Nobody’s mention the Travelling Wilburys yet?
I thought “Congratulations” was a pretty good Dylan track, as was “Dirty World.” Also liked “Margarita.”
Hated “Tweeter and the Monkey Man,” though.
I love Tweeter - maybe because I used to live in New Jersey. “Blinded by the Light” was Bruce doing Dylan - this song is Dylan doing Bruce.
Like the others you mention also.
Wilburys was all I had of Dylan for a while there.
Thanks, mmm. Will do!
I’ve always enjoyed Dylan and Leonard Cohen so I tried to find both “Hallelujah” and “Do You Hear What I Hear”
I found his Christmas album but I’ve been unable to find “Hallelujah”. Can you please tell me the name of the album that it’s on?
I have 35 Dylan albums (I’ll put the list at the end of this post). But I couldn’t find it in any of them. Here are the 35 albums I have:
1962 BOB DYLAN
1963 THE FREEWHELLIN BOB DYLAN
1964 ANOTHER SIDE OF BOB DYLAN
1964 THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN
1965 BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME
1965 HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED
1966 BLONDE ON BLONDE
1967 JOHN WESLEY HARDING
1969 NASHVILLE SKYLINE
1970 NEW MORNING
1970 SELF PORTRAIT
1973 DYLAN
1973 PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID
1974 PLANET WAVES
1975 BLOOD ON THE TRACKS
1975 THE BASEMENT TAPES
1976 DESIRE
1978 STREET LEGAL
1979 SLOW TRAIN COMING
1980 SAVED
1981 SHOT OF LOVE
1983 INFIDELS
1985 EMPIRE BURLESQUE
1986 KNOCKED OUT LOADED
1988 DOWN IN THE GROOVE
1989 OH MERCY
1990 UNDER THE RED SKY
1992 GOOD AS I BEEN TO YOU
1993 WORLD GONE WRONG
1997 TIME OUT OF MIND
2001 LOVE & THEFT
2006 MODERN TIMES
2009 CHRISTMAS IN THE HEART
2009 TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE
2012 TEMPEST
If you could point me to the album, I’m certain that finding that track would be dead simple.
I found this one web site:
It contained quite a bit of info about Dylan & Cohen and their friendship. But, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to tell us the name of the albums containing Dylan singing Cohen’s songs.
Any help for me please?
I’m a big fan of the album Oh Mercy. Particularly strong tracks are:
Man in the Long Black Coat
Most of the Time
What Was It You Wanted?
Also, I’ve always had a soft spot for “License to Kill” from Infidels. It’s a bit on the preachy side, but it has a killer hook.
He never officially recorded it, so you must go for live versions/bootlegs.
Blood on The Tracks is one hell of a great album. Is it considered “post - Jesus freak”?
Nope, Blood on the Tracks (awesome as it is) is from 1975. The Jesus years are 1979-1981 or so.
mmm
Wow, that was pretty short.
Thanks for the thread, guys. I’m a UUUUUUUUUUUGE fan of Dylan, but only have his older stuff. It will be nice to get some of his newer work.
Just to mention while we’ve got the Dylan fans gathered. One of the biographies I read (think it was Behind the Shades) said that he probably never really had a born again period. He became friends with a charismatic preacher type in California and Dylan really liked the guy. He therefore didn’t want to let him down so he hung around with him, attended bible classes etc.
Friends of Dylan told this biographer that it is entirely in keeping with Dylan’s personality that he would even go as far as releasing two Christian albums for no other reason than he didn’t want to upset this guy who he liked and admired. But he probably never actually believed any of it.
I read “Behind The Shades” maybe two years ago and don’t remember that aspect, maybe it’s from another bio. What I DO remember, but please don’t ask me where I read it (I’ve read so much about Dylan), is that he had some kind of epiphany maybe before meeting that preacher or while being his follower, and that lead to his religious awakening and those two albums. Given the fervor and self-righteousness he delivers on “Slow Train Coming” and especially “Saved”, I doubt that it was only done as a favor for a friend without really feeling that way, all while snubbing the core of his fan base. You see in this thread how many old fans turned away from him after that and sometimes never came back, so there was a big price to pay for his conversion.
Maybe it was another bio. I didn’t really do it justice in my short summation - the place where I read it spent a lot more time explaining it and giving quotes from friends. I think one point it mentioned is that Dylan can be very loyal to friends and (for whatever reason) he saw this guy as a friend at the time.
And when has Dylan ever cared about snubbing the fan base? Wasn’t Self Portrait released as a deliberately bad album to piss off the fans?
Ok, you got me there, that was really never one of his concerns. But I still doubt that he played the mouth-frothing born-again Christian without really meaning it just to please a friend.
The version that Dylan has told is that someone threw a small silver cross on stage during a concert in San Diego (Nov. 17/78, thanks Wikipedia), which he pocketed without thinking much about and then remembered later. This does seem like a reasonable timeframe to have a born-again phase given that he was 37 (entering the mid-life crisis zone?), he’d just gotten divorced and his last couple of projects (Renaldo and Clara and the Street Legal album) had gotten some very bad reviews from critics.
