BOB DYLAN: JOHN WESLEY HARDING (1968)
1) John Wesley Harding; 2) As
I Went Out One Morning; 3) I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine; 4) All Along The
Watchtower; 5) Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest; 6) Drifter's Escape; 7)
Dear Landlord; 8) I Am A Lonesome Hobo; 9) I Pity The Poor Immigrant; 10)
Wicked Messenger; 11) Down Along The Cove; 12) I'll Be Your Baby Tonight.
Most of the ink, both analog and digital, spilt
over John Wesley Harding since its
appearance in late 1967 / early 1968, has been spilt with benevolence and
admiration, with the few dissenters deservedly going to Hell. However, to my
deep surprise, I have never yet encountered a review or general discussion of
this record that would really hit me
where it feels sharpest. Maybe that makes me a particularly special kind of
«Dylan nutcase» — wouldn't that be flattering, actually? — and if so, feel free
to ignore the strong sentiments below. But they are strong, and have been that way for about two decades, and this
is nothing to laugh about.
The story itself is known fairly well: Dylan
recuperates, goes back to business, returns to Nashville, enlists the minimal
aid of Blonde On Blonde vets Charlie
McCoy (now on bass) and Kenny Buttrey on drums, plus steel guitarist Pete
Drake on two tracks, cuts a fourty-minute, twelve-song LP in less than twelve
hours (to the huge surprise of his backers), makes a Christmas release that
stumps, then delights critics and fans alike: Dylan going back to his «roots»!
and this time, with a noticeable «country» rather than «folk» flavor! and in
the middle of the psychedelic craze and all! Then, next year, we have The Band,
The Byrds, and even The Beatles following suit, and the «roots-rock revolution»
is underway: yet another lever in the popular conscience pulled hard by the
mysterious Mr. Zimmerman.
But, of course, as arrogant and self-centered
as Mr. Zimmerman has always been, he was hardly likely to think of himself as
the harbinger of yet another revolution when he entered that Nashville studio
once more. What is much more likely
is that, in his usual manner, he simply wanted to derail the public — there
they are, all waiting for yet another rock'n'roll explosion à la Highway or the next whacky soul trip à la Blonde On Blonde,
so, naturally, the right thing to
give them is something that couldn't be farther removed from these
expectations: who are all these
people, daring to hope that The Artist will condescend to their predictable
tastes? The day The Artist allows himself to be pigeonholed is the day he dies,
and now that God himself has changed his mind and postponed that, all the more
reason to become twice as confounding.
That must have been the planned intention, and it
does not interest me all that much. What is far more bewildering is the side
effect that John Wesley Harding has
on some people — like myself, who believes that the record, by far, transcends
the formulaic limitations of «country-rock» and, together with Blonde On Blonde, taps into something
much deeper, much less understandable and expressable. It is not just an album
about going back to one's roots, nor is it a limited-issue album about some
sort of nostalgia for the Old West, as some have proposed. But what is it, exactly — I am still not sure of
it myself.
You put on the record, and it starts out with
some unassuming, though lively, acoustic strumming and an equally unassuming
"John Wesley Harding was a friend to the poor...". Now that looks
pretty much like just a normal kind of folk stylization — Bob's take on the
«friendly outlaw ballad» genre. Let alone the fact that the real John Wesley
Hardin was more of a psychopathic killer than a «friend to the poor»: none of
that matters, since most outlaw
ballads idealize their protagonists (what do we know about the real Robin
Hood?), so Bob is just following tradition — besides, if pressed real hard
against it, he could always reasonably retort that his John Wesley has an -ng
rather than an -n in his family name,
so "no charges against him could they prove".
But that is not the point — the point is that
ʽJohn Wesley Hardingʼ, the song, is like one of those dazzling optical
illusions, something that shifts from one opposite to the other before your
very eyes without any noticeable conscious effort on the viewer's part. At one
point in time, it is like a sincere, honest stylization. Then, with one
carefully planted vocal twist or intentionally crude lyric, it seems to drift
into parody and irony. Here it sounds like a respectable imitation; there it
sounds like a sarcastic deconstruction. One bar of solo harmonica feels heroic
— the next one rather gives a sense of the comical. You can sing along with a
deadly serious expression, or you can do the same thing with a permanent grin
on your face — it works both ways. At the end of the song, you might feel that
the message has been delivered from the first to the last letter — or you might
feel that there was no message in the first place.
