Music

Go to the archives

Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Sep 05, 2022
Category: Rock

The most piercing Dylan year for me was 1967-1968. It was the fall of my senior year in college. Thesis done, degree requirements satisfied — talk about your dish of cream! But there was a war on, and if you want to talk about “a nation divided,” consider how that was playing out in a year when 11,153 body bags would come home, 467 in October alone. That month, like everyone else I knew, I went to Washington to protest; I watched peaceful people beaten and arrested, with not a mention of it in most newspapers. The culture was just as split. In greater America, “To Sir with Love” was the #1 song that month; in New York, “Hair” opened off-Broadway.

Bob Dylan was in Nashville that month, recording a new album.

The first session, on October 17, lasted three hours; out of it came master takes of "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," "Drifter’s Escape" and "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest." On November 6, Dylan knocked off “All Along the Watchtower," "John Wesley Harding,” "As I Went Out One Morning,” "I Pity the Poor Immigrant" and "I Am a Lonesome Hobo." Late the next month, Dylan quickly finished the album.

Twelve hours in the studio for 40 minutes of music — there’s no comparison in all of American music.

And that’s just the start of What’s Exceptional about “John Wesley Harding.”

On December 27, 1967 — a month after he finished recording, in the dead week between Christmas and New Year — Columbia released the album. Promotion? None. A single? Not. Still, Dylan fans found it and snapped it up. And then it went away, until Jimi Hendrix plucked one song from it. “Two riders were approaching. The wind began to howl.” And did it ever…

I can understand why “John Wesley Harding” is not in your Dylan collection. It came after three of the greatest albums ever recorded: “Bringing It All Back Home,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde on Blonde.” Then there was Dylan’s motorcycle accident. And a long silence. And then this — not quite a country album, though there were tendencies. With lyrics that teased and challenged: stripped-down story songs, vaguely Biblical in theme.

And not one word about Vietnam, drugs, hippies or the chasm between old and young.

And out of Dylan came this….

I listened obsessively to “John Wesley Harding” that winter, and as the man says in one song, “I bowed my head and cried.” First, for the artistic achievement; Dylan had, yet again, turned his back on his past and made something completely unexpected and contrarian. But even more for what I thought Dylan was saying. He’d taken a giant step back from everything contemporary and looked deeply into what mattered. What he found was scary, exhilarating, desperately important — and absolutely relevant to what was happening. [To buy the CD from Amazon and get a free MP3 download at a ridiculously low price, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]

All these years later, I find myself drawn again to “John Wesley Harding.” I am a slow thinker, so it took me a while to figure out why — of all the music I could be playing, this is the most relevant I know. The reason is right at the start of the first song: “John Wesley Harding was a friend to the poor…” The whole album is shot through with references to losers: hoboes, immigrants, drifters. In short, all the people that a certain group of politicians, moguls and voters want to exclude from the national conversation. And then, even though you and I are still lucky enough to matter, the line we can all understand: “Dear landlord, please don’t put a price on my soul.”

If I make this sound heavy as German philosophy, I do my cause no favors here. The fact is, this is a fantastic listening experience. The band —Charles McCoy (bass), Kenny Buttrey (drums) and Pete Drake (steel guitar) — was amazed at Dylan’s speed and self-assurance. Kenny Buttrey: “We went in and knocked ’em out like demos.” True, but these were the best studio players in Nashville. And the producer was the legendary Bob Johnston.

And we are, after all, talking about our Shakespeare.

UPDATE: DYLAN AT THE WHITE HOUSE

Barack Obama, on that evening: “Here’s what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that. He came in and played ‘The Times They Are A-Changin.’ A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I’m sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise.”