Track Listing

1. Subterranean Homesick Blues
2. She Belongs To Me
3. Maggie's Farm
4. Love Minus Zero/No Limit
5. Outlaw Blues
6. On The Road Again
7. Bob Dylan's 115th Dream
8. Mr. Tambourine Man
9. Gates Of Eden
10. It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
11. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2261 in Music
• Released on: 2004-03-29
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
"You sound like you're having a good old time," a purist Dylan fan is spotted telling the artist in the documentary Don't Look Back just after the release of this, his first (half-) electric album. He certainly does. Updating Chicago blues forms with hilarious, tough lyrics--in fact, all but stealing the meter of Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" for "Subterranean Homesick Blues"--on one side, dropping some of his most devastating solo acoustic science ("It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", "Mr Tambourine Man") on the other, the first of Dylan's two 1965 long-players broke it right down with style, substance and elegance. --Rickey Wright

CD Description
Howls of rage greeted Dylan as he presented the world with folk rock--he was roundly booed at both the Newport Folk Festival and the Royal Albert Hall. Yet here is one of those moments of cross-influence that changed the course of popular music. BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME gave His Bobness an audience on a plate; it was a massive breakthrough. An album of twodifferent sides, acoustic (his past) and electric (his future), it contains milestones in the blues-rockers "Maggie's Farm" and "Subterranean Home Sick Blues", the future Byrds hit "Mr. Tambourine Man", and the transcendently poetic "It's Alright, Ma". You can debate the "is it folk or is it rock" arguement forever. It's merely Dylan at one of his many peaks.

Customer Reviews

One of his four best albums - and that's saying something!
From this distance it's hard to imagine the shock this must have caused when it first came out. Dylan's first four albums (all big sellers) had been entirely acoustic; just Bob on vocals, guitar and harmonica. This opens with the pounding, very plugged-in 'rap' Subterranean Homesick Blues and all at once with this ultimate crossover song, intelligent rock, artistic rock was born. The opening scene of Dylan's documentary the same year (Don't Look Back) also used this song to make it the first song to have what we would now call a video. Dylan's lyrics here are perfect, half-way between the impassioned beliefs of his folk protests and the beautiful nonsense of much of Blonde on Blonde.

Love Minus Zero/ No Limit is still for me the perfect love song, and I challenge you not to be moved as the album slips out of the bluesy-rock boisterousness to the more thoughtful atmosphere of pared-down voice and guitar. It is this second half that really makes the album. It's as if Dylan has just been entertaining you for half-an-hour, sits down and says "Now. Let me show you what I can do." There can be few songs in his canon more bitter than It's Alright Ma, and few more tender than It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, both made from the simplest of ingredients.

Dylan's peak
Few musicians in popular music have reached the creative zenith that Bob Dylan did in the mid-sixties. His musical imagination at that point was astonishing.
Even the most cursory listen today to "Bringing it all back home" is delightful. The wordplay and comic juxtapositions on the likes of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" demand to be analyzed, but in someways, examining it further misses the
surreal point.
His distinctive vocal style- simultaneously sad, joyous and anguished is something few artists have been capable of capturing. "It's Alright Ma" is perhaps the greatest of all his lyrical masterpieces, a pointed attack at our technically modern, yet spiritually undeveloped society, that needs nothing more than his guitar and harminica to accompany it. This is the first of the two albums he made in 1965 ("Highway 61 Revisited", the other)and ideally both should be listened to back to back to appreciate them in their full glory.

Dylan's best work
After owning this record and much of Dylan's other material from 62' - 76/7' for a few years now, Bringing It All Back Home is not only the Dylan album that appears most frequently in my record player, it is a CD which has become one of my most precious possessions. Blood On The Tracks, The Freewheelin', Blonde On Blonde and Highway 61 all take their place as the backbone of my collection, but i belive Dylan never topped his 1965 Bringing It All Back Home.

The Album was undoubtably a slap in the face to early Dylan loyalists - shocked to discover their idol employing an electric guitar, some thrashing drums (well almost), and a few energetic baselines. Furthermore, this record marks the birth of Dylan's abstract lyrics ('the lampost stands with folded arms') especially as it progresses.

It may also gain historical status for an album containing a fantastic progression. The composition, in rudimentary terms of the positioning of each number is quite remarkable. From the mumbling chaos of Subterranean Homesick Blues and the simplistic, untimely melody of Magie's Farm to the outstanding, warm, mind bendingly origional songs/lyrics of the likes of Gates of Eden, It's alright Ma & Baby Blue closing the record, it's a mind-boggeling beautiful creation, which is surely why ive felt so compelled to pen my first short review.

Finally the comedy of a couple of middle album tracks should probably have a mention. As most people know, Dylan can tell a powerful story in his song, but unlike much of his early (or later) protest tunes these are more comic, surreal and encapsulating. Once any of these tracks start up and conversation i hold with friends dies a quick detah and i'm forced to direct all my attention to the story and the poet. Great stuff.