What’s the last great Dylan song, you know, the last one that made the hairs stand up on the back of your neck? I was running an errand with my two sick boys this afternoon, and “Hurricane” was on. The song’s a bit of a mess on many levels, but I love hearing Dylan fired up and casting accusations left and right, the way he did so effectively in his prime. He’s so full of righteous indignation that he resorts to throwing out some curse words and other language I don’t recall him using prior to that song. When I hear that song I still feel as charged up as I did when I was 13 or so, whenever it first came out and got occasional airplay. I’ve liked some Dylan songs since then, and I respect some others, but my enthusiasm tells me that “Hurricane” is the last great Dylan song. What do you say?
“What was it you wanted” used to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
this is a nice version…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiyquyrPbkQ
it just doesn’t anymore.
but neither does ‘hurricane.’ i don’t like listening to that song for personal reasons i’d rather not air on rth.
I’d put in a vote for “Not Dark Yet” on the “Time Out of Mind” album. It hit me pretty hard in the solar plexus when it came out, for personal reasons I’d also rather not air on RTH. I listened to it again recently & still think it’s A Great Dylan Song. I think that whole album is top shelf Dylan. He’s pretty much been following the template set by it on all his subsequent records. I’m kind of partial to this grizzled riverboat gambler persona he’s adopted in the last decade or so. It suits a guy that’s been in the biz as long as he.
That being said, I do think that album was his last REALLY relevant statement, & if I had to pick one song from it, that would be the one.
Can I put a vote in for a cover by Dylan. His version of “Blood in My Eyes” (originally by the Mississippi Shieks) from 1994’s World Gone Wrong is great, in my book. Even the video is compelling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5pOh1FLb2g
Wow, tough question. I couldn’t possibly pin it down to just one song. I’ve always said Dylan is the greatest songwriter ever in any genre. And he is every bit as relevant today as he was in the 60’s.
I know I didn’t answer the Q, but I think I’ll go put on some Dylan.
Not Dark Yet is a good choice for last great one. Two others classics post-Hurricane are Every Grain Of Sand from Shot Of Love and Blind Willie McTell (Infidels era but not released until the Bootleg Series).
If i know the mod’s way of thinking on these things, he’s not looking for a late period dylan song that holds up as an example of “great songwriting,” he’s looking for….cue the fanfare….and the tympana…put reverb on these next words….THE LAST GREAT DYLAN SONG…the one that is the milestone end.
Am i right, mod?
if so…
i’m not sure i hear it in Hurricane, or anything on “Desire.” I know that album’s a sacred cow in some quarters of RTH, but i think it might be an album for Oats’s “Overrated / Underrated” thread.
and if so….i woud think that something epic and cinematic from Nasvhille Skyline, but that finds Dylan a little tired and at the end, as if he’s finally laying his burden down, might fit the bill better….
I submit “Lay Lady Lay” as…THE LAST GREAT DYLAN SONG. I mean, if we want GREAT in the epic proportions that the word suggests, Hurricane (which is a nice song), isn’t even close.
Oh my…I have some friends who are huge lifelong Dylan fans who think LOVE AND THEFT is the best Dylan album EVER.
I’d be willing to say that my ears heard no “great” Dylan songs after DESIRE until L&T (a few on TIME…came close), but I think that L&T is just plain packed with them and MODERN TIMES has a few too.
Just to pick one: “High Water.”
My personal choice would be “Dignity”, although I would agree with Oats on “Blood In My Eye” & if we use THE LAST GREAT DYLAN SONG criteria, then I would say “Knocking On Heaven’s Door”
RE: Saturn’s comment
Saturn. “Lay Lady Lay”? REALLY? I mean, 1st of all, its from that thankfully short stretch when he quit smoking & his voice sounded like some goofy MOR type.
Secondly, what the hell is epic about THAT song? It’s a pleasant enough little come on/love song (take yr pick), but epic? I think not. The thing came out before “Blood On The Tracks”, for crying out loud. I think most would agree, THAT had some pretty EPIC songs. And if we’re trying to answer the question, “What was the LAST great Dylan song?” I would say chronology is implicit.
