#410 - Bob Dylan - Time Out of Mind (1997)
MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:
Released on September 30th of 1997 on Columbia Records and produced by Daniel Lanois this is the 30th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.
This is one of the most important figures in Popular Music of the last almost 60 years and there are going to be a whole lot more Bob Dylan records on here so let’s keep his early bio brief.
Born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941 by his teenage years he was playing in Rock and Roll bands.
By college he became enamored with the early American Folk Music scene, changed his name to Bob Dylan, and by the early ’60s became a vanguard of the movement. While dragging the Folk scene against its will into the electric ’60s he evolved into a Rock and Roll star. Over the last six decades he’s created a library of songs that have become American standards like, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “The Times They Are a-Changin’”, “Mr. Tamborine Man”, “Like a Rolling Stone”, “Just Like a Woman”, “Lay Lady Lay”, “All Along the Watchtower”, and “Masters of War.”
But despite so many career highs there were also some less successful moments.
Following 1990’s disappointingly received “Under the Red Sky” and a few albums of covers for his first record of originals in seven years Bob chose producer Daniel Lanois who had previously worked with him on 1989’s critically-acclaimed album, “Oh Mercy.”
Despite their less than perfect working relationship on that record Lanois met Dylan in a hotel room in 1996 to listen to his song demos and talk about the next album’s direction.
The skeletal song ideas were filled with what Dylan called, “the dread realities of life.”
Similar to “Blood On the Tracks”, his 1975 album about his break up with his first wife, Sara, some of the inspiration for much of this album is considered to be about his 1992 break up from his longtime back-up singer Carolyn Dennis. Despite having a baby with her and then marrying her in 1986 most fans and the media didn’t know anything about their relationship until a 2001 biography about him.
He asked Lanois to listen to old Rock and Roll and Blues records for a blueprint to the raw, direct, and simple vibe he wanted.
Despite once again butting heads with each other during the making of more song demos they finally went to Miami to record the album. Bob wanted to use a bunch of musicians often on the same instruments at the same time because he liked to hear them all around him in the studio while he stood about 4 feet from the microphone without wearing headphones.
He also got bored easily and wanted to move on to the next song quickly.
The conflicts continued but the results were undeniable. Dylan leaned into his 56 years’ worth of exploring the dark experiences of life.
While some critics thought Lanois’ characteristically ambient and hazy production often took too much of the spotlight the reception to this album was heralded as a return to form and set up his career resurgence to this day.
This won Grammys for Album of the Year (beating out Radiohead’s “OK Computer”), Best Contemporary Folk Album, and another for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.
Bob’s tried every style of music, acted, written books, painted and drawn, collaborated, won so many awards including a bunch of Grammys, an Oscar, a Golden Globe, the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
And this year he just put out his 39th studio album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways.”