Just four months after Self Portrait left Bob Dylan’s fan and the critical community scratching their collective heads, he released an album that pretty much quieted the storm. New Morning was a simple, warm album that marked the return of Dylan as a songwriter and, even more important, the return of Dylan’s trademark voice.
For all of the complaints about Dylan’s lack of vocal ability, it’s funny how a couple albums of his much smoother country croon had people longing for the nasally whine.
So, exactly how bad is Self Portrait? Well, the thing is, I don’t really know. I’ve been so affected by the legend surrounding this album’s awfulness that I’ve never taken the time to listen to it. Until now, that is.
And I have to say, based on the clips I’ve heard… it’s actually pretty good.
Certainly that conclusion owes a lot to the power of expectations, and you can ask for no lower expectations than those attached to an album that’s famous for sucking. But I also think the negative consensus around Self Portrait has a whole lot to do with how and when it was released.
Not including live albums and greatest hits collections, Bob Dylan has released 39 albums over the past 47 years. I own 31 of them. And today we arrive chronologically at the first Dylan album that isn’t in my collection.
Self Portrait is perhaps the most infamous of all Dylan releases. It was released in 1970 at a pivotal point in his career, a time when fans and non-fans alike were holding their breath to see which direction he’d choose to go next.
A few years before Nashville Skyline was released, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash struck up a friendship that blossomed into a collaboration. Cash wrote the liner notes to Nashville Skyline, which took the form of a crackerjack poem celebrating his friend’s unique career.
Sample verse: “This man can rhyme the tick of time / The edge of pain, the what of sane / And comprehend the good in men, the bad in men / Can feel the hate of fight, the love of right / And the creep of blight at the speed of light.”
In 1969, following the stripped-down acoustic approach of John Wesley Harding, Bob Dylan threw his fans for another loop with the straight-up country album Nashville Skyline. But the musical genre was only half of the surprise… the real bombshell was Dylan’s velvety voice, a laid-back croon that was a far cry from his oft-imitated trademark whine.
I remember being told as a kid (thought I don’t remember by whom) that Dylan had gotten into a motorcycle accident and emerged with this new singing voice. That was close to the truth, chronologically, but it gave me the creepy impression that the accident itself had physically altered his vocal chords.
Meet Me In Montauk 