Bringing It All Back Home, the fifth studio album by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, was released by Columbia Records on March 22, 1965 — 58 years ago today.
The album is divided into an electric and an acoustic side. On side one of the original LP, Dylan is backed by an electric rock and roll band — a move that further alienated him from some of his former peers in the folk song community.
Likewise, on the acoustic second side of the album, he distanced himself from the protest songs with which he had become closely identified (such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall"), as his lyrics continued their trend towards the abstract and personal.
The album reached #6 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart, the first of Dylan's LPs to break into the U.S. Top 10. The lead-off track, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," became Dylan's first single to chart in the U.S., peaking at #39.
One of Dylan's most celebrated albums, Bringing It All Back Home, was soon hailed as one of the greatest albums in rock history. In the 1979 Rolling Stone Record Guide, critic Dave Marsh wrote a glowing appraisal:
"By fusing the Chuck Berry beat of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles with the leftist, folk tradition of the folk revival, Dylan really had brought it back home, creating a new kind of rock & roll [...] that made every type of artistic tradition available to rock."
Clinton Heylin later wrote that Bringing It All Back Home was possibly "the most influential album of its era. Almost everything to come in contemporary popular song can be found therein."
Before the year was over, Dylan would record and release the album, Highway 61 Revisited, which would take his new lyrical and musical direction even further.
Here is Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
The Recording of Bob Dylan’s album, Bringing It All Back Home
Bob Dylan spent much of the summer of 1964 in Woodstock, New York. He was already familiar with the area, but his visits were becoming longer and more frequent. His manager, Albert Grossman, also had a place in Woodstock, and when Joan Baez went to see Dylan that August, they stayed at Grossman's house.
Baez recalls that "most of the month or so we were there, Bob stood at the typewriter in the corner of his room, drinking red wine and smoking and tapping away relentlessly for hours. And in the dead of night, he would wake up, grunt, grab a cigarette and stumble over to the typewriter again."
Dylan already had one song ready for his next album. "Mr. Tambourine Man" was written in February, 1964, but omitted from Another Side of Bob Dylan.
Another song, "Gates of Eden," was also written earlier that year, appearing in the original manuscripts to Another Side of Bob Dylan. A few lyrical changes were eventually made, but it's unclear if these were made that August in Woodstock.
At least two songs were written that month: "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)."
During this time, Dylan's lyrics became increasingly surreal. His prose grew more stylistic as well, often resembling stream-of-consciousness writing with published letters dating from 1964 becoming increasingly intense and dreamlike as the year wore on.
Dylan eventually returned to the city, and on August 28, he met with The Beatles for the very first time in their New York hotel (during which Dylan reportedly turned the band on to marijuana), a meeting which would bring about the radical transformation of the Beatles' writing to a more introspective style. Dylan would remain on good terms with The Beatles.
Dylan and producer, Tom Wilson, were soon experimenting with their own fusion of rock and folk music. The first unsuccessful test involved overdubbing a "Fats Domino early rock & roll thing" over Dylan's earlier, acoustic recording of "House of the Rising Sun," according to Wilson.
This took place in the Columbia 30th Street Studio in December, 1964. It was quickly discarded, though Wilson would more famously use the same technique of overdubbing an electric backing track to an existing acoustic recording with Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence."
In the meantime, Dylan turned his attention to another folk-rock experiment conducted by John P. Hammond, an old friend and musician whose father, John H. Hammond, originally signed Dylan to Columbia.
Hammond was planning an electric album around the blues songs that framed his acoustic live performances of the time. To do this, Hammond recruited three members of an American bar band he met sometime in 1963: guitarist Robbie Robertson, drummer Levon Helm and organist Garth Hudson (members of The Hawks, who would go on to become The Band).
Dylan was very aware of Hammond’s resulting album, So Many Roads, according to his friend, Danny Kalb. "Bob was really excited about what John Hammond was doing with electric blues,” Kalb recalled. “I talked to him in the Figaro in 1964 and he was telling me about John and his going to Chicago and playing with a band and so on..."
However, when Dylan and Wilson began work on the next album, they temporarily refrained from their own electric experimentation. The first session, held on January 13, 1965 in Columbia's Studio A in New York, was recorded solo, with Dylan playing piano or acoustic guitar.
