Bob Dylan's Overlooked Masterpiece

1966 was a year packed with surprises for Bob Dylan, the folk-messiah of the baby-boomer generation. First off, the year was rewarding in terms of his music. Dylan released Blonde on Blonde, an album filled with dense poetry, plenty of amusement, and even a couple of radio-friendly tunes. It was soon to be regarded as one of the best albums in the history of rock n' roll, and by many as better than all of Dylan's other works. A real masterpiece. Unfortunately, many die hard fans of Dylan's earlier days didn't see it that way. They objected to Dylan's musical promiscuity with electric guitars and the poppy craftsmanship of his new work. So, when Dylan went to perform concerts to promote his new album, they surprised him by traveling from one concert date to the next just to boo and heckle him. What a hassle to be an artist at the top of your game! Dylan responded acrimoniously to these insults, tossing back insults of his own, pouring more fuel onto the fire. In interviews from this time, you can see how he had become beleaguered and rather terse, as if he had totally lost his appetite for the media-circus he was performing in. But Dylan was in for the worst surprise of the whole year: while taking a ride on his motorcycle, Dylan's wheels locked up underneath him and he suffered a nearly fatal injury. His neck was broken, and his messiah days were over.

Dylan recovered for the next year in anonymity at his countryside home. He was really quite humbled by the whole situation. He no longer saw himself as invincible.

This is precisely the reason why his next recordings are so great. They are the truly overlooked masterpieces of Dylan's career, rivaling all of his other work, particularly Blonde on Blonde. These new recordings, later collected and presented as The Basement Tapes have something special. They have all of the heart that is missing in Dylan's other work. That's not to say this his other works didn't have heart, but it's just to emphasize that this album is filled with songs that tend to revolve around the heart. You get the feeling that Bob Dylan had no special agenda for recording these songs. They are often charming, very relaxed, not too serious, sometimes even ridiculous, and once or twice a little touching. As an added bonus, there are also a few very good songs by Dylan's backup band, who later gained fame in their own right with an album developed from these sessions with Dylan, Music from the Big Pink. On even the simplest, almost asinine tunes, Dylan and his band decorate the arrangements with harmonies that pop out of the song and provide a sense of humanity to the work. Dylan had flirted with ludicrousness in his lyrics prior to his motorcycle accident, but in this case this ludicrousness does not come across as insolent in any way but rather life-affirming in a respect that transcends the work itself. What is truly good about these songs is not the songs themselves but the need that Dylan and the others had to create them. You feel like with each new song, Dylan was regaining some of his confidence. He was realizing that he could still express himself in music, no matter how aimless or insubstantial the music was.

Consider these lyrics from "Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread:"

Now, pull that drummer out from behind that bottle.
Bring me my pipe, we're gonna shake it.
Slap that drummer with a pie that smells.

A pie that smells? What in the world was he talking about?

And take a look at these shallow, pointless lyrics:

Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow's the day
My bride's gonna come
Oh, oh, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!

It doesn't matter how empty these words are, because Dylan and the others sing them as if the secret of the meaning of life rests inside of them.

But what makes this album poignant is the moments when Dylan-the-songwriter handles the words carefully. He gives us just a handful of songs here that arrest the heart and illuminate the tender immediacy unexpected heartbreak, longing, and hope:

We carried you in our arms
On Independence Day,
And now you'd throw us all aside
And put us on our way.
Oh what dear daughter 'neath the sun
Would treat a father so,
To wait upon him hand and foot
And always tell him, "No"?
Tears of rage, tears of grief,
Why must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know
We're so alone
And life is brief.

As with these lyrics from "Tears of Rage," sometimes life just pours out in uncontrollable emotion, even if it doesn't seem to have anything to say.