Bob Dylan John Wesley Harding CD

This is a stereo 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.

Bob Dylan's eighth album followed a lengthy hibernation due to a motorcycle accident in which the singer re-evaluated his art. He emerged with a set of stark simplicity and heartfelt intensity, melding folk, rock, and country with a mesmerizing power that set off a huge back-to-basics movement in rock that lasted well into the next decade. A biblical purity encompasses the collection as Dylan paints graphic portraits of the disenfranchised--hobo, immigrant, drifter, messenger--articulating the uncertainty of the times. The best-known song here is the apocalyptic "All Along the Watchtower," which would soon be electrically redefined by Jimi Hendrix. The mood lifts on the final track "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," a beautifully tender love song, suggesting that this is where salvation lies. John Wesley Harding repays repeated play with ever-unfolding metaphor and interpretation, including four hidden Beatles on the cover.

Bob Dylan returned from exile with John Wesley Harding, a quiet, country-tinged album that split dramatically from his previous three. A calm, reflective album, John Wesley Harding strips away all of the wilder tendencies of Dylan's rock albums -- even the then-unreleased Basement Tapes he made the previous year -- but it isn't a return to his folk roots. If anything, the album is his first serious foray into country, but only a handful of songs, such as "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," are straight country songs. Instead, John Wesley Harding is informed by the rustic sound of country, as well as many rural myths, with seemingly simple songs like "All Along the Watchtower," "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," and "The Wicked Messenger" revealing several layers of meaning with repeated plays. Although the lyrics are somewhat enigmatic, the music is simple, direct, and melodic, providing a touchstone for the country-rock revolution that swept through rock in the late '60s. [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.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Originally released in 1967, 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. 12 tracks. Digipak. Sony. 2003.

Includes liner notes by Bob Dylan.

Personnel: Bob Dylan (vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano); Pete Drake (steel guitar); Kenneth A. Buttrey (drums).

Photographer: David Gahr.

Personnel: Bob Dylan (vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano); Pete Drake (steel guitar); Charles McCoy (bass); Kenny Buttrey (drums).

Rolling Stone (4/11/02, p.106) - Ranked #15 in Rolling Stone's "50 Coolest Records".
Rolling Stone (3/30/00, p.68) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...one of Dylan's most cryptic and thematically complex albums....its songs are rife with religious imagery, both explicit and implied....a masterful move - the original Dylan unplugged."
Q (Magazine) (p.111) - "[T]his spare collection of outlaw allegories and Biblical allusions is in stark contrast to the louder aesthetics prevailing elsewhere at the time..."