Review Summary: Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind is is the begginning of his attempt to reestablish his legacy after a series of failed albums with few exceptions over the course of 22 years. The good news: It's successful.
A new movie chronicling the life (or rather “lives”, as the trailer touts) of Bob Dylan will be arriving in theaters this November. It’s called I’m Not There. The film, which does not give much away in its trailer, and only a little more in its leaked clip (search youtube.com for “Bob Dylan I’m Not There”) seems to take its cue from the legacy Dylan has built around his legend in the past ten years. Before 1997, Dylan’s career had been steadily deteriorating since his last classic, Blood on the Tracks. It was not his last great album, but it would be his only commercially successful for some time, with the exception of its slightly less successful successor, Desire, and a few semi-noteworthy albums in the seventies. After a few embarrassments in the eighties, such as his almost-entirely-covers album, Down in the Groove, Dylan had his biggest comeback since Blood in 1975: This 1989 album, Oh Mercy, was where he picked up Daniel LaNois, recommended to him by U2’s Bono. Following this comeback would be another series of disappointments though (often embodied in more cover albums). It was not until 1997, when Dylan reenlisted LaNois to record his biggest comeback yet, that Dylan would have an album that would approach the greatest of his past feats, which hadn’t been seen in twenty-two years. The album, TimeOut of Mind, would be the basis for the legacy Dylan would craft for himself in coming years.
Time Out of Mind was the first time that Dylan truly got personal. Up to this album, Dylan tended toward casting himself out of the lens of his listeners (with the obvious exception of Desire’s “Sara,” about parting ways with his ex-wife). He had wanted to shine on the subjects he was concerned with.
Every man has only so much to say though. Oh Mercy would spotlight the last of Dylan’s political and worldly woes. Time Out of Mind would refocus his listeners’ lenses into Dylan’s own skull.
The effect of Time Out of Mind is mesmerizing. Unlike most of Dylan’s works, one can be spellbound by the music without even hearing Dylan’s words. Dylan, however, is conscious of his heretofore legacy for language. He begins the album, on “Love Sick,” with the soft sound of an almost inaudible keyboard. Quickly, a chord clicks, softly, slowly, repeatedly. 1 – 2 – 3 – 4; his scraggly voice croaks, “I’m walkin’.... Through Streets that I dig …. Walkin’ …. Walking with you in my head.”
This first stanza establishes a recurring theme in the album: He speaks of a lost love. It seems to have left him in an otherworldly depression.
Love has been a subject on almost all of Dylan’s albums. It usually seems to be observation of others though, even as he uses the first-person perspective (eg; “My love, she speaks like silence.”) But the songs on Time Out of Mind are not folk, though they can certainly be defined as blues. They’re spooky though. Eerie. He sounds like a ghost. Looking at the album cover, one sees Dylan as though he, Dylan, is on the inside looking out as you look in. Vulnerability.
The listener may hear the words, or he may hear the music. Consciousness drifts between the two; meeting when the keys begin to slide over to give his words meaning: When he mentions the “clouds weeping” the organ hits a plateau, and then rolls further onward, propelling the song forward, and sustaining the spooked tone and rainy atmosphere throughout the album.
“I spoke like a child …. You destroyed me with a smile …. While I was sleeping ….” These lines introduce the themes of lethargy and dreams; and innocence.
The album rolls on, plucked ahead into the most upbeat song of the album, the haunting but lackadaisical, “Dirt Road Blues.” Despite the cheery (but haunting!) overtones, the lyrics are undeniably honest; nauseating in their desperate meaning (“Gon’ walk on down that dirt road, til my eyes begin to bleed”). At the end of the first verse, Dylan wails, “If I don’t find my baby, I’m gonna run away and hide,” foreshadowing the last song, “Highlands.”
The last line of Dirt Road Blues” is, “I’m gonna have to put up a barrier to keep me away from everyone;” perhaps alluding to his exposed vulnerability; perhaps alluding to the mobs of fans that hounded his steps during his 1966 concert tours. Whatever it means, it does not refer to his lost love.
“Standing in the Doorway” tells exactly of how she left; but only so exactly as to still have universal appeal. Lines like, “The ghost of our love has not gone away / (Don’t look like it will anytime soon);” “I know I can’t win / But my heart just won’t give in;” speak of a man who knows he should have, by all means, and rights to himself, given up. But he doesn’t. And the pain squeezes his soul: “You left me standing in the doorway crying” / - “Under the midnight moon”…. - “In the dark land of the sun”…. - “Blues wrapped around my head.”