Ridiculous as it might sound, I have even shed
an occasional tear to this song — one of the most befuddling, incomprehensible
tears in my life. Was it because the tune was so catchy, so well-rounded, so
ideal in the simplicity and finiteness of its form? Was it because I had no
idea of what I just heard, but felt strongly that I must have heard something, just couldn't put my finger
on it? (and neither, perhaps, could the artist himself, even if pressed under
torture to give out the truth?). Was it, in any way, related to the context of the times — this
minimalistic, ascetic exercise in self-limitation, displayed in an age of
sprawl and excess — or could it work the same way regardless of one's knowledge
about said context? What are the extents and limits of this incomprehensible
mystique? Nope, I cannot answer any of that.
And that is all just about the first song,
probably the least assuming / pretentious number on the entire first side of
the LP. The following ones are not as tightly locked for comprehension, or,
rather, you are simply allowed to make a few more steps down the corridor
before you arrive at the same locked doors. This makes them into more usual
candidates for discussion, debate, and hot-headed interpretations — but no
final word has been pronounced on any of them either.
With ʽAs I Went Out One Morningʼ, the
minimalistic approach begins to shows its potential for real — there is almost
nothing to block the little zoops
that Charlie McCoys plays on his bass, make the tune one of the few Dylan songs
that are «owned» by the instrument. As usual, there has been plenty of debate
over what exactly Tom Paine has got to do with stopping fair damsels running around
in chains, but, frankly speaking, I have always regarded those lines ("as
I went out one morning to breathe the air around Tom Payne's...") on the
same level as "depart from me this moment, I told her with my voice", etc. — semi-improvised phrasing that helps
organise and rhyme the lines, at the cost of some benevolently allowed
linguistic and cultural crudeness which has always been an explicitly stated
part of Dylan.
Anyway, once again, it is not really important what the man is singing — only how. Charlie's bass zoops, Bob's worried
acoustic strum and the gravel in his voice, all of that has mystery and danger
a-plenty, but you don't know where the danger is actually coming from. At the
end of the song, you are somehow left in the middle of a Hitchcock movie — is
it the «lovely girl» who is the bearer of the danger? is it Tom Paine? is it
nobody in particular, and the whole thing is just a misunderstanding? or is it
all about a general issue of fate? Whatever the answer be, here we have
ourselves a pretty eerie slice of quiet darkness, and everyone can hang one's
own name on it — it could be an allegory of the Vietnam War, for all I know. Or
a prediction of 9/11. Do it yourself.
Joan Baez did not cover that one — too weird! — but she did do a good job
on ʽI Dreamed I Saw St. Augustineʼ, a fairly accessible number in comparison.
Bob didn't have to do much composing here — the melody and even the initial
lyrics are rigorously based upon ʽI Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Nightʼ, and one
could not even argue that he had much improved upon the original's pedestrian,
but still well-chosen phrasing. However, Bob throws in one of those seductive
Biblical components — the righteous loner against overwhelming odds — and gives
the song an air of quiet, barely visible, but total killer desperation.
Formally, it sounds nowhere near as bleak and misanthropic as... well, as about
fifty percent of everything he'd done since Street Legal, but subtlety is always king, and ʽSt. Augustineʼ
works on a much deeper level: above everything else, it does not whine, nor does it make a big point out
of openly condemning anyone or anything, it is just unbelievably, devastatingly
S-A-D in all of its elements.
The obvious question that occurs to everyone
vaguely familiar with Christian history is — who are the mysterious «them»
"that put him out to death", when it is well known that not only did
St. Augustine die from natural causes in his own bed, but also that one cannot
even take that figuratively (since the guy still remains one of the Holy
Fathers of the Church). The simple answer is that, just as in the case of John
Wesley Hardin(g) and the travesties of his career, Dylan did not care — he just
needed a trisyllabic name for a Holy Father, and «Augustine» worked quite well.
The complex answer is that this is a «symbolic» St. Augustine, chosen out of
many to represent the «righteous loner» image (which he did have in life), and,
well, we all know that, as a rule of thumb, «righteous loners» don't last long
and... well, you know. It is, however, curious, that for the first time in his
life Dylan has the guts to align himself with the ignorant «them» rather than
the rebellious «him» — and ask a little confessional pardon for it. Or maybe
it's just another of the many clever ways for the dude to show off, I am not
sure. But I am sure that every goddamn time I hear "...I put
my fingers against the glass, and bowed my head and cried..." I am all but
ready to do the exact same thing. The song just totally got me in its grip — like no Beatles song ever did or could
hope to do.
Hendrix was the first among many to see the
thunderstorming hard rock potential of ʽAll Along The Watchtowerʼ — and thank
God he did, or it might have been picked up by Three Dog Night or Grand Funk
Railroad instead. His is a grand and visionary interpretation, but do not let
its loudness and technical dazzle overshadow the understated simplicity and
sparseness of Bob's original. Dave van Ronk, Bob's old friend and mentor, used
to openly criticize the song for its nonsense lyrics — which, as it happens, are nonsense if you string all of them together
and try to look for cohesion, but work very well as a disjointed collection of
phrasal sketches: lots of individual great lines ("businessmen they drink
my wine, plowmen dig my earth"), or at least appropriately placed
platitudes ("there are many here among us who feel that life is but a
joke").