I think it was a bit more subtle than I’ve given the impression of. The thing I read said he got caught up with this guy and his group and kind of got carried along with their enthusiasm. Dylan was attracted to the enthusiasm and the fervour. And this guy, typically for a charismatic type, was full on - didn’t give Dylan much time to think. It was a daily thing - group meetings etc.
So it’s more that Dylan was caught up in it and attracted to the whole full on-ness and enthusiasm than the actual theological basis of Christianity. And he genuinely liked the guy. But witness how quickly he dropped it like a turd with leprosy once he left the orbit of this guy (and released an album called Infidels).
In post #24 above I said that I had always enjoyed Dlyan but that was not the whole truth.
After listening to his 1975 “The Basement Tapes” album, I became very wary of listening to any more of his music. I did listen to portions of some of his other albums he released in the latter half of the 1970s but the religious content was just too much for me to handle at that time.
However, he made a sharp turn away from music with that kind of content and his later albums were extremely different from either his early music or his Christian-slanted music. The albums that most people in this thread have recommended and have had high praise for were those albums recorded around 1990 or shortly afterwards. Specifically:
1989 OH MERCY
1990 UNDER THE RED SKY
1992 GOOD AS I BEEN TO YOU
1993 WORLD GONE WRONG
1997 TIME OUT OF MIND
2001 LOVE & THEFT
2006 MODERN TIMES
2009 CHRISTMAS IN THE HEART
2009 TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE
2012 TEMPEST
I’ve only listened to this music once or twice and I usually need to listen to music a few more times than that before I form a lasting opinion of music.
So far, I find this music to be real good listening. It’s very different from either his early stuff or his middle-aged stuff (meaning largely his Christian-content music).
I’d like to say that one exception to his middle-aged albums I found is 1976 Desire. I have always love Hurricane (about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter), Mozambique, One More Cup of Coffee and Sarah.
His music from the 90s and beyond is very different. IMO, it is highly reflective and indicates a life full of experiences that he wishes to share with us.
I still need to listen to that music a few more times. But overall, I’m real happy that so many of you have posted about that music because there was a real good chance that had you not, I would never have discovered it.
I believe that after a few more listens, I might feel this music is a real strong favorite of mine and so I thank you all very much.
Dylan has never wanted to be in a box created by his fans. Nashville Skyline could have been viewed the same way - except it worked. Self Portrait didn’t.
I saw Dylan in 1980, and he seemed sincere to me. I saw him much more recently, post-Christian, where he led off with a Christian song.
My favorites include:
Jokerman
I and I
Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight
Blind Willie McTell
Foot of Pride
Dark Eyes
Brownsville Girl
Groom Still Waiting at the Altar (Biograph version)
Political World
Most of the Time
Man in the Long Black Coat
Ring Them Bells
Dignity
Blackjack Davey
Arthur McBride
World Gone Wrong
Broke Down Engine
Delia
Love Sick
Cold Irons Bound
Not Dark Yet
Mississippi
High Water (for Charley Patton)
Honest with Me
Tweeldedum and Tweedledee
Thunder on the Mountain
Workingman’s Blues #2
Ain’t Talkin’
I Feel a Change Coming On
Duquesne Whistle
Pay in Blood
Long and Wasted Years
Roll on John
… that’s probably enough for now. 
Here are some comments about “2006 MODERN TIMES” that I thought you all might enjoy. It was never stated just who wrote these. But I just selected a few small portions of these comments so as not to break any of the board rules.
Modern Times is the thirty-second studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 29, 2006 by Columbia Records. The album was Dylan’s third straight (following Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft) to be met with nearly universal praise from fans and critics. It continued its predecessors’ tendencies toward blues, rockabilly and pre-rock balladry … "
Modern Times became the singer-songwriter’s first #1 album in the US since 1976’s Desire. …
At age 65, Dylan became the oldest living person at the time to have an album enter the Billboard charts at number one.
[1] It also reached #1 in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland, …
In the 2012 version of Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, Modern Times was ranked at number 204.
P.S. I love “Beyond the Horizon”.
Oh, religion has always been a permanent thread in Dylan’s work, right from the beginning. I very much doubt that he ever lost faith in the Abrahamic god, though for many people the image of the uber-cool speed-freak counter-culture icon from 1965/66 is impossible to reconcile with the bible-thumping zealot of his born-again phase, but that’s Dylan for you (the general you). Note that the religious theme after Saved didn’t suddenly stop, but only slowly faded and softened. Shot Of Love is sometimes counted as part of a born-again triology, and it still has some religion-themed songs, but it is milder (see Every Grain Of Sand, in essence a pantheistic song), though there was also the quite self-righteous Property Of Jesus. And what is Jokerman on Infidels other than a messianic figure, maybe The Man himself. In his later work, allusions to religious themes were still all over the place, just like before Slow Train Coming, but mostly subtler than in his born-again phase. So it’s no surprise that he often starts his concerts with old religious folk and gospel songs on the neverending tour.