Bob Dylan's ninth album poses fewer mysteries and yet, paradoxically, offers greater rewards than any of his previous work. Its only difficulties aren't metaphysical or interpretative—indeed, the beauty and openness within is kept almost rigorously simple in genre—but rather those of taking the artist's new-found happiness and maturity for exactly what they appear to be. That smiling
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face on the cover tells all—and isn't it wonderful?
Most obviously, Nashville Skyline continues Dylan's rediscovered romance with rural music (here complete with a more suitable, subtle "country" voice). The new LP represents a natural progression, both historically and emotionally, from the folk-music landscapes of John Wesley Harding into the more modern country-and-western worlds of Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, and Jerry Lee Lewis.
In Harding, Dylan superimposed a vision of intellectual complexity onto the warm, inherent mysticism of Southern Mountain music, rather like certain French directors (especially Jean-Luc Godard) who have taken American gangster movies and added to them layers of 20th-century philosophy. The effect is not unlike Jean-Paul Sartre playing the five-string banjo. The folk element gains a Kafka-esque chimericality, and the philosophy a bedrock simplicity that leaves it all but invisible and thus easy to assimilate. "Down Along the Cove" and "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," exceptions to the above and the record's last two songs, are almost a microcosm of the geography to come.
Nashville Skyline is a jewel of construction with three distinct beginnings. The much-anticipated guitar-and-vocal duet with Johnny Cash, a stately and beautiful rendition of "Girl from the North Country," is a thoughtful bonus to the listener, a musical postcard to an old Minnesota love, and a reminder that Dylan has always been capable of tenderness. The song's most painful verse—"Many times I've often prayed/In the darkness of my night"—has been deleted here.
The second beginning—or, if you prefer, an intermission in which each performer gets a chance to solo—"Nashville Skyline Rag," serves as an instrumental introduction to the album's excellent personnel: Kenny Buttrey, Charlie McCoy, Pete Drake, Norman Blake, Charlie Daniels, and Bob Wilson. It's country music at its joyful, shit-kicking best.
Dylan finally announces the LP's "real" beginning, "To Be Alone With You," when he asks producer Bob Johnston, "Is it rolling, Bob?" Unlike the Beatles, he may not want to take us home with him, but he makes it quite clear that what follows should be viewed as a personal confrontation: "Everything is always all right/When I'm alone with you."
"I Threw It All Away," the first of the record's three classic love songs, couples a haunting melody and magnificent singing to the hard-won realization that "Love is all we need/It makes