Lastly, I didn’t pick a late period song & album because it was a pleasant piece of craftsmanship. I picked them because I felt them to be major works in the canon of The Big D. In comparison, something like “Lay Lady Lay”seems more than a bit bloodless.
welcome aboard bobby! good stuff.
i don’t think you’re listening closely enough to ‘lay lady lay’, let alone giving it enough credit.
i’m sure i won’t find all that much support for my argument, but here goes:
first of all, i like the sound of his voice on that record. there’s no accounting for taste, but i find its mellow quality to be pleasant enough.
without trying hard to address epic subjects in an epic way, ‘lay lady lay’ manages to be epic in scope with much greater subtleties. the sound of the song…it’s slow, tired drawl, evokes long shadows in late afternoon in my imagination.
and its lyrics tell the story of a tired man whose station in life allows him the ownership of a “big brass bed” (which suggests years of toil when coupled with the dirty hands he mentions) who claims to have never seen anything more beautiful before him than this woman.
in its simplicity, it manages to be universal in scope, and IMPLY a long, meandering narrative rather than tell us one with verse after verse of wordy stuff. i find it much more compelling.
it’s the last great dylan song in my mind.
i even think that in his heart of hearts, dylan knows that he stopped trying to write “great dylan songs” after this.
oh sure, he writes great songs…and he writes dylan songs, but not many of them are “great dylan songs.”
so yes, i’m perfectly aware of chronology. and i know where i am on the timeline.
and your point about blood on the tracks is an excellent one.
‘tangled up in blue’ is probably the only song that might sway me from my choice. but the deeper i dig into that song, the less i find.
diskojoe, “heaven’s door” is EXACTLY what i have in mind.
thanks for indulging my criteria!
(and you, too, bobby!!!)
mod, forgive me for semi-hijacking this thread…if these are not your criteria, fuhgeddaboudit.
Genuine sleeper possibility: “Every Grain of Sand” from the otherwise only okay Christian album Shot Of Love. Big sentiments movingly addressed: a forgotten Dylan classic and certainly a worthy opponent for “Heaven’s Door.”
Tweeter & The Monkey Man (1988)
..and that’s WAY after the previous last great Dylan song, which I might say was “Jokerman”.
And I’m not some 60’s purist. I love Empire Burlesque (1985), but if you set the bar as high as Dylan had, you are held to that level for your (many) follow ups over your career.
For recent Dylan, Love & Theft is at the top, especially the song Mississippi.
I’m happy to see the love for late period Dylan expressed so far, because that’s where I was going to go with my comments.
I also think that his last three albums are as good or better than anything he’s done. The problem is that’s he’s found a method of working where the body of work is more important than any one song. I think High Water is a good suggestion, and Not Dark Yet too. I’d add Mississippi and Things Have Changed as well. Everything is Broken from Oh Mercy, to go back a little further, is great. But is any of them greater than the others? You could make a case for Highlands off of Time Out of Mind, because of its epic length, but scope is not always the best measure of greatness. This is why saturn’s choice of Lay Lady Lay makes sense. Dylan excels at short and incisive songs, short but evocative songs, widescreen songs, etc.
Also I don’t like the idea of separating Dylan’s talent as a songwriter from his talent as a singer and maker of records. This has always been true, but its especially true now. His recent work really brings all three of those aspects of his art together brilliantly. The Mod I think recognizes this, because one of the things he’s hearing in Hurricane is the vocal intensity. And there is a feeling of him firing on all cylinders on that track. But I think, and even thought at the time, that Desire was over-rated.
thanks BigSteve.
i agree wholeheartedly about not separating the songwriting from the performance (and by dint, the production). the unity of them is what makes Lay Lady Lay so evocative.
and the lack of unity of them in what i think is another example of an incisive song, the one i cited earlier , “what was it you wanted,” that makes it fall short.
by the same token, the vocal intensity is certainly right for Hurricane, and it IS one of the reasons why it’s not an unreasonable choice.
one of the nice things about Lay Lady Lay, is the amount of space it gives the listener to share in making the narrative. that’s something that doesn’t happen in a wordy song, where we’re clamoring to find a way inside but there’s all this information coming at us that confounds our attempts to know it.
don’t get me wrong, there are many late period songs i like very much. “sweet girl like you” is another one of those tunes that probably just slipped out of him one day, that others would kill to be able to write. don’t take its simplicity for granted. just try to write a song like that! it aint easy.
ps. i’m surprised noone’s called me on my slip: his hands aren’t dirty…his clothes are! it doesn’t change my argument, however.
Shot of Love is one of my very favorite Dylan albums.
I wondered if someone would step up to defend that album, Steve. I like it too, actually, but “favorite” is an overstatement for me.
