Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home CD

This is a multi-channel hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Howls of rage greeted Bob Dylan as he presented the world with rock music--he was roundly booed at both the Newport Folk Festival and the Royal Albert Hall. Yet here is one of those moments of cross-influence that changed the course of popular music. BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME gave Dylan an audience on a plate; it was a massive breakthrough. An album of two different sides, acoustic (his past) and electric (his future), it contains milestones in the blues-rockers "Maggie's Farm" and "Subterranean Home Sick Blues," the future Byrds hit "Mr. Tambourine Man," and the transcendently poetic "It's Alright, Ma." You can debate the "is it folk or is it rock" argument forever. It's merely Dylan at one of his many peaks.

With Another Side of Bob Dylan, Dylan had begun pushing past folk, and with Bringing It All Back Home, he exploded the boundaries, producing an album of boundless imagination and skill. And it's not just that he went electric, either, rocking hard on "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Maggie's Farm," and "Outlaw Blues"; it's that he's exploding with imagination throughout the record. After all, the music on its second side -- the nominal folk songs -- derive from the same vantage point as the rockers, leaving traditional folk concerns behind and delving deep into the personal. And this isn't just introspection, either, since the surreal paranoia on "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and the whimsical poetry of "Mr. Tambourine Man" are individual, yet not personal. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, really, as he writes uncommonly beautiful love songs ("She Belongs to Me," "Love Minus Zero/No Limit") that sit alongside uncommonly funny fantasias ("On the Road Again," "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream"). This is the point where Dylan eclipses any conventional sense of folk and rewrites the rules of rock, making it safe for personal expression and poetry, not only making words mean as much as the music, but making the music an extension of the words. A truly remarkable album. [In 2003, Columbia/Legacy reissued 15 selected titles from Dylan's catalog as hybrid SACDs, playable in both regular CD players and Super Audio CD players. Each title is packaged as a digipak, containing the full original artwork. On each of the titles, and on each of the layers, the remastered sound is spectacular, a considerable upgrade from the initial CD pressings. Bringing It All Back Home was one of five titles that also included a 5.1 Surround Sound mix.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Originally released in 1965, this reissue is a hybrid CD consisting of remastered regular version playable on all players and a super audio CD version for players equipped with the format. 5.1 Surround Sound too! 11 tracks packaged in digipak format. Sony. 2003.

Recorded at Columbia Recording Studios, New York, New York in January 1965. Includes liner notes by Bob Dylan.

Audio Mixer: Michael Brauer.

Liner Note Author: Bob Dylan.

Photographer: Daniel Kramer.

Personnel: Bob Dylan (vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica); Al Gorgone, John Hammond, Jr., Bruce Langhorne, Kenneth Rankin (guitar); Paul Griffin, Frank Owens (piano); William E. Lee, Joseph Macho, Jr., John Sebastian (bass); Bobby Gregg (drums).

Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.106) - Ranked #31 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time" - "...Dylan amplifies his cryptic, confrontational songwriting with guitar lighting and galloping drums..."
NME (Magazine) (10/2/93, p.29) - Ranked #48 in NME's list of the "Greatest Albums Of All Time."