The next song, “Million Miles,” drags. The listener has been debriefed with the first three songs. Now “Million Miles attempts to make some progress toward that lost love. But he’s, “still a million miles away from you.” The listener gets more background here too. Dylan’s voice seems pummeled, understandably. Sample these lyrics:
“Yes the last thing you said before you hit the street
‘Gonna find me a janitor to sweep me off my feet’
I said that's alright mama ...you... you do what you gotta do
Well I try to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you”
He even stutters (in the liner notes).
The album has fully taken on its wispy form here; a plateau of eerie blues that will sustain to its end.
“Tryin’ to Get to Heaven [‘before they close the door’]” is likely a metaphor for reclaiming the woman who has exited his life, and left him to ramble these rain-besotted roads in search of her. “I’m just goin down the road feelin bad.” The theme, refrained in words and in music song after song, of sleep, opens the closing verse: “Gonna sleep in the parlor and relive my dreams.” Sounds very light, especially given the song’s relatively light-hearted tone, but when one thinks of the subject matter heretofore, it’s actually contrastingly dark to Dylan’s voice; as evidenced by the succeeding line, “I lie awake and wonder if everything is as hollow as it seems.”
Why should he keep “going,” wandering these “lonesome valleys”? Faith is one answer in evidence, exemplified by the title of the last tune, as well as this line in the next, from “Til I Fell in Love with You”: “Still I know God is my shield / And he won’t lead me astray / Still I don’t know what I’m gonna do / I was alright til I fell in love with you.” The song seems to be one of explanation. Why all this trouble? Why not stop? Like a hero in a folk tale, he can’t. Fate tugs the strings, and men follow.
As this album is a very dark one, especially by Dylan standards (remember the innocent though politics/love-savvy Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan?) it has a dark peak, or rather, a dark dip. “Not Dark Yet,” the title a seemingly quirky observation when taken outside the album’s context, is very dark. However, there is a little light just barely visible in the organ and the high cracks of Dylan’s voice as he laments over a “Dear John” letter she has left him, explaining subtly how kind words are so hurtful when the message behind the kindness is hurt.
“Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writin' what was in her mind
I just don't see why I should even care
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there”
And as for that faith-reasoning hinted at in “Til I Fell in Love with You”? These are the last two lines of “Not Dark Yet”: “Don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer / It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”
The first line of “Cold Irons Bound” is another window into Dylan’s mind: “I’m beginning to hear voices and there’s no one around. Within a couple more lines though, there is someone around; he’s in church. In fact, the lost lady is there too. This may serve as the album’s re-indoctrination of faith. He was a “million miles” away, but now he’s “20 miles outta town, cold irons bound.” Hope is back in the tone of the album. Perhaps the song’s title means determination. Perhaps it means he’s bound for the cold irons of this woman’s love. Perhaps it means he’ll be in shackles until he has her back.
And so with that, with the lost love within sight, he makes his case to her, in, “Make You Feel My Love.” As the listener knows nothing about this woman, much can be left to individual interpretation, even within the conceptual framework that this review outlines. Dylan may be projecting his own feelings onto her; although it’s possible she may feel the same.
“When the rain is blowing in your face
and the whole world is on your case
I could offer a warm embrace
to make you feel my love
“When evening shadows and the stars appear
and there is no one there to dry your tears
I could hold you for a million years
to make you feel my love”
The circumstances are never given as to what turmoil the relationship went through to put the speaker in such a position as belabored by Dylan’s tortured, crackled voice. This though, is all for the better, as it offers each line and each song universal appeal to their audience; and do not need the conceptual framework to stand as individual songs, or as a cohesive album.
Her answer is not given. But it is obvious what it was from the next song’s first lines: “I can’t wait / Wait for you, to change your mind.” She said no! “Can’t Wait contains some of the best lines on the album, as an individual piece, and when taken as part of the concept. It also has some of the concept’s, as well as Dylan’s, most telling lines. Take the middle of the last verse:
“It's mighty funny
The end of time has just begun
Oh honey, after all these years you're still the one
Well I'm strollin' through the lonely graveyard of my mind
I left my life with you”
He doesn’t know how much longer he can wait. With people, this is often a signal
of, “getting over it.” Or, just the opposite, sinking further.
