Bob Dylan – ‘New Morning’
What does the voice of a generation do when it gets tired of spewing bile for everyone else’s sake? It goes on holiday and soaks in the beauty of introspective spiritualism for a while. As Bob Dylan howls on the title track, “So happy just to be alive underneath the sky of blue,” he is delivering the mantra of New Morning—his second chapter. Dylan’s cathartic release is ours to share as he gives away his peace in a bellow of sonic bliss and asks for nothing in return.
However, sustaining bliss ain’t easy—just take a look at the suddenly saddened faces in a holiday departures lounge. Content involves constant work and careful balance. Dylan elucidates this point with one of the greatest opening lines in music history. In the beauteous song ‘Sign on the Window’ he begins proceedings with a verse that illuminates the dichotomy of his condition: “Sign on the window says ‘Lonely’ / Sign on the door said ‘No Company Allowed’…” In essence, is cutting himself off from the world for his sanity worth the isolation that comes with it?
While for Dylan, this disjunction might be about the troubles of fame, like the rest of the album, it holds a hell of a lot of universality for all of us. Though on the surface, the knowledge that the company that comes with fame is bad but the loneliness of self-imposed solitude is worse, is a very specific notion, in a spiritual sense, loneliness versus the fear of taking the first steps against it is a battle that resonates with us all.
As a result, the song winds up being a touching lament about the tricky business of living rather than the moans of a weary star. In true Dylan style, he is somehow at his most personal and most connective simultaneously. What’s more, he houses this all in an expressionist vignette—lord knows why, but