Well, friends, Bob Dylan is back with us again. I don't know how long he intends to stay, but I didn't ask him. Didn't figure it was any of my business.
with it, and I must admit that if there is a major fault on the album, I haven't found it. Nor do I care to. This one comes easy, and that's what it's all about, isn't it? A newly re-discovered self-reliance is evident from the first measure to the last fadeout, the same kind of self-reliance that shocked the old-timers when this kid dared to say "Hey-hey Woody Guthrie,
I wrote you a song." That may have been his own modest (as it turns out in retrospect, anyway) way of saying "Here I am, world." Calling his latest outing
New Morning may very well be his way of saying, "I'm back."
But that's reading things into it already, and I'd like to get through this review without reading much into what's already there, because what's there is very impressive indeed, and needs no help from the likes of me. Instead, let's look at what is there, pausing now and again to comment on it.
To begin with, there's the cover. Dylan, looking like he's been through some rocky times, but confident. And the back cover, with Young Zimmerman and Victoria Spivey, self-appointed "Queen of the Blues," standing by her piano. He's holding a guitar that Big Joe Williams had just given him, and she is beaming up at him, immensely pleased. The look on his face seems to say, "I thought I could do it, and I could. Shit, man, I'm Bob Dylan, that's who I am." And indeed, that's who he was. And is.
"If Not For You" starts it all off. A kind of invocation to the muse, if you will, only this time, instead of crying "I want you so bad," he's celebrating the fact that not only has he found her, but they know each other well, and get strength from each other, depend on each other. 'Twas always thus, it seems, and the Kooperishly bouncy organ and brisk tempo go back a long ways.
Everyone seems to think that "Day of the Locusts" is about Dylan picking up his degree at Princeton, but it could as easily be any kid in this day and age, perplexed, uptight, and not a little unnerved by this juncture of his life, graduating from college. But putting all that aside, musically, this is where the whole thing gets off the ground. Dylan makes his first appearance here playing piano (piano cuts wisely ticked off on the cover, probably by Kooper who knows a great keyboard artist when he hears one, and who hears one in Dylan), and the entire production, from the locust organ discord to the subtly mixed-down vocal backup, is just fine. This cut sounds like a lot of work was put into it, which is a break from Dylan's usual studio practice of doing a song about twice and leaving it at that.