Saturn, I would say there are other songs on Blood On The Tracks that would fit the criteria you speak of, such as You’re A Big Girl Now, or even You’re Gonna Make Lonesome When You Go or Buckets of Rain. All are low key, plainspoken, & GREAT DYLAN SONGS.
I would also agree with almost all of the later period songs mentioned above, but STILL believe Time Out Of Mind was a major sea change for Dylan, and that he has been following that thread in his subsequent releases.
Talking about “great” songs from BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, I’d think “Tangled Up in Blue” would be at the top of the list. Its a masterful merging of his more “direct” writing with his more phantasmagorical stuff. I get swept up in that song every time I hear it, what a performance.
“Things Have Changed” is the last song I got all goosepimply about, if “The Times They Are a’Changin'” was about the onset of the 60’s “Things Have Changed” really set an ominous note to the onset of the Bush decade.
“Blood in My Eyes” and that whole second acoustic covers record really hit me hard too. I also dug the fact that when White Stripes mania hit a few years back, the Dylan song they covered was “Love Sick” rather than some old chestnut (…geez, TIME OUT OF MIND is twelve years old already… ).
-db
db wrote:
And Love & Theft’s release date was 9/11/01.
BigSteve, I forgot about that unfortunate release date, and db, I was hoping someone might put in a vote for”Things Have Changed”. I love the line, “people are crazy and times are strange/ I used to care, but things have changed”, & the way Bob sings it; all world weary resignation. Good choice. I may rethink my pick.
BigSteve wrote:
“And Love & Theft’s release date was 9/11/01.”
I remember going to lunch and buying the new Bob Dylan record amidst the madness of the day’s events. At the end of the day, I put my headphones on and tuned out the chaos (that would follow for weeks to come) of the media. Bob said, “Today has been a sad and lonesome day…”
That hit really hard for me. I adore that record on several levels, but the fact that it’s got comedy (the opposite of Time Out Of Mind) and was able to actually brings a few smiles to face. That’s the magic of Dylan. There are a few cuts on that record that I would rank highly.
And, yes, I think his last three records are as good as anything he’s done.
TB
I read a bio on Sonic Youth recently (forget the name), and there’s a story in it about Lee Ranaldo experiencing the planes crashing into the towers from a few blocks away and still dashing out to buy the new Dylan album before coming back home, gathering up a few things with his family, and then evacuating. Amazing.
I didn’t buy the thing until weeks later, but yes I thought the trickster persona he got into on L&T was an interesting contrast to the heavy world-weariness of Time Out of Mind. On Modern Times he seems to have found a middle ground.
The latest Bootleg Series volume has interesting alternate takes from this era. Not much new material unfortunately. Anyone who didn’t want to pay extra for the 3-CD version of that release should go here — http://nevergetoutoftheboat.blogspot.com/2008/12/bob-dylan.html. I think it was db that pointed me there for the Fun House box. This guy has lots of amazing stuff. I think I got 11 CDs’ worth of other stray Dylan tracks there, and 6 of Richard Thompson recently. Maybe I’ll get to listen to all this once I retire.
“Poor Boy”
Sorry, “Po’ Boy”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCNCVLfT_ss&feature=related
yeahh…but those sonic youth guys’ll tell any sort of implausible story to weave themselves into rock mythology.
being BLOCKS from those buildings in the period after the planes hit and before they crashed to the ground would’ve made it impossible to conduct regular purchases.
Hey I didn’t say how many blocks away he was. I know the band’s studio was pretty close, but I don’t remember how far away Ranaldo’s apt was. Maybe he was in Brooklyn. It’s been 6 months since I read the book, and I was idly trying to weave some mythology. So maybe you should blame me for plausibility issues. I wasn’t counting on anybody being so bloody-minded when I’m trying to ‘print the legend.’
“bloody minded.” nice.
You know I’m a SY fan, but I’ll blame them instead of you!
Hey, I lived in NYC at the time (I was a 15 year resident, from 1987 – 2002) , & all I can say is music was the last thing on my mind that day. Also, living in Brooklyn didn’t make much difference, as it was where I lived & it was still only 3 miles away. I used to be able to see the Twin Towers from my window, & after the incident debris was floating around even in my neighborhood. Also, there was a smell that lingered until around Thanksgiving.
The thing you’ve got to remember about NYC is how compacted everything is. I can’t say whether Renaldo was fibbing or not, but I don’t personally know anyone living in the 5 boroughs that day who would have been thinking about picking up a new CD release, & I’m proud that I don’t know any people like that.
nice sentiments, bobby.
