{"id":40691,"date":"2008-01-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/john-wesley-harding-2\/"},"modified":"2008-01-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-12T00:00:00","slug":"john-wesley-harding-2","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/john-wesley-harding-2\/","title":{"rendered":"John Wesley Harding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Dylan\u2019s motorcycle careened out of control on July 29, 1966<\/st1:date> and slammed the singer to the ground. Dylan retreated to Woodstock<\/st1:city>, New York<\/st1:state><\/st1:place> to recover. While recovering, he found time to record some tunes at home with the Band, make plans for his next album and probably read the Bible. <\/p>\n

Traveling to Nashville<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> to record, Dylan was backed by only veteran country artists Charley McCoy on bass, Ken Buttrey on drums and Pete Drake on steel guitar. What emerged from all this was the stark, sparse, apocalyptic yet strangely beautiful John Wesley Harding. <\/i><\/p>\n

John Wesley Harding <\/i>is now viewed as the beginning of Dylan\u2019s move away from his earlier sound. The songs were compact and, for the most part, more to the point that something like, say, \u201cBallad Of A Thin Man.\u201d Biblical imagery made several appearances in the lyrics. The result was one of the more surprising and revelatory albums of Bob Dylan\u2019s career. <\/p>\n

Side one of John Wesley Harding <\/i>contains a lot of scriptural imagery. \u201cI Dreamed I Saw St.<\/st1:address><\/st1:street> Augustine\u201d finds the narrator receiving a vision from the early Christian bishop. \u201cThe Ballad Of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest\u201d is a morality tale about temptation. Whether Dylan ever experienced temptation on this level is unknown, but he makes it seem convincing regardless.<\/p>\n

Oddly, one of Dylan\u2019s signature songs contained on this album is one his few songs not to be associated with him. Jimi Hendrix took out Dylan\u2019s biblical references, re-routed the chord structure, cracked up his psychedelic guitar and turned \u201cAll Along The Watchtower\u201d into one of his own songs — yet in its own way, Dylan\u2019s original is just as compelling.<\/p>\n

Side two features a number of songs featuring the downtrodden and marginalized of society. \u201cDrifters Escape,\u201d \u201cDear Landlord,\u201d \u201cI Am A Lonesome Traveler\u201d and \u201cI Pity The Poor Immigrant\u201d all talk about struggle, trial and tribulation of the individual. Dylan\u2019s protest against society tended to express itself in the stories of these types of individuals. Even the title and leadoff song of the album features just such a person; John Wesley Harding himself may have been an unsympathetic 19th century killer, but he fit the mold of a person that Dylan would lament. <\/p>\n

Despite the struggles and imagery of the first 10 songs, John Wesley Harding <\/i>closes on a positive and sensitive note. Both \u201cDown Along The Cove\u201d and \u201cI\u2019ll Be Your Baby Tonight\u201d are love songs. For Dylan, in 1967, love and ultimately hope were not dead. <\/p>\n

John Wesley Harding <\/i>presents a deeper, ageless and eternal Bob Dylan and finds this album, 40 years after its release, one of the crowning achievements of his career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":29157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5866],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-40691","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-bob-dylan","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40691"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}