A lot of ground is covered between 15-year-old Bobby Zimmerman quietly singing "When I Got Troubles" into a home tape recorder in 1959, and an angry and defiant Bob Dylan howling out "Like a Rolling Stone" at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966. In that progression is one major facet of the story of the 1960s.
The story of the '60s was multi-dimensional, of course: political, social, economic and artistic. Bob Dylan played one of the major roles in the arts of the decade, first as a singer of traditional folk songs, then as a writer and singer of his own songs within that tradition, then as the poet who expanded what a folk song could be and everybody's concept of it, and finally as the one who showed the world that rock 'n' roll could be artful and poetic and the folk song could have a beat and an electrified twang.
No Direction Home is Volume 7 of the Dylan Bootleg Series, mostly made up of previously unreleased material that has been subject to bootlegging over the years. And it's sort of the soundtrack to the Martin Scorsese film of the same title, scheduled to be shown on U.S. public television in September 2005 and released on DVD about the same time. Apparently the actual soundtrack uses mostly other music, and the tracks for this recording were culled as the best and most significant from the vaults that illustrate Dylan's growth and transformation during that period, 1959-66.
The first of the two discs shows the most remarkable growth in Dylan the singer, from the aforementioned home recording through an alternate version of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." It documents the movement from the young man singing traditional songs, through the Greenwich Village youth imitating Woody Guthrie, the strident protest singer to the self-confident owner of his own voice in "Baby Blue." Along the way are some wonderful moments, including a live "This Land is Your Land," with Dylan trying both to mimic Guthrie and come up with his own delivery at the Carnegie Chapter Hall in 1961, and the "Song to Woody" off of Dylan's self-titled debut album that same year -- it's one of only two tracks previously released. There are live versions of his early protest songs "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War" and "When the Ship Comes In," and a slower early take of "Mr. Tambourine Man" with Ramblin' Jack Elliott singing harmony on the chorus, which may have been the template for The Byrds' hit single with its McGuin-Hillman-Crosby harmonies. And a stunningly powerful live take of "Chimes of Freedom." A great disc.
The second disc sees Dylan experimenting with a new voice -- actually a whole new Dylan, trying to capture what he called "that thin, wild mercury sound" of the electric guitar with his own music. The biggest treat is his joyously rocking "Maggie's Farm" from the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, backed by the Butterfield Blues Band and complete with Peter Yarrow's (Peter, Paul and Mary) nervous introduction. The rest of the tracks are valuable mostly for the way they highlight the choices made in the studio as Dylan recorded his classic early folk-rock albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde.
As the album ends, it's 1966. Next year will be the Summer of Love, and the timing is no coincidence, because the classics of 1967, including especially The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band were directly influenced by Dylan's art. The only other previously released track is the archetypal performance of "Like a Rolling Stone" from Manchester, heard before on thousands of bootleg albums and tapes and finally on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4. Within a few months Dylan would be in a motorcycle accident and drop from sight for several years as he attempted to raise a family. But his legacy was sealed.
This is a beautiful package, with entertaining and informative liner notes, and alternate photos from the era's album covers. A historic document it is, but also an album of still living music, still bursting with transformative power. It's essential Dylan.