Living in the safety of Philadelphia, I DID buy the Dylan CD on 9-11-01 but in my defense I was working at a record store at the time (Spaceboy r.i.p.).
dbuskirk: I was really more trying to address Lee Renaldo’s claim of running out to get the new Dylan CD before getting his family safely out of harm’s way, when that hell-storm was taking place right in front of him (& yes, he did live downtown at the time). THAT, to me, speaks to either a pretty f-ed up set of priorities or a pretty sick, unfunny sense of humor. And I like sick humor! It just has to be FUNNY sick humor. There was nothing funny going on in New York that day.
It’s not out of the question that he would have been able to go buy a CD right after the event. It did start out like any other day, & people were working & generally doing what they’d normally be doing on a Tuesday morning. The entire city didn’t just stop in it’s tracks the minute the planes hit. People were pretty much stuck wherever they were at the time, & there was a lot of confusion as to what exactly the hell was happening.
But if you were w/in blocks of the attack, you would’ve plainly seen that it was something BIG & SCARY going on. So, claiming to have been in the midst of that & STILL feeling the need to go buy an f-ing CD sounds like the kind of juvenile “I’m-so-cool” bragging that a man of Renaldo’s advanced age should be well over by now.
Anyone outside of NYC on that day is excused, as far as I’m concerned, for living their lives as usual. I can say for a fact, from the people I was able to talk to on the phone later that day, that, unless you were in NYC, it took awhile for the enormity of the events to sink in. Seeing things like that happen on TV & seeing them right in front of you are two VERY different things. That’s something I took away from that experience that I’m constantly reminded of when watching the news. It’s also something that I have conflicting feelings about. On one hand, I appreciate the perspective it’s given me on these types of horrible events, wherever they happen. On the other hand, I could have lived quite happily without ever having that perspective.
Sorry for straying so far off topic, but I felt a need to elucidate on exactly what I meant in my previous post.
by no means his “best” song from the later years, but my FAVORITE is “Tight Connection to My Heart”
great one-liners
“What looks large from a distance, close up ain’t never that big”
“My hands are sweaty, and we haven’t even started yet”
“And they’re beating the devil out of a guy who’s wearing a powder blue wig”
I’ll throw one up for Hurricane. It makes me angry and tells a story like good dylan songs do. How about best “lost” dylan song? My vote is “Motopsycho Nightmare”
Mr Bittman,
All kidding aside, let me just say you’re a credit to the industry and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
I knew where you were coming from with the 9-11 thing, it was just with all the details one remembers of that day, I’d forgotten about the Dylan release, and the fact that I heard the record for the first time that day. We watched TV till noon or so than the boss made it clear we were to go back to work, so I went upstairs and processed the new release order while listening to LOVE & THEFT. At least the record had a certain gravitas to it that went with the day. The film DONNIE DARKO came out that week as well, and the legend is the events doomed its box-office prospects.
Dylan’s MODERN TIMES completely slipped my mind, I “appreciate” those albums more than I enjoy them. The songwriting isn’t up to TIME OUT OF MIND.
Ok ok, so I went and got the book off the shelf to make sure I hadn’t mischaracterized the whole thing. It’s called Goodbye 20th Century, and it’s by David Browne. Make up your own mind after reading this, but be aware that the story is second-hand. Here is the relevant passage:
Wow, It must have been REALLY late in the evening, considering what a standstill the events of the day had brought to Manhattan. Subways, Bridges, every way out was either closed off or congested beyond belief, even for that city. Most regular people who were downtown when it happened had to do the zombie-march across one of the bridges if they didn’t live in Manhattan.
If what he claims is true (always a point of contention when dealing w/SY), then Renaldo really DOES have a pretty f-ed up sense of priorities. He had kids, for Chrissakes!
dbuskirk, I read BigSteve’s entry before responding on the other thread on which we’ve been bantering back & forth. I’ve got to agree with you, though. The events of that day COINCIDENTALLY colored many things which otherwise wouldn’t have carried as much weight. It wasn’t like Dylan wrote & recorded the song that morning, & somehow had it hastily added to the CDs which were already in the stores at that point. He’s good, but…
(He’s not magic)… I also think db (if you don’t mind me being so informal) gets my drift about the level of quality in Dylan’s songwriting (not to mention production & performance) on “Time Out of Mind”. I love the subsequent releases, but I think they all owe something to the bar he set w/ THAT release. While there are many REALLY great tunes on the later albums, and I’m just gonna go back, where I see fit, & call them “albums” from now on. It just sounds more like a collection of songs tied together by SOME unifying thread than the, to my ears, rather generic term CD. I may be alone in this, but when I think CD, I think of more recent “acts”, releasing a full length piece of product to pad out the 2 or 3 REAL SONGS they MAY have. Britney makes CDs, Dylan releases albums (even if they’re on the CD format). So sue me for being an old fogey.
