Introductory Remarks
Eyolf Østrem
New Morning has been haunting me ever since I bought it. This must be Dylans most stylistically varied album ever (possibly topped by Love and Theft), but I still cant decide whether it belongs in the weak category together with Self Portrait, or if it is a glorious testimony to the sprezzatura that only Dylan can handle without collapsing completely.
Ive had heated discussions with a friend of mine about The Man In Me is it a good song? an exuberant celebration of the bliss of true love? a rare moment in Dylans catalogue of a love song with no hint whatsoever of uncertainty, bitterness, pain?
No! its just too sweet. Things that are too good to be true, usually aren’t. It’s like Sara or Wedding Song, another couple of songs that I just can’t take seriously. What they have, though, is an intrinsic seriousness which commands some kind of respect: only Dylan can say “I love you more than blood” and get away with it.
And what does The Man in Me have ?
La la la la la. Not quite the same.
In the same category come If Not For You (I’d be sad and blue or I wouldnt have a clue / If not for you cmon Bob, you can rhyme better than that!), and, to some extent, New Morning and Winterlude. But they arent too bad after all: Winterlude has this corny, guy-on-the-sleeve-of-Nashville-Skyline-ish, country dude thing going on, and if such a down-to-earth guy thinks youre fine, what is there to complain about? And New Morning has these wonderful snapshots of situations which may be just reminiscenses of random glimpses, but which may also be filled with meaning (Rabbit runnin down across the road / Underneath the bridge where the water flowed through, Automobile comin into style / Comin down the road for a country mile or two), and they are introduced with a shade of desperation in the insistent questions: Cant you hear? (You really cant hear it? Dont you remember? But that was an important moment! I thought we shared it Dont you love me anymore?) Besides, the song is forever redeemed by the treatment it got in 1991 when someone goes though something like that, you just have to care for them …
The three songs that really got to me and made me think of it as a great album after all, were If Dogs Run Free, Three Angels and Father of Night. Im not positive that the scat singing in Dogs is great, but I know it makes me smile. And the choir on the other two heavenly! In fact, if Dylan ever wrote a heavenly line of music, its the two bars of dirty-winged angels song between the verses in Father of Night, or the very end of Three Angels.