Ten complete songs and several song sketches were produced, nearly all of which were discarded. Three of these songs would eventually be released: "I'll Keep It With Mine" on 1985's Biograph, and "Farewell Angelina" and an acoustic version of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" on 1991's The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991.
Other songs and sketches recorded at this session: "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream," "She Belongs To Me," "Sitting On A Barbed-Wire Fence," "On The Road Again,” "If You Gotta Go, Go Now," "You Don't Have To Do That" and "Outlaw Blues" — all of which were original compositions.
Dylan and Wilson held another session at Studio B the following day, this time with a full, electric band. Guitarists Al Gorgoni, Kenny Rankin and Bruce Langhorne were recruited, as were pianist Paul Griffin, bassists Joseph Macho, Jr. and William E. Lee, and drummer Bobby Gregg.
The day's work focused on eight songs, all of which had been attempted the previous day. According to Langhorne, there was no rehearsal, "we just did first takes and I remember that, for what it was, it was amazingly intuitive and successful."
Few takes were required of each song, and after three-and-a-half hours of recording (lasting from 2:30 pm to 6:00 pm), master takes of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Outlaw Blues," "She Belongs to Me" and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" were all recorded and selected for the final album.
Sometime after dinner, Dylan reportedly continued recording with a different set of musicians, including Hammond and John Sebastian (only Langhorne returned from earlier that day). They recorded six songs, but the results were deemed unsatisfactory and ultimately rejected.
Another session was held at Studio A the next day, and it would be the last one needed. Once again, Dylan kept at his disposal the musicians from the previous day (that is, those that participated in the 2:30 to 6:00 p.m. session). The one exception was pianist Paul Griffin, who was unable to attend and was replaced by Frank Owens.
Daniel Kramer recalls "the musicians were enthusiastic. They conferred with one another to work out the problems as they arose. Dylan bounced around from one man to another, explaining what he wanted, often showing them on the piano what was needed until, like a giant puzzle, the pieces would fit and the picture emerged whole. Most of the songs went down easily and needed only three or four takes.
“In some cases, the first take sounded completely different from the final one because the material was played at a different tempo, perhaps, or a different chord was chosen, or solos may have been rearranged. His method of working, the certainty of what he wanted, kept things moving."
The session began with "Maggie's Farm." Only one take was recorded, and it was the only one they'd ever need. A master take of "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" was also selected, but it would not be included on the album. Instead, it was issued as a single-only release in Europe, but not in the U.S. or the UK.
Though Dylan was able to record electric versions of virtually every song included on the final album, he apparently never intended Bringing It All Back Home to be completely electric.
As a result, roughly half of the finished album would feature full electric band arrangements while the other half consisted of solo acoustic performances, sometimes accompanied by Langhorne, who would embellish Dylan's acoustic performance with a countermelody on his electric guitar.
The album's cover, photographed by Daniel Kramer with an edge-softened lens, features Sally Grossman (wife of Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman) lounging in the background. (Grossman died on the night of March 10–11, 2021, at her home in the Bearsville area of Woodstock. She was 81.)
There are also artifacts scattered around the room, including LPs by The Impressions (Keep on Pushing), Robert Johnson (King of the Delta Blues Singers), Ravi Shankar (India's Master Musician), Lotte Lenya (Sings Berlin Theatre Songs by Kurt Weill) and Eric Von Schmidt (The Folk Blues of Eric Von Schmidt).
Dylan had "met" Schmidt "one day in the green pastures of Harvard University" and would later mimic his album cover pose (tipping his hat) for his own Nashville Skyline four years later.
A further record, Françoise Hardy's EP J'suis D'accord, was on the floor near Dylan's feet, but can only be seen in other shots from the same photo session.
Dylan sits forward holding his cat (named “Rolling Stone”) and has an opened magazine featuring an advertisement on Jean Harlow's Life Story by the columnist Louella Parsons resting on his crossed leg. The cufflinks Dylan wore in the picture were a gift from Joan Baez, as she later referenced in her 1975 song, "Diamonds & Rust."
The black and white pamphlet lying across Time magazine with President Johnson on the cover is a publication of the Earth Society, then located on East 12th Street in the East Village. The Earth Society saw its mission as protecting earth from collisions with comets and planets.
On the back cover, the girl massaging Dylan's scalp is the filmmaker and performance artist, Barbara Rubin.