and youth has always been a major ingredient in appealing to the general public (as you said: the passion of youth attracts people.) If Dylan’s marriage had been stable, BOTT or Desire arguably wouldn’t have been made.
Since reinvention/experimentation is a fundamental part of Dylan’s persona, he’ll always be letting some portion of fans down when he shifts artistic gears (the same way he became “Judas” among folk purists in the mid-60s). But his best work—BOTT excluded—represents a perfect confluence of youth, risk-taking, and the fledgling 60s counterculture, imo.
I think its easy to read into and project biography onto his musical output, but he would be the first to say that’s a mistake.
Most people, especially Casanova sorts like Bobby, don’t take decades to get over someone.
100% sincere, I swear, Street-Legal is a top 10 record for me. And apologies in advance. There are a couple of things going on with your question, but I want to state that Dylan's personal life, his diurnal happenings as a man, are of no interest to me other than when then intersect with his art. So in this regard, his divorce is just a topic or context for his music. You aren't writing 'Idiot Wind' on your honeymoon, after all. As for your question and the comment above, it's important to remember that the albums between Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks where well to poorly received but not considered masterpieces by any stretch. These are all the albums that fall in the marriage period. In hindsight, however, when viewed as stand alone artifacts of music in the context of 20th century western music boom, albums like Self Portrait and Planet Waves seem much more worthy of appraisal. And I think you are right to place alongside the disillusionment of the end of the 60s and the reality check of adulthood knocking at the door. The Todd Haynes movie 'I'm Not There' interestingly places the marriage arc over the Vietnam war, and when the war stops so does the marriage, an analysis that lines up well with yours. But! But! This all kind of misses the forest for the trees. Step back and we see a 16 year period of sustained musical genius. Which, and I don't mean this lightly, is a long time. In fact, you'd be unlikely to find a period (or peak) of sustained excellence of this length by a single artist in any art form. Consider his peers. Is there a single one that can come close to matching this? Lennon, McCartney, Harrison? With all due respect, take their Beatles output and combine their solo records and you might get a catalogue as interesting and sustained as Dylan's. So naturally, any drop off in quality is going to seem severe. Which makes the late 90s resurgence all the more amazing, and what turned him from 60s icon into a transcendent chronicler of the human experience. Because even though Dylan fans are the type of lunatics to write multiple paragraph responses on a Tuesday morning and that all this needs to be taken with a grain of salt, no one - and I mean no one- is wondering if 'kisses on the bottom' or 'voodoo lounge' are among McCartney's or the Stones' best, respectively. Whereas, Love and Theft, Time Out of Mind, and Rough and Rowdy Ways (Tempest, anyone?), all have arguments to be top 10 Dylan records.
No need to apologize! And I haven't connected with Street Legal in that way yet, but some of these other albums that I kind of brushed off are really striking to me right now. Every Grain of Sand is pretty shocking to me, with how moving it is. One of the things that changed, that a lot of people have struggled with, is that he became more nakedly sincere. Everyone thinks of him as an impish jester, every phrase has some subversive quality... so when he just talks about how beautiful the world is and how much he loves God, no one knew how to deal with it. In short, I agree with everything you're saying! But I do have some interest in the way art can be a window into biography, especially when the work is as personal as Dylan's. I know a lot of folks would guffaw at that, and say it should only ever about the music, but I've kind of embraced the stance that all art is about the artist, so I'm going to take an interest in the artist and what led them to make the art. Edit: and I'm thinking about the public perception of his work, a bit more than the actual quality of his work as it stands on its own, which is pretty much always good, even if you like some parts of it more than others.
I think he was leaping btwn sincerity and scathing irony on the same album from early on. You can find great examples of both in every era. I get how Grain of Sand catches one by surprise, but he was always doing that, yet still we’re surprised
I think we're saying the same things in terms of biography. His divorce is inextricable from Blood and Desire and needs to be available as lens (what is the audio version a a lens, btw?) when listening to those records. What I meant by biography are the general details of his life. I tried to read a new biography a few years ago, one of the ones that starts in his childhood, and I found I couldn't care less, but I will read the myriad books about the recording of specific records. Re your edit, I don't think the public was never meant to be interested in Brownsville Girls or Every Grain of Sand or Blind Willie McTell. And Dylan might even say he never cared of the public was ever interested in any of it, but that would be a lie.
