Nashville Skyline by Bob Dylan
 

This is a thread to talk about Bob Dylan`s well-known album:-

This album was recently selected by the Folk And International Roots Album Club, but, of course everybody`s comments are welcome.

So, what do you think ? How does this album compare with Bob`s other work ? It`s an old album; has it dated well, does it bring back memories for you ? What are the best or worst things about it ? If you`d been in the studio with Bob at the time, would you have had any advice for him ?

Another question is, can anybody upload an image of it for us ? :laughing:

c/o wikipedia

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lleSkyline.jpg


I did enjoy this album. I found myself tapping my feet to some amiable tunes. I can't say Dylan's vocals were a selling point and on some tracks he nearly lost me but overall not a bad listen.

it's lurvely

and i think the voice he adopted for this album is beautiful (he only sang like that again on a coupla songs off Self-Portrait)

my only gripe? it's too short (a little under 40 minutes)

Agree with Il Duce. A lovely album. My fave track is "Tonight I'll Be Staying here With You". I love his voice on this album- wish he sang like that more often
Some great picking.
This would probably be in my Top 5 Dylan Albums. My Top 5 Dylan would run something like this:
1.DESIRE
2.JOHN WESLEY HARDING
4.NASHVILLE SKYLINE
5.BOB DYLAN
Just about in there would be "NEW MORNING"

top 5 dylan?

that's like asking my fave brand of chocolate

at the mo':-

John Wesley Harding
Oh Mercy
Time Out of Mind
Shot of Love
New Morning

Throw my ticket out the window !
 

The elements that attracted me to Dylan in the first place, the folk purist with exceptional lyrics, have pretty much disappeared on this album, but I still fell in love with it immediately. Dylan`s new-found mellow delivery helped me through a rather lonely period in my life, so I completely agree with Moshe:-

Personal favourites would be Girl of the North Country, I threw it all away and Tonight I`ll be staying here with you.

^ To answer my own question, after he recorded Country Pie and Peggy Day, I would have told him straight, "Come on Bob, you can do better than that! Go home and don`t come back until you`ve written something more substantial."


^ Aha ! The contentious topic of our favourite Dylans ! My favs might be:-

1. Freewheelin`
2. John Wesley
3. Nashville Skyline
4. Blood on the Tracks
5. Desire
6. Street Legal
7. Bootleg volumes 1-3

I`m surprised that New Morning is appearing in the favourite lists. Did it have some great tracks that I`ve forgotten ?

it has a soothing rustic vibe about it

Day of the Locusts is one of his best songs

Yes, I like the pastoral quality of New Morning. Title cut is an example & "Time Passes Slowly".
"Went To See The Gypsy" is a fine song, reputedly about meeting Elvis
I also like the mellowness of "Winterlude" & the "free jazz" vide of "If Dogs Run free"

^ Thanks, guys, you`re right.
It does have a laid-back, "rustic vibe" which is quite charming, and unusual for Dylan. This cover of Time Passes Slowly, for instance, shows what a surprisingly tender song Dylan wrote :-



I also remember Sign In A Window as having some beautiful piano playing in it - so it`s an album you`ve convinced me to re-visit. :)

yeah Sign in a Window is great

Nashville skyline is a great album. He had a good lead guitarist for that one. Girl from the north country with johnny cash is great. I think new morning is without a doubt one of his best. Such a great and unique style of music on that album. Sign on the window is great. I really like the man in me. Every song on that album is great. I think planet waves is a really underrated album. Its one of my favorites. Its the only studio album he made with the band. Something there is about you is one of my favorite all time songs. I strongly recommend that album if you havent heard it. A few of the songs on it arent so good, but the ones that are good are amazing.

I'm probably more partial to something like his Blonde on Blonde album.

That`s interesting; Blonde on Blonde certainly has it`s admirers, though I`m not particularly one of them.

Have you checked out this thread yet ?
http://www.musicbanter.com/rock-n-ro...trinity-3.html

i love Blonde on Blonde but it's overplayed for me and i don't think i'll listen to it again for another 20 yrs

To be honest I wouldn't call myself a Dylan fan. Before Nashville Skyline was nominated for this thread I hadn't really listened to any of his albums. Now I've given a few of his albums a listen I'd say Blonde on Blonde followed by Blood on the Tracks are my favourites so far.

Blonde on Blonde is good, but not one of his best. I dont see how it is overplayed, maybe rainy day women is. Visions of johana is great and stuck inside of mobile are some of my favorite songs. Sad eyed lady of the lowlands is a masterpiece.

overplayed by me

as i put it on one too many times

i hear ya. dylan is hard to overplay for me, but it happens. Ive worn out the freewheelin, but i still listen to it from time to time. what do you think of the planet waves album?

i like it, it's pretty underrated

although I must say the best version of Forever Young is the acoustic demo on Biograph

Very underrated. Something there is about you is one of my favorite dylan songs. Im not sure if ive heard that version. Ill have to check it out. I like the upbeat version on planet waves better than the really slow, drawn out version on the same album.

Going Going Gone is my fave song off that album

the acoustic demo of Forever Young is kinda like his pre-electric stuff, that's why i like it, i guess

Going, going, gone is great. I think dirge is one of his best songs. Great lyrics. Great pounding rhythm on the piano. Unbelievable guitar playing from robbie robertson. Damn, i love the band!

