Bob Dylan's most underrated tunes
(CBS) Happy birthday to Bob Dylan! The iconic singer-songwriter (and multi-instrumentalist) who changed popular music as we know it turns 70 Tuesday. And what can we say about him that hasn't already been said? Not much.
So here we offer a list of 10 of Dylan's most underrated songs. We all know the classics - "Masters of War," "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," "Hurricane," to name a few. The songs listed here represent tunes that span his entire career that sometimes get clipped by more famous pieces of work.
Most of these songs fall into Dylan's so-called difficult period - that is, post-"Desire" and pre-"Time Out of Mind." The early stuff - even the album tracks - is mostly revered and his later work is seen as an artist's resurgence.
What are your favorite underrated Dylan tunes? Let us know in the comments.
"The Man in Me" from "New Morning" (1970)
Dylan sounds downright exuberant during this song's opening, singing over and over, "La la la la la la la la la," as he's backed up by nimble bass, a piano bashing out chords and an organ playing a countermelody. If this tune sounds familiar, you've probably seen "The Big Lebowski" more than once.
"The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" from "Shot of Live" (1981)
This bluesy rocker is one of the few truly great tracks on the otherwise underwhelming "Shot of Love," the last album in Dylan's overtly religious series of records that began with "Slow Train Coming" and includes "Saved." The song wasn't on the album's first pressing but was later included when the record was manufactured for CD.
The track features a sharp Dylan vocal, blistering slide guitar and an awkward lyric - "East of the Jordan, hard as the Rock of Gibraltar/I see the burning of the page, Curtain risin' on a new age/See the groom still waitin' at the altar" - that he manages to pull off through the sheer force of his delivery.
"Jokerman" from "Infidels" (1983)
Critics call this Dylan's first secular album after the born again trilogy, but this track contains plenty of religious imagery and a great reference to a small dog licking your face.
Dylan co-produced "Infidels" with Mark Knopfler and the Dire Straits frontman's steady hand in the studio is evident throughout this reggae-influenced track - and the entire album. Dylan did a fiery, rocking live version of this song on "Late Night with David Letterman" in 1984.
"Oxford Town" from "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" (1963)
This quiet number about racism in the South from Dylan's second album features just the singer and his guitar. The reason it doesn't get more attention is probably because it's short, simple and to the point and appears on the same album as "Blowin' in the Wind," "Girl from the North Country" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall."
"True Love Tends to Forget" from "Street-Legal" (1978)
"Street-Legal" doesn't get the respect it deserves, but how could it? The album followed "Blood on the Tracks," "The Basement Tapes," "Desire" and the Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
The track opens with a fade-in and then Dylan's vocal, as if the band were jamming on the slow groove and waiting for the singer to launch into the first verse. The horns are big, the message simple (a couple having a falling out), the vocals weary. This song would be great live but according to Dylan's website, it's never been featured on a tour.
"Series of Dreams" from "Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3" (1991)
This song was recorded for one of Dylan's many "comeback" albums, "Oh Mercy" (1989). Dylan played the song live but it was relegated to bootlegs until it made it on an official bootleg in 1991.
Typical of some Daniel Lanois productions in the '80s, "Series of Dreams" features an understated vocal, an insistent, thumping rhythm track, heavily processed guitars buried in the mix and lots and lots of keyboards. The production is more akin to Lanois' work with U2 than Dylan.
"Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" from "Together Through Life" (2009)
Sure, this song was featured in the promo campaign for HBO's "True Blood" and the song's swampy instrumentation fits the show well. But to hear only :30 of it is a bummer and after the critical brouhaha surrounding "Love and Theft" and "Modern Times," "Together Through Life" gets short shrift.
Dylan's voice is so ragged and broken it sounds like it could cut glass. The guitar is a standout and the lyrics, which Dylan wrote with Robert Hunter, seize on the idea that it's a couple against the world. In the video, it's a couple vs. itself, as a man and a woman beat the hell out of each other.
"Seeing the Real You at Last" from "Empire Burlesque" (1985)
The '80s were a tough time for Dylan fans. Every time the guy put out an album like "Infidels" he'd turn around and give you "Empire Burlesque," which is about as bad as it gets.
If you can get past the thoroughly glistening '80s production - there are no hard edges here - "Seeing the Real You at Last" is a decent track. The horns accent the vocals in the right places and there's good session work from the Heartbreakers' Mike Campbell on guitar and Benmont Tench on keyboards.
"Can't Wait" from "Time Out of Mind" (1997)
The excellent "Time Out of Mind" album is so consistent and all-enveloping, by the time you get to "Can't Wait," the second-to-last track, you may need a break.
Push through: The peppery drums, bass and atmospheric guitars bring to mind a tired band giving its last bits of energy to close a set that's left them spent and ragged. The lyrics - "I can't wait, wait for you to change your mind/It's late, I'm trying to walk the line" - feel like that, too.
"When You Gonna Wake Up" from "Slow Train Coming" (1979)
This song, buried on side two of Dylan's first evangelical album, is an uneasy mix of tempos, going back and forth from a half-time groove in the verses to a fast rock beat in the choruses.
Whether the shifting tempos indicate any kind of shifting consciousness on Dylan's part from secular songwriter to born-again songwriter is anyone's guess, but the track contains some great organ by Barry Beckett and rhythm by Dire Straits' then-drummer Pick Withers. And though Dylan more or less renounced his born-again phase later in life, here he sounds as if he really means it.