But of course van Ronk missed the main point —
ʽAll Along The Watchtowerʼ is the best known and the most covered song off this
album because it provides a unified emotional reaction to the largest amount of
people: few will dare to deny its creepy pre-apocalyptic feel, in which it is
second only to ʽGimme Shelterʼ (actually, ʽGimme Shelterʼ is the Apocalypse happening before one's
very eyes, so they are in complementary distribution on the subject), and its
emotional power runs highest in between
the verses, as those shrill harmonica sirens pierce your ears to McCoy's doom-and-gloom
basslines.
Bob himself had commented on how ʽAll Along The
Watchtowerʼ challenges time conveniences, having the «events» unfurl in reverse
order, with the setting of the scene verse coming after the dialog — a
brilliant move, actually, as it always seemed to correlate with an imaginary
movie in my mind: camera focus on the «thief/joker» duo, then slowly, gradually
zoom out onto the surroundings — "all the women came and went..."
"...two riders were approaching..." This is, in fact, the normal way
of life for Dylan: talking from a «petty» perspective that logically flows into
a «grand» scheme of things. So, on second thought, there may be some cohesion here after all.
That one-two-three-four punch which I just
described, to me, is the single awesomest streak of four-in-a-row album openers
on any Dylan album, period — which is why, in comparison, the rest of John Wesley Harding, in relative comparison, has always seemed a
little underwhelming to me. Underwhelming not because the other songs are «bad»
or «uninspired», but because not all of them manage to uphold the same style of
eerie mysticism. Worse, they do drift
a little bit too close to concrete particularities — ʽI Am A Lonesome Hoboʼ and
ʽI Pity The Poor Immigrantʼ are just the kind of material that earned Harding its «oh, it's the one where he
sings about Old West colonization» status, even if, yes, the lyrics of
ʽImmigrantʼ are probably one of his deadliest and sharpest bites of all time: a
bite that, among other people, would certainly hurt the inhabitants of Bobby
Zimmerman's own dear beloved town of Hibbing.
This is, however, merely to note that these
songs are less mind-stimulating than others — on the other hand, ʽI Am A
Lonesome Hoboʼ is great in how its whole melody and vocal delivery convey the
«warning» idea of "hold your judgment for yourself lest you wind up on
this road" before the words are even spoken; and ʽI Pity The Poor
Immigrantʼ is amazing in how the lyrics are so devastating, yet the singer does
deliver them with visible pity in his voice — the same singer who, but less
than three years ago, mostly used that same voice to reduce the objects of his
critique to dust, salt, and vinegar.
On the other hand, ʽBallad Of Frankie Lee And
Judas Priestʼ, occupying twice as much space as the average track on the album,
sort of outpulls the blanket in the other direction — its melody carries no
mystery, serving only as a backdrop for Bob's convoluted pseudo-allegory. To
me, that song has always played the role of a «red herring» on the album, which
I would be perfectly ready to forgive if it weren't for all the people who
actually admit to liking the song, as
in, really liking from the heart —
about which I'm not sure: a put-on, I think, is always a put-on. If anything,
Bob's own conclusion ("Don't go mistaking Paradise for that home across
the road!") should serve as an easily decipherable warning to all.
The situation is more difficult with the last
two songs on the album, where Bob's little band is joined by steel guitarist
Pete Drake and the merry foursome get carried away into straightahead country
territory, first in a danceable mode (ʽDown Along The Coveʼ) and then in
nighttime ballad mode (ʽI'll Be Your Baby Tonightʼ). Both songs are lyrically
straightforward — way too
straightforward, one might say, faced with "Down along the cove, I spied
my little bundle of joy / She said Lord have mercy honey, I'm so glad you're my
boy!" right after the head-bursting conundrum of ʽWicked Messengerʼ — and
both, in their own way, act as a «preview» of the upcoming Nashville Skyline, although, of course,
nobody knew that back in early 1968. Naturally, such an odd conclusion was
intentional — the question is, does it work?
Well, I think nobody will ever want to put
ʽDown Along The Coveʼ on one's list of Dylan favorites, but as a «gesture» of
sorts, it does no harm sitting there next to the great stuff on John Wesley Harding. On the other hand,
ʽI'll Be Your Baby Tonightʼ, I think, is simply a perfect conclusion to the
album — closing it off on a thoroughly serene, nonchalant, not-give-a-damn note
after all the troubles and premonitions. It captures a bit of that lazy, arrogant,
and utterly charming Hank Williams atmosphere with just the barest of Hank
Williams trappings, and none of that distinct Southern accent, either, which
may act as a turn-off for all them elitist Yankees. It's insanely catchy, it's probably
got the most melodic and perfectly controlled harmonica breaks on the whole
record, and it just washes your worries away with two and a half minutes of
gentle soul medicine — when was the last time, or when, for that matter, would
there be a next time where Bobby would get us all so relaxed with such a
finale?..
