60 years ago today: Bob Dylan 'went electric' with Bringing It All Back Home

Originally published in Hot Press in 2021:

I remember seeing the wild-haired youth from Hibbing, Minnesota for the first time on BBC television way back when, in fiercely grainy black and white, and it was a pivotal moment. Here was someone who had stepped outside the confines of what was called pop music, to deliver songs of immense, imposing narrative power. Watching him, I was changed forever.

Songs too, with a profound sense of mystery. It is a quality that, almost uniquely, Bob Dylan has been able to sustain both in his work, and in what we know of him. Through all of the sometimes tortuous ups and downs of a remarkable –  and a remarkably successful – career, he has never forgotten the importance of keeping people guessing. No one can fully pin Bob Dylan down. Not even Bob himself, at times, one suspects.

I remember arguing with one of the more liberal and intelligent English teachers in school that someone like Bob Dylan should be on the English curriculum. I quoted 'Mr. Tambourine Man' enthusiastically to him and he acknowledged that it had a poetic quality, before insisting that we return to our contemplation of 'The Lady of Shalott', by Alfred Lord Tennyson, or something similarly twee and dated. I might have had the last laugh, when Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." But that was decades later in 2016. It took some people a long, long time to come around.

The acoustic Dylan of the early 1960s, breaking new ground with every record, was just the start of it. Bringing It All Back Home, on which 'Mr. Tambourine Man' featured, was split into electric and acoustic sides, and began with the immortal opening lines of 'Subterranean Homesick Blues', "Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine/ I'm on the pavement thinking about the government...", condensing a novel's worth of teeming imagery and chewable life advice into a mere two minutes and 21 seconds, before ending with the sorry news that "The pump don't work/ 'Cos the vandals took the handles." They're still at it too – and who can blame them?

It was epic, marvellously real and powerfully elusive. What did it all mean? There was never an easy answer to that question with Bob Dylan.

I still sing 'One Too Many Mornings', 'She Belongs To Me', 'It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry', 'I Want You', 'All Along The Watchtower', 'Lay Lady Lay', 'On A Night Like This', 'Hazel' – as you can see I loved the Band-aided Planet Waves –  'Simple Twist of Fate', and a whole bunch more. For me, Bob Dylan was always the Songwriter-In-Chief. He still is.

Listen to Bringing It All Back Home below: 

The extract above is taken from The Message (May 2021), marking Bob Dylan's 80th birthday. Read the full feature here.