I love the ay that Dylan's voice has evolved over the decades. The funereal rasp of his recent albums is perfectly fitted to the dark tone of his songs - though it makes his in-concert performances pretty hard to listen to. I resolved not to go see him again after his last london show. I've seen him maybe eight times, but now you have to guess what songs he is singing.

Nashville Skyline has him at his armest and most sonorous.

^ :laughing: Oh dear! Sounds like going to a Dylan concert these days is just an act of homage to the good old days. I´ve only seen him a couple of times - the best being at Earl´s Court when Street Legal had just come out.

Any comments on Tempest, Prospero ? I enthused about it here, http://www.musicbanter.com/country-f...bob-dylan.html , but oddly enough, haven´t played the album since.

Nashville Skyline is great. I dig it. It is not serious, nut most of the songs are catchy. It goes to show how Bob never was only about music. He is a good melodist (or a good thief) or most likely both.
Come to think how many memorable melodies he have stolen or written? I would say that if we take other singer-songwriters like Leonard Cohen, Bob's melodies are great when you compare them with those. Seems like, after all, every good Dylan song includes some memorable musical twist, so he is not all about lyrics, after all.

I have no problems with Bob's voice on records but when he plays live, it's awful. Those old songs don't work at all nowadays. I don't know what happened to his voice, he should have done something for it.
Back in the sixties, his voice, contrary to rumors, was great. I can't get the opinion of some folks that he was a bad singer. He stayed usually in tune, he was able to express many different kind of emotions, he could change his tone when needed and he sounded humane. All that a great singer needs. Maybe not technically perfect, but the most important part of music is NOT on the notes and music is not about technical ability, it's about, well, something far greater than that.

Nashville Skyline had a huge impact on the direction of popular music when it was released in 1969. At the time, Dylan & the Los Angeles rock group the Byrds were the only artists experimenting with country music.

At the time I was in high school playing in a rock band and Dylan was a scheduled guest on The Johnny Cash Show. I can still recall the entire show vividly. We all gathered around a portable black & white television in renovated barn we used as a rehearsal space. Dylan sang two songs from Nashville Skyline: Lay Lady Lay, and Girl From the North Country which was a duet with Johnny Cash.

Dylan had cut off his wild looking hair-do and was dressed like a country gentleman, not in his usual bohemian style of dress. He dressed like he was on his way to an appearance on the Grand Ol' Opry. It was scary but Dylan almost looked like a clone of Johnny Cash, both in appearance and stage manner.

Later in the show a little known folk singer named Joni Mitchell made her national television debut singing a song titled Both Sides Now. We were completely enthralled. Watching that show also got me interested in the music of Johnny Cash, who was completely under the radar for rock and rollers in 1969.

I went to YouTube to check to see if my memory of that 1969 Dylan appearance on the Johnny Cash Show was accurate. We took a lot of drugs in those days and sometimes your memory plays tricks on you.... But the performance was exactly how I remembered it:



Nashville Skyline was a good album, but not nearly as good as some earlier albums when Dylan was at the peak of songwriting talents. This was the mellow Bob Dylan, and as a matter of personal taste, I preferred the angry Dylan who sang songs like Like A Rolling Stone, Masters of War & Positively Fourth Street.

I've seen Dylan at every stage of his career and I'm partial to the old Dylan. The first time I saw Dylan was in March of 1966, when my father took me to a Dylan concert at Kiel Opera House in St. Louis. My father was a huge Dylan fan and he listened to Dylan when I was still in elementary school.

His voice was much better in 1966 and his concerts were very long. In the Kiel Opera House concert he played about an hour and half of acoustic solo music and then returned with a band (which was actually The Band without Levon Helm playing drums) and played another hour and half of electric music. I didn't know it at the time, but this was the American leg of an international concert tour, where Dylan was notoriously booed in London for playing with a rock and roll band. The previous summer Dylan was also booed at the Newport Folk Festival for playing rock and roll.

In St. Louis there was no booing and the reception for the rock and roll portion of the show was wildly enthusiastic. Maybe St. Louisians were musically unsophisticated and didn't keep up with the latest controversies about folk rock, but I think by that time there was a growing acceptance of Dylan's rock music vision everywhere across the globe.

Yes, Taxman, I completely agree; he could write a decent melody, and I feel the same as you about his voice too. I always liked the way he seemed put being passionate above being pretty - given how many peole were singing at the time, that was quite a bold stance, but it really made his material stand out from the crowd.

That`s a great vignette from your younger days, Gavin B ! For me as well, it was Nashville Skyline that introduced me to the name of Johnny Cash. That same summer (when I was listening to Nashville Skyline once a day minimum), they showed Johnny Cash Live From San Quentin on tv one evening, but I don`t think the Johnny Cash Show ever turned up on British tv, so the clip was very interesting. Bob looks pretty relaxed, though he must have known that thousands of die-hard fans would be watching in disbelief. As you say, he`s like a Cash clone.

I`m not entirely convinced about this, though. Weren`t plenty of people exploring the border between rock and country? I don`t know for sure, but I think people like Rick Nelson, Roy Orbison, The Holy Modal Rounders had a foot in both camps. Sure, with his talent and charisma, Dylan was able to turn people`s attention to country rock, but my feeling is that it was there already. Dylan gets enough accolades as it is; let`s hear it for some of the lesser talents too.

(PS. Well done St. Loius, for not being outraged at Dylan`s "betrayal". What a concert that must`ve been. Made me think of when I saw Neil Young, who also played a long acoustic set followed by some raise-the-roof rock.)