Not so much ‘just an album’ more perhaps a cultural artifact, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is an extraordinary record and it is on the stereo right now!
Like a few other titles that we have written about over the last year or so, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It is a cultural titan and since its release in May 1963 it has found generations of fans, admirers and has been a huge influence on not only popular culture and music, but society more broadly.
With all that in mind, as passionate amateurs at best, there is very little Drift can add to the broader opinions and conjecture of the esteemed writers and thinkers who have already done so; besides of course writing about what it meant to me when I listened to it for the first time…
I actually hated it.
God knows where, but I had heard Peter, Paul and Mary playing Blowing in the Wind and I simply couldn't stand it. Their take on the song was broadly indistinguishable from Puff The Magic Dragon which was also absolutely not for me. For one, Nirvana Nevermind had just dropped. So my first memorable listening experience of Dylan was some guy playing a sparser version of that song I hated. But, I was in a car and I wasn’t in charge of the stereo and it’s not easy to skip a tape cassette. I did also respect the hierarchy that at nine or ten years old, I wasn’t ever going to supersede the driver's choice. The album opens with Blowing in the Wind, and its last few harmonica notes fade into the dexterously plucked strings of Girl from the North Country, that's where it clicked for me. It was the most melancholic thing I had ever heard. Then the grit of Masters of War, the blues tone plucks of Down the Highway and ending the first side of the album with A Hard Rain’s A‐Gonna Fall, a song that gives me chills thinking about a 22 year old writing it. The nuance and pathos of Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, the regrets of Bob Dylan’s Dream, the incendiary sparkle of Oxford Town, and the wry humour across Talkin' World War III Blues, Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance and I Shall Be Free. I did read a little about that period and was always surprised to learn that The Freewheelin’ was recorded over the best part of a year and across seven or eight sessions. It sounds so focused and much more like they just started the tape rolling and he stayed as close to the microphone as he could manage whilst he reeled them off.
The Freewheelin' from there on became an obsession. At times alienating, at times bonding, but ever present. I can remember exactly where he stutters or laughs, where his voice cracks, the little studio rattles and the clicks and pops on my* specific copy. I have listened to it hundreds and hundreds of times, always lost in Nat Hentoff’s liner notes. It made me pick up the guitar seriously for the first time. It made me look into who Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg and Sophia Loren were. It made me want someone to want me to grow a moustache on my face. It taught me that there was also an Oxford in Mississippi. It would lead me to Jones Street in the NYC West Village one bright March morning just to see where they walked. I am not a terribly boring Dylan-ite, with the exception of Blood on the Tracks and Time out of Mind, I actually only really ever listen to the five album fun that followed The Freewheelin’; but I do maintain that it is a record that they should be teaching in schools.
My favourite bit? Corrina, Corrina. I did eventually come around to Blowing in the Wind too, although I do on occasion still skip it for old times sake.
A masterful album about love and injustice, and irrespective of all of its cultural significance, I hope that I have convinced you to give it a spin this Sunday, you’ll benefit gratefully from it.
* I borrowed my Dad’s copy about twenty years ago and he has kindly left it in my care.
