DYLAN '73

Original Released on LP Columbia PC 32747
(US 1973, November 16)

Maybe this should be retitled "Bob Johnston's Revenge". What is most astonishing about this album is that at one point Dylan seriously intended some of these tracks for release. They certainly provided Columbia with some blackmail material a few years down the tracks. Even so, Dylan seemed more amused than affronted. These were songs, «not to be used. I thought it was well understood. They were just to warm up for a tune. I didn't think it was that bad really!» Rolling Stone's review was damning, an album 'guaranteed to net only horselaughs'. Giving it the title "Dylan", as if it were his definitive statement, merely added insult to injury. When Dylan returned to Columbia he quietly demanded its deletion, the only album to suffer this treatment other than what many think is the equally wretched "Down in the Groove" although it did surface briefly as a UK-only CD. However, as the more fair-minded have pointed out, Dylan alone is not to blame. Michael Gray's review for Let It Rock nailed it at the time, 'basically the album has been given an horrendous re-mix by some anonymous apeman who plainly has the hots for all the girls in the chorus'. 

On "Lily of the West", a harpsichord is reduced to 'an irritating little tinkle at the edge of one speaker'. And Gray does not exaggerate one iota when he describes the hatchet job on "Sarah Jane". The song 'has a very muggy, boomy, indistinct sound, yet the girls come in as clear as a bell. You can almost hear the click as they're switched on at the start of each chorus'. As for the cover of this album - now far more rare and sought after on CD than on vinyl - both front and back are versions of the same photograph by Al Clayton, with Dylan bent forward in contemplation. Or maybe about to throw up having heard the record. On the front - a serigraph by Richard Kenerson - this seems to have had paint tipped down it, and on the back it is marbled like an old book, for which John Berg takes credit. Both have a certain  mausoleum-like quality, as if Dylan has been embalmed. Given the circumstances in which this album was both issued and then deleted, that would seem extremely appropriate. (Brian Hinton)