Tag Archives: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan albums, Music Calendar

Today: It is 50 years since Bob Dylan released The Freewheelin Bob Dylan

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” I think it was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all… And for the rest of our three weeks in Paris, we didn’t stop playing it.” 
– John Lennon

Dylan had already moved on to other songs when his first masterpiece was released. Contrary to his first album, this album mostly has songs penned by the man himself.  With songs like Blowin’ in the Wind, Girl From The North Country, Masters Of War,  and  Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right  that are still a big part of Dylan’s concerts half a century later,  Freewheelin’ is an album whose music will live long after anyone who is  reading this post is gone.

Facts from Wikipedia: 

Studio album by Bob Dylan
Released May 27, 1963
Recorded April 24–25, July 9, October 26, November 1 and 15, December 6, 1962, and April 24, 1963 at Columbia Records Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York City
Genre Folk
Length 50:04
Label Columbia
Producer John Hammond, Tom Wilson

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in May 1963 by Columbia Records. Whereas his debut album Bob Dylan had contained only two original songs, Freewheelin’ initiated the process of writing contemporary words to traditional melodies. Eleven of the thirteen songs on the album are original compositions by Dylan. The album kicks off with “Blowin’ in the Wind”, which would become one of the anthems of the 1960s, and an international hit for folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary soon after the release of Freewheelin’. The album featured several other songs which came to be regarded as amongst Dylan’s best compositions and classics of the 1960s folk scene: “Girl from the North Country”, “Masters of War”, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”.

A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall:

Dylan’s lyrics embraced stories ripped from the headlines about civil rights and he articulated anxieties about the fear of nuclear warfare. Balancing this political material were love songs, sometimes bitter and accusatory, and material that features surreal humor. Freewheelin’ showcased Dylan’s songwriting talent for the first time, propelling him to national and international fame. The success of the album and Dylan’s subsequent recognition led to his being named as “Spokesman of a Generation”, a label Dylan came to resent.

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan reached number 22 in the US (eventually going platinum), and later became a number one hit in the UK in 1964. In 2003, the album was ranked number 97 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2002, Freewheelin’ was one of the first 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.

Girl from the North Country:

Even if you were among the handful of people who bought Bob Dylan’s 1962 self-titled debut, you couldn’t have predicted The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the 1963 folkie touchstone where Dylan transformed American songwriting and blew the minds of everyone from his coffeehouse compatriots to the Beatles.

– The Rolling Stone Magazine

Album of the day @ JV:

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David Bowie, Great albums, Music Calendar

Today: David Bowie released Diamond Dogs in 1974 – 39 years ago

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david bowie diamond dogs

Throughout the album, there are hints that he’s tired with the Ziggy formula, particularly in the disco underpinning of “Candidate” and his cut-and-paste lyrics. However, it’s not enough to make Diamond Dogs a step forward, and without Mick Ronson to lead the band, the rockers are too stiff to make an impact. Ironically, the one exception is one of Bowie’s very best songs — the tight, sexy “Rebel Rebel.”
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)

When this came out in 1974, it was roundly dismissed as Ziggy Stardust’s last strangled gasp. In hindsight, Diamond Dogs is marginally more worthwhile; its resigned nihilism inspired interesting gloom and doom from later goth and industrial acts such as Bauhaus and Nine Inch Nails.
~Mark Kemp (rollingstone.com in 2004)

#2 – Diamond Dogs:

Well.. most the critics dismissed (and still – in hindsight – dismisses) this album. I’ve always liked it. Best to play it all through in one sitting…

Wikipedia:

Released 24 April 1974
Recorded October 1973 – February 1974 at Olympic Studios and Island Studios, London, and Ludolf Studios, Hilversum, Netherlands
Genre Rock, glam rock
Length 38:25
Label RCA
Producer David Bowie

Diamond Dogs is a concept album by David Bowie, originally released in 1974 on RCA Records, his eighth album. Thematically, it was a marriage of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Bowie’s own glam-tinged vision of a post-apocalyptic world. Bowie had wanted to make a theatrical production of Orwell’s book and began writing material after completing sessions for his 1973 album Pin Ups, but the late author’s estate denied the rights. The songs wound up on the second half of Diamond Dogs instead where, as the titles indicated, the Nineteen Eighty-Four theme was prominent.

david bowie diamond dogs 2

#6 – Rebel Rebel:

Although Diamond Dogs was the first Bowie album since 1969 to not feature any of the ‘Spiders from Mars’, the backing band made famous by Ziggy Stardust, many of the arrangements were already worked out and played on tour with Mick Ronson prior to the studio recordings, including “1984” and “Rebel Rebel”.

