Bob Dylan releases John Wesley Harding - TIMH

Bob Dylan released “John Wesley Harding”, his eighth album, today in 1967. Since being involved in a motorcycle accident in 1966, Dylan had been laying low at his house in Woodstock, New York. While recovering from his injuries, Dylan began recording tracks by himself as well as with a band that lived down the road. In a house called Big Pink, Dylan recorded multiple jam sessions with a band called the Hawks. The Hawks would soon be known as The Band and those sessions would become the infamous “Basement Tapes”.

In between all of this, Dylan found time to craft a dozen more songs that would comprise “John Wesley Harding”. Considering that the album would be Dylan’s highest charting album (#2) until 1974, these were not leftover songs but they did combine to make a rather unusual album. Dylan was trying to maintain a low profile and he convinced his record label to release only two singles, “All Along the Watchtower” and “Drifter’s Escape”. Both songs failed to crack the chart though “All Along the Watchtower” became a hit for Jimi Hendrix when he released a cover of the song six months later. It may be hard to believe but “Watchtower” was Hendrix’s only Top 20 single in the United States.

Despite the lack of hit singles, “John Wesley Harding” is revered as one of Dylan’s finest albums. He stripped down the instrumentation to a bare minimum – guitar, bass, drums, vocals, harmonica and a bit of steel guitar – and recorded the album quickly. The entire album was recorded in a 12 hour period over three days in Nashville. Dylan was in a period of trying to streamline his music and lyrics and there was a sparse economy to everything on the album. He consulted poet Allen Ginsberg to help tighten his lyrics and, in Ginsberg’s words, “he (Dylan) was writing shorter lines, with every line meaning something. He wasn't just making up a line to go with a rhyme anymore; each line had to advance the story, bring the song forward. There was no wasted language, no wasted breath. All the imagery was to be functional rather than ornamental."

Dylan achieved his goal of concise functionality as seven of the twelve songs were shorter than three minutes. Even at that short length, Dylan managed to tell impactful and memorable stories. So much so that, despite having no hits, a number of songs off the album have been covered time and time again. “John Wesley Harding” was a transitional album sandwiched between the “classic” Dylan album “Blonde on Blonde” from 1966 and the “country” Dylan album “Nashville Skyline”, which would be released in 1969, that in many ways eclipsed both its predecessor and successor.

Dylan had a bit of fun with the cover of the album. It’s not visible on the cover of the CD but if you own the album flip it upside down. Hidden in the lighter section of the tree bark are pictures of the Beatles. Dylan and the Beatles were pals but it has been suggested that this was Dylan tweaking their noses over the cover of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album that was released a few months prior.