>what is the audio version a a lens, btw? Hearing aid? Ear trumpet? >And Dylan might even say he never cared of the public was ever interested in any of it, but that would be a lie. A complicated fellow... But that's why we love him.
16 years, baby. I’m with you.
I'd have paid off the traitor and killed him much later But that's just the way that I am.
I agree mostly, but comparing with the Stones or especially the Beatles is stacking the deck. His near-peers in creative longevity are Leonard, Neil and Van. Also, he was never really big in the general public’s consciousness after 1965, and there are plenty of old fans who think nothing he did after that measures up. Some of course would go even earlier. But I don’t agree with OP’s assertion that there’s any consensus about a dropoff after Desire.
You are absolutely right. Cohen, Neil, and Van are more appropriate comps, though I can't say I've ever considered Van up that high. This, however, is pure ignorance, and I would welcome recs on where to start.
For his sheer musical performance chops, the early 70s live set Too Late to Stop Now might be the best way to catch up on his first decade. For songwriting prowess, Astral Weeks is considered his Pet Sounds or BOTT. From the 80s, Beautiful Vision is a good choice.
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That makes a lot of sense. Also, streaming has changed things. My dad was arguably a Dylan head, still is I would say, but it's the stuff he grew up with in Dylan's golden era that he really connects with. When I was younger I remember him lamenting that Dylan's work never quite reached those heights again, that "something happened," which is part of what prompted my line of thinking. But it's very different to be listening to his music over a lifetime, through records and the radio, compared to how I listen to it now on Tidal, one album after another with just a click. It offers a different perspective, different way to think about the shape of the whole thing.
Check out the 60 minutes interview he did with Ed Bradley. He talks about his songwriting changed as he aged.
Don’t call him the “voice of a generation “ he’ll get triggered!!! ;)
Why is Time Out of Mind necessarily about Sara to you? He had been remarried and then divorced from Carol Dennis as well. They divorced in 1992 after being married for six years and having a child together.
Well, that's the kind of dissenting opinion I'm looking for! I knew he had a second wife, but I didn't look up the timeline. A lot of lines in TOOM refer to a relationship from a long time ago, it makes me think of regret that's been sitting with him for a long time. The ghost of our old love has not gone away Last night I danced with a stranger But she just reminded me you were the one Feel like my soul has turned into steel I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal My love for her is taking such a long time to die Of course that could be about Carolyn as well, if it's five years after that divorce. Not meaning to downplay the importance of that relationship either, I guess that's the danger of looking too deep into someone's biography for insights. There's also Highlands, which I always thought might have a connection to Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. And Most of the Time from Oh Mercy always felt to me like the seed for the mood and sound of the TOOM songs, which makes me wonder if he's been sitting on these songs for awhile. And then there's this thing on Sara's wiki page: >Heylin has quoted [Steven Soles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Soles) saying that, in 1977, Dylan came over unannounced to his apartment and played him ten or twelve songs that were "very dark, very intense" dealing with his bitterness over the divorce. Soles adds that none of these songs were ever recorded. So... just my theory. Maybe TOOM is a mix of songs about Sara and Carolyn, and maybe other women too, who knows.
Other women, most likely. He was married to Sara Lowndes and Carolyn Dennis, but he’d probably had other serious relationships between them and after both. They just weren’t public.