It is not advisable to choose John Wesley Harding for your first acquaintance
with Dylan, no matter how much I, or anybody else, choose to gush over this
stuff. Its minimalist trappings can turn one off, I think, even quicker than his
completely bare-bones early acoustic albums — where the instrumentation was
ascetic, but the ambitions were grand. John
Wesley Harding, in comparison, is a true musical «Hermit's Hollow»: if I
learned, one day, that the songs were recorded in a cave in the middle of a
wild forest, rather than a cozy Nashville studio, with all the band members
wearing loincloths and drinking nothing but clear water from the nearest brook,
I wouldn't be the least surprised. On its initial run, I think, the album works
best as a deliberate contrast with the 1965-66 stuff, and should probably be
listened to in the evening, on headphones, for the ultimate effect. But
eventually, it gets its own life, and I am fairly sure that with certain
psychological types of people, it can lock on so tightly that a «best Dylan
album ever» option will not be out of the question. In any case, it is in my personal «top 5» for Bob,
meaning one of the highest thumbs up an album might get. Too bad he never
made anything even remotely close to it in style — but then again, a wonder is
a wonder, and one thing that makes it a wonder is that you cannot deliberately
repeat it, and if you try, you either end up with a different kind of wonder —
if you are that good — or you simply
fail.
Check "John Wesley Harding" (CD) on Amazon
Check "John Wesley Harding" (MP3) on Amazon
Dammit George. Now you're going to have me listening to John Wesley Harding all day. I used that have a cassette in college that had Blonde on Blonde in its entirety and the first 4 songs of John Wesley Harding. I wore that tape out completely and it made me a Dylan fan for life. Those JWH songs were what did it too...
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite Dylan albums. I've always thought of it as the last volume of a loose tetralogy with the three preceding albums.
ReplyDeletelike eating dust at times that album..i like tonight and cove.
ReplyDeleteSpartan, laconic, ascetic... Like Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf".
ReplyDeleteIt amazes me how many people think of "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" as a UB40 song. Really, the cover doesn't hold a candle to the original. It has none of the laid-back, sepia-like tone that endears me as a listener. The cover's just white reggae-pop (and not the really good kind The Police made, I mean the boring kind).
ReplyDeleteI got this one almost 20 years ago during my classic rock period, when I was into guys like Neil Young, Hendrix, the Who, etc. I had jammed to Hendrix's Watchtower for years and wanted to hear the original. I throw it on and was instantly underwhelmed. Blech. Boring. Incomprehensible. Watchtower especially irked me--typical whiny harmonica in place of Jimi's majestic sonic poetry. I forced myself to listen to it several more times over the next few weeks but nothing happened. It sat on my shelf for a few years until I purged my CD collection in the in the interest of expediency and thought little more about it for ten years.
ReplyDeleteA few years back I was going threw a melancholic period of self-pity, which coincidentally paralleled a renewed interest in Dylan, and I "borrowed" from the library most of his catalog. I was listening to JWH at work one day and it just clicked. I had to release all the preconceptions, unlearn all the hype and criticism, and just take it at face value--not even the lyrics, but the imagery, both the implicit and explicit. Who the heck were Tom Paine, John W. Harding, Terry Shute, Frankie Lee, etc. etc.? As the wise little neighbor boy says in the ballad, "Nothing is revealed." Clearest words on the whole album.
The self-pity part comes in because I was mourning my mysanthropic tendencies and realized that there is a lot of breast-beating and head-hanging in these songs, and the one that really killed me was I Am a Lonesome Hobo. His final warning "And hold your judgment for yourself,
Lest you wind up on this road" spoke to me in a personal way that cannot be described here, but I realized I was that titular Hobo. And if I didn't change my ways, I too would be alone on the road.
As always, great insight, and thanks for indulging my maudlin babbling. Here's my throat, thanks for the loan.
Saw somewhere that the sound of this one was influenced by contemporary Gordon Lightfoot records- fair enough for the rhythm section, but whereas gord's 12 string acoustic would fill in the bottom very richly, Bob plays 6 string with capo often high on the neck- putting a lot of space between the guitar and bass. a whole different, very spare sound.
ReplyDeleteThat description of the title track is the most insightful I have ever read, and I agree 100% - thank you!
ReplyDelete