Oops, In my tangent on CDs vs Albums I didn’t finish my thought about the ALBUMS Dylan released after “T.O.O.M.”. What I meant to say was, while there are great songs on those, & most are really good albums, to me, they don’t carry the weight of “T.O.O.M.”. That’s it. Also, I REALLY don’t want to talk about 9/11 again, at all.
Bobby’s argument is why I came up with the theory that the grouping into albums is coincidental. The important thing is that he came out of his funk after those two folk music albums with a new way of working, and I think of everything since then as being part of the same album.
And I read yesterday that Dylan is supposed to be putting out a new ‘album’ in April. I’ll believe it when I see it, but it will probably precede Neil Young’s bluray archive.
BigSteve; Thanks for your somewhat back-handed acceptance of my ‘album’ vs. ‘CD’ screed (if I read you wrong, feel free to correct. If I read you right, you have every right to call me on my anal compulsion concerning the matter. It WAS a bit much), but if I’m reading you correctly, you agree w/ me on “T.O.O.M.”, as I put it earlier, as a sea change in his working dynamic. Am I gettin’ your drift or not?
As far as Neil’s bluray archive, I’ll believe it when I see it ( & then go buy a Playstation to listen to it on. May as well kill 2 birds w/one handful of $$).
Jake, welcome to the fray – and thanks for seconding “Hurricane.” I’m glad you guys figured out, however, that I wasn’t “challenging” anyone by saying that the last great Dylan song FOR ME was “Hurricane.” I wanted to know what you thought was his last great one. Totally subjective topic – nonjudgemental and all those other qualities for which I’m known.
The Lee Renaldo story feeds into my disgust with that whole SY crowd more than I could have dreamed up myself. Brilliant!
I agree that Time Out of Mind represents the maturing of Dylan’s art, but I disagree with favoring it over the albums that followed. It may carry more “weight,” but I think that represents only a partial picture. The comparative lightness of Love & Theft doesn’t make it a lesser work. In fact, it’s Dylan’s ability to make great music from both viewpoints that makes him a complete artist. It’s a false dichotomy, but serious art is not better than comic art.
Out of the past three albums, I prefer Love & Theft. I think the kick-ass band complements Dylan’s blown-out voice really well. Whereas on Modern Times, everyone plays really quietly and gingerly, and it gets old by the time you get to the umpteenth 7-minute 12-bar blues. Similarly, with Time Out of Mind, I think the spooky production serves mostly as a distraction from some real time-filler tracks (in addition to there being some major songs, like “Not Dark Yet” and “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven”).
For those of you who’ve been busy discussing the relative merits of Dylan’s long, post-great career, there’s still time to put in your nomination for THE LAST GREAT DYLAN SONG. I’m no fan of the Desire album, if you were wondering, but I’m sticking with “Hurricane.” Someone mentioned “Jokerman,” which almost made me change my pick, but not quite.
Speaking of Jokerman and since I never get tired of plugging this appearance – the greatest live Dylan I’ve ever seen and that includes 1966 – here’s Dylan on Letterman in 1984 walking on a tightrope.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIS7jFSe8n8
This is my version of the Power & Glory of Rock & Roll. A great song, Dylan in all his coolness (how many people can look that cool with jacket sleeves pushed up), a ragged rock & roll band who, even when Dylan strands them can keep it rolling, Dylan with the wrong harmonica, finding the right one but then searching for what to play.
And here’s License To Kill from the same show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv6gB1GmXpA
And his opening song that night Don’t Start Me Talkin’. More classic Bob – a rare tv appearance to promote his new album Infidels and he opens with a Sonny Boy Williamson cover that’s not on the album. Bob and the Plugz as the world’s greatest rock & roll bar band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQZWeUO2NoM
And some may think these videos belie any rehearsal but there was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfX-OwSOFTQ&feature=related
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmNdVjcJPog&NR=1
(Notice the hair fluff at 2:00 in the last one.)
At this point, for me it’s a toss up between ‘Not Dark Yet’ & ‘Things Have Changed’. That’s it from me. Bittman out!