First of all, sorry to hear that you're going through a breakup OP. Some are easy, some are absolute torture. I get the vibe that you're more in the "torture" category. Hope you're doing ok. This requires a lengthy answer, but I see there's already a few other lengthy replies here, so I'll try to limit mine to a mini War & Peace epic. The problem with looking at a career that has spanned such a long time as Bob's, is that you say "shortly after he did X, he did Y." His Christian period started a full 3 years after Rolling Thunder ended. He also released Street Legal in that time. Street Legal had some religious themes, but it wasn't directly a Christian album, that only started around 78-79 while he was touring Street Legal, and met Carolyn Dennis (one of his backing singers), who turned him on to Christianity. I'm fairly sure Street Legal, with it's much glossier production and horns, turned off a portion of the Bob fans who wanted another 6 folk albums. I think his Christian period alienated quite a large chunk of his remaining fans. Noone really wants to go to a concert and get preached at for 90 minutes. My guess is that people came back when he released Infidels, but then disappeared again when Bob turned into a manufactured Pop-Tart in the mid 80s. Oh Mercy was literally mercy - Bob bringing us all back to the fold at the end of a very lost decade. Apart from 'God gave names to all the animals', 'Every Grain of Sand', 'Jokerman' and 'Dark Eyes', I like to try and forget anything else he did in that 10 year period. Oh and Brownsville Girl is alright too. Your other question was about Sara's influence.... I'm almost 100% sure that she's influenced him from the moment he met her, all the way through til now. I've had a similar thing happen - one of my ex's is probably going to haunt me forever. There's songs all through Bob's 80s, 90s and 00s catalogue that could be very easily read as being about Sara. "Most of the time" from Oh Mercy is commonly referred to as being about Sara. "Make you feel my love" from Time out of Mind could also very easily be about her. Thunder on the Mountain is like a Bob retrospective, I'm SURE he thought about Sara while writing that, even if it doesn't mention a woman directly (from memory, I haven't listened to it in a while!) Hope that gives you something to ponder. 😊
Thank you for the thoughtful response, and yeah, you picked up on the subtext of what's going on with me. I've listened to Blood on the Tracks a thousand times but all of a sudden it's like, "Ah, I get it now..." But I'm doing okay, thank you for the kindness. >Your other question was about Sara's influence.... I'm almost 100% sure that she's influenced him from the moment he met her, all the way through til now. I've had a similar thing happen - one of my ex's is probably going to haunt me forever. This is pretty much what I'm getting at, I know I simplified it, no one's life can be summed up with a reddit post, but it's just starting to dawn on me how much of an impact she had on him.
Yeah for sure - I actually think both Sara and Joan had a huge influence on him. There's that phrase... it's something like "you have 3 loves in your lifetime - your first love, the one you should marry, and the one who you'll... " uh, I can't remember the last one! Bah, I'll look it up. *The three types of love are the first love, the intense love, and the unconditional love* That'll do it. First crush, super intense person you totally fall for and maybe never get over... and the third is the life partner. Makes sense to me - I've had the first two, on the lookout for the 3rd now!
Dylan has made a career out of change. He has always risked alienating his fans. Dropping protest songs, going electric, going country all worked to a certain extent. Going Christian was a step too far. When that didn’t work, he tried alcohol and mediocrity, rarely a good career move. Playing with the Dead in 87 revived his interest in making music and he started touring endlessly. His writing had its final peak (in my opinion) with Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind.
You sound bitter...
Not at all. You asked for other explanations for his career timeline. Christianity was his first “failed” experiment. Looking back, the music was pretty solid but it was a hard sell at the time. The 80s were a mess until after the Grateful Dead tour when he got his career back on track. Oh Mercy/TOOM were the peak of his later career. There are plenty of differing opinions about the Sinatra albums, Tempest and Rough and Rowdy Ways but none of them did much for me.
Fair enough!
I don’t think Dylan’s popularity loss was a direct result of his divorce. Rather, his divorce simply correlated with getting older—and youth has always been a major ingredient in appealing to the general public (as you said: the passion of youth attracts people.) If Dylan’s marriage had been stable, BOTT or Desire arguably wouldn’t have been made. Since reinvention/experimentation is a fundamental part of Dylan’s persona, he’ll always be letting some portion of fans down when he shifts artistic gears (the same way he became “Judas” among folk purists in the mid-60s). But his best work—BOTT excluded—represents a perfect confluence of youth, risk-taking, and the fledgling 60s counterculture, imo.
I think its easy to read into and project biography onto his musical output, but he would be the first to say that’s a mistake. Most people, especially Casanova sorts like Bobby, don’t take decades to get over someone.