In the studio, however, Herbie Flowers played bass with drums being shared between Aynsley Dunbar and Tony Newman. In a move that surprised some commentators, Bowie himself took on the lead guitar role previously held by Mick Ronson, producing what NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murraydescribed as a “scratchy, raucous, semi-amateurish sound that gave the album much of its characteristic flavour”. Diamond Dogs was also a milestone in Bowie’s career as it reunited him with Tony Visconti, who provided string arrangements and helped mix the album at his own Good Earth Studios in London, on a Trident B-range console, brand new from Trident at the time. Visconti would go on to co-produce much of Bowie’s work for the rest of the decade.

david bowie diamond dogs tour

#7 – Rock’n Roll With Me:

The record was Bowie’s glam swansong; according to author David Buckley, “In the sort of move which would come to define his career, Bowie jumped the glam-rock ship just in time, before it drifted into a blank parody of itself”. At the time of its release Bowie described Diamond Dogsas “a very political album. My protest … more me than anything I’ve done previously”.

Diamond Dogs’ raw guitar style and visions of urban chaos, scavenging children and nihilistic lovers (“We’ll buy some drugs and watch a band / And jump in the river holding hands”) have been credited with anticipating the punk revolution that would take place in the following years.

Track Listing:

All songs written by David Bowie, except where noted.[14]

  1. “Future Legend” – 1:05
  2. “Diamond Dogs” – 5:56
  3. “Sweet Thing” – 3:39
  4. “Candidate” – 2:40
  5. “Sweet Thing (Reprise)” – 2:31
  6. “Rebel Rebel” – 4:30
  7. “Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me” (lyrics: Bowie; music: Bowie, Warren Peace) – 4:00
  8. “We Are the Dead” – 4:58
  9. “1984” – 3:27
  10. “Big Brother” – 3:21
  11. “Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family” – 2:00

david bowie diamond dogs 3

 

Personnel:

  • David Bowie – vocals, guitars, saxes, Moog synthesizer, Mellotron, producer, mixing engineer
  • Earl Slick – guitar on “Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me”
  • Mike Garson – keyboards
  • Herbie Flowers – bass guitar
  • Tony Newman – drums
  • Aynsley Dunbar – drums
  • Alan Parker – guitar on “1984”
  • Tony Visconti – strings, mixing engineer
  • Keith Harwood – engineer, mixing engineer

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylans's best songs, The Best Songs

Bob Dylan’s best songs – A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall – #16, released version

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The hard rain is gonna fall is in the last verse when I say “when the pellets of poison are flooding the waters”. I mean, all the lies, you know, all the lies that people get told on their radios and their newspapers which, all you have to do is
just think for a minute, y’know, try and take peoples brains away, y’know, which maybe’s been done already. I dunno, maybe, I hate to think it’s been done, but all the lies, which are considered poison, y’know, er…
Bob Dylan (to Studs Terkel, April 63)

‘Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’… I wrote the words of it on a piece of paper. But there was just no tune that really fit to it, so I just sort of play chords without a tune. If all this comes under the heading of a definition, then I don’t care really to define what I do. Other people seem to have a hard time doing that.
~Bob Dylan (to Max Jones, May 64)

From “The Witmark Demos” (Bootleg Series 9):

@ #16 on my list of Dylan’s 200 best songs. The original version from “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” was recorded on December 6 – 1962…. 50 year’s ago today. The Witmark version above was recorded sometime in December 62.

‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, recorded December 6, 1962, is another song whose genius and power are so great that our analytical minds (not our hearts) may have difficulty accepting and recognizing it’s simplicity.
~Paul Williams (Performing Artist 60-73)

from 1964:

 

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