The last song, “Highlands,” does not provide a resolution whatsoever. It is the most lighthearted song on the album though. Or is it? It’s very mysterious, and if there were a song to disprove a conceptual theory of the album, this would likely be it. Or maybe it wouldn’t be at all. Most of the sixteen-minute piece is simply Dylan talking over a repetitive guitar, with that same old organ accompanying to maintain the tone of the album.
Things seem well at first. The opening scene even finds Dylan admiring nature.
Well my heart's in the highlands, gentle and fair
Honeysuckle blooming in the wildwood air
Bluebells blazing where the Aberdeen waters flow
Well my heart's in the highlands
I'm gonna go there when I feel good enough to go”
So what’s in the highlands? Some sort of salvation perhaps? “I feel like a prisoner in a world of mystery.” This song seems to be the most honest on the album. Except for the scene with the waitress, the lost love, and love itself is taken out of the picture, except where it may linger in the enigmatic background of words and sound; as the rest of the “love-sick” album has lead up to hear.
It’s possible that the waitress that Dylan talks to for about deven of these 20-plus verses is that last love. First she asks what’ll have for breakfast; Dylan says, “Tell me what I want;” she says, “You probably want hard-boiled eggs.” He responds, “That’s right. Bring me some.” She tells them they don’t have any. The scene is the only part of the album with any humor, though it is very wry. But it’s rather uplifting after so many crooners of despair.
She asks him to draw a picture of her, (“I know you’re an artist,” she says). He says “I would if I could, but / I don’t do sketches from memory.”
“Well I’m right here in front of ya,” she says. “Well haven’t ya looked?” There’s a definite air of familiarity, but it may NOT be his love, the scene may just be one of two strangers flirting. She gets upset with Dylan’s sly remarks and turnarounds and excuses, but this doesn’t have to be a fed-up old flame; it doesn’t even have to be the eginnings of an awkward courtship: It may simply be Dylan’s apparent insanity ebbing into the outer world. Maybe it’s all three. The whole conversation reads as a mystery.
Whichever it is, Dylan leaves the restaurant the second the waitress steps into the back. If this was his lost love, than why would he have left? Perhaps to fully recuperate. As suggested in “Can’t Wait, perhaps he is off to attempt to build a new life.
“The sun is beginnin' to shine on me
But it's not like the sun that used to be
The party's over and there's less and less to say
I got new eyes, everything looks far away”
Well my heart's in The Highlands at the break of day
over the hills and far away
There's a way to get there, and I'll figure it out somehow
Well I'm already there in my mind and that's good enough for now”
“Highlands” does resurface from the depths of the melancholy album, and from the recesses of Dylan’s soul. It sounds like a lark (though still reminiscently haunting; attribute that to the organ that rhythmates the album’s general atmosphere). At its close, and thus the album’s close as well, it leaves a small smile on the listener’s face.
The last sigh says he’s “here in his mind.” The end of that time out of mind that was the album.
What’s most significant about Time Out of Mind, other than it being Dylan’s biggest album in over twenty years, is that it reestablishes Dylan as a legend. In the time that he had spent continually producing simply decent, or just plain bad albums in that time, Dylan became a has-been. It seemed that Dylan had already left his mark on the world; his influence on modern music and culture permeated deeply; but never to rise again. He was too definable. The mystery that Bob Dylan shrouds around himself on Time Out of Mind, with a few explanations, but with a smorgasbord of new questions, excuses Dylan’s failures. His brilliantly written memoir, Chronicles (2003) and his follow-up musical successes, Love and Theft, and Modern Times only deepen the mystery started with Time Out of Mind. The new movie, which will feature several different actors playing Dylan in different parts of his career, including an African-American and a woman, will do the same. It will become impossible just to put your finger where it’s at when it comes to Bob Dylan. The innocent couple on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, as well as the Woody Guthrie imitator on The Times Are A Changin,’ or the gypsy Dylan of Desire may as well never have existed. Except that they did exist, and the recordings, along with the power contained within them prove it. Time Out of Mind was simply first step in reshaping Bob Dylan’s legend. By exposing himself as never before, Dylan left more up to mystery, and this reinvigorated the perception of the popular consciousness of who and what Dylan is.
This Message Edited On 08.20.07
