A Belated Reflection on Bringing it All Back Home
Bringing it All Back Home is, chronologically, the first of the “Blonde Trilogy,” as the three albums Bob Dylan released in close succession in 1965 and 1966, are called. The first side of this album is much more electrified than anything Dylan had released up until this point. This, of course, was quite controversial, as he had already been labeled as the protest singer ‘voice of a generation.’ Side B of Bringing it All Back Home is much more acoustic. In most of the songs on this side the only accompaniment is Bob Dylan on the acoustic guitar and the harmonica, with a small amount of electric guitar noodling going on in the background. Despite the accompaniment’s nod back to Dylan’s earlier style, this side of the album was also somewhat controversial, because of the lyrical structure of many of the songs. This is the first of three albums where Bob Dylan seems to be working out a new voice for himself, and, some say, inventing to genre of folk rock.
The first side of the album begins with the song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” which has been said to reflect the style of the Beat Poets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan#Going_electric). Like the rest of this side of the album this song has lots of instrumentation, and lyrics, which seem a bit playful, while still reflecting on something personal and important. Each stanza in “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is rather serious in tone and offers advice of some sort to the listener. However, the way the song is put together, with a driving, almost manic, rhythm, creates a feeling of overall young energy. The two most playful songs on Side A are “On the Road Again,” which contains a giggle or two from Dylan as he sings, if you listen carefully, and “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream.” Both of these songs create a rather bizarre story and are played with a great deal of enthusiasm by many musicians. There are also two love songs on this side of the album, both of which are describing love in a joyful way; extolling the virtues of a lover almost like Shakespeare and the other sonneteers of his time would do. Even “Outlaw Blues,” while undoubtedly bluesy is high energy. One comment listed by a viewer of Bob Dylan’s homepage says, “it sound[s] like everyone is just playing [their] instruments so hard that they are probably all broken by the end of the song” (Submitted by mmmmly at http://www.bobdylan.com/#/music/bringing-it-all-back-home), I thought this was a wonderful way of describing the amount of energy present in the music.
When the album gets flipped over, however, things change. The first song, “Mr. Tambourine Man” has been thought by many listeners to be a sort of hymn to LSD or other drugs. This, however, is not the impression I have gotten, and, according to the Wiki has been denied multiple times by Bob Dylan and by people close to him when he was first writing and recording this song. To me “Mr. Tambourine Man” seems to be all about wanting to sleep and not being able to. It sounds so much like a lullaby that I actually found myself feeling quite sleepy while listening to it. The last song on the album, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” also sounds a bit like a lullaby. The two songs in between, however, are nothing but lullabies. “Gates of Eden” is a somewhat abstract song, and another one where each verse is about something different, instead of telling a narrative story. It seems, though, that the main statement the song is making is that the worlds on either side of the Gates of Eden are very different, and that it is difficult to define one world or the other against each other. “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” is the final song I have to discuss, and it is a song of apocalypse. In it there is a young man singing about all the things he is facing in his world, and during these verses the lyrics and accompaniment chug on in a similar fashion to how they do in “Subterranean Homesick Blues”—they are insistent and do not seem like they will be stopped. The rhyme scheme, in which five out of six lines in a verse all have the same end rhyme, adds to this feeling. However, when it comes time for the refrain the guitar gets quiet, the tune gets slower, and Bob Dylan’s voice sounds a little bit sweeter as he sings “It’s alright, Ma.”
This album seems like it was one where Bob Dylan was experimenting. He continues this experimentation on his next two albums Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. What is interesting is that even though he is testing different lyrical and musical techniques, all his songs still have some base in traditional music, such as blues or folk.
-Chelsea Wright
