May 2011 sees the 70th birthday of Bob Dylan. To celebrate, we're taking you on a journey through the lesser celebrated avenues of his back catalogue. A journey down Highway 61 that won't stop off at 'Blowin' In The Wind', 'All Along The Watchtower' or 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' but will call by...
This Wheel’s On Fire (1967)
Bob Dylan didn’t really embrace the psychedelic movement. His motorcycle accident occurred right at the moment Psych and Acid were hitting their 12 month UK and US peak and he didn’t make a public re-appearance until the end of 1967 with the ‘John Wesley Harding’ album. In his absence though the probing spirits of the music world still took it for granted that Dylan was on their side, how could they do otherwise? He’d spent eighteen speeding mid-sixties months blowing open the perceptions of what popular music could do and was undoubtedly one of the pioneers of musical open mindedness with boundless poetic wordplay and imagery. All his disciples were doing was carrying on the journey, still knocking down doors while the leader sat out his unplanned sabbatical. How typically Dylan isn’t it then that when he did again come into view he was anything but psychedelicised; instead once more staying a long way ahead of the pack by pre-empting the country-rock, ‘back to our roots’ vibe that swept across a lot of bands in ’68 and ’69. Perhaps it’s true the story that on first hearing ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Bob screamed “take that off, that’s not music”, but I find the idea a little over exaggerated. How could he, having come up against the same narrow minded refusal from sections of his own audience only 12 months previous, express similar tunnel vision himself? It seems unlikely. Nevertheless, it is clear that many of the trademark fads of the period, the sitars, studio trickery, over-elaborate string arrangements and flowery concepts et al, did not appeal to Bob. Other than the ‘Fourth Time Around’ subtle nod to The Beatles ‘Norwegian Wood’, there isn’t a genuine Psych or Acid-Rock moment in the entire Bob Dylan back catalogue (and yes I include the 1980s Grateful Dead collaboration in that). So it was down to Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity to give Bob his defining flower-power moment in the technicolor sunshine. Covering one of the standout songs from the ’67 sessions in The Bands basement, what a classic track it is too. Curiously though, the ‘Basement Tapes’ would reveal years later that they really hadn’t strayed that far from the original. Maybe Bob did have kaleidoscope eyes for a short period after all? He just chose to keep it underground.
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