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28/04/2006

Is Dylan (1973) worth chasing?

Reader James Martin asks: “Is Dylan, the 1973 album I keep hearing about, worth chasing?”.

Well, as a collectible, yes. But the musical content is less than compelling. It's a ragbag of unsatisfactory sweepings released by Columbia after Dylan had left the label - demos…tryouts…failures.

It's interesting to hear Dylan attempting Can’t Help Falling in Love, Elvis's power ballad, backed mainly by an un-Elvis-like harmonica. But it can't conceal the wasted opportunity of having the world's greatest popular songwriter miked up in the studio, only for him to go through the motions with a song whose lyrics have a mind-numbing banality unusual even in material recorded by Elvis. Ditto A Fool Such As I.

The Ballad of Ira Hayes is a mid-'60s Dylan tale of the underdog. Thank goodness he didn't inflict it on any of the otherwise great albums of the period.

It's instructive to listen to the vacuity of the Dylan album back-to-back with Planet Waves, the near-contemporaneous masterpiece sanctioned by its writer.

I've never seen Dylan on sale in CD format in England. 'Nuff said.

Dylan (1973):
Lily of the West; Can’t Help Falling in Love; Sarah Jane; The Ballad of Ira Hayes; Mr. Bojangles; Mary Ann; Big Yellow Taxi; A Fool Such As I; Spanish Is the Loving Tongue



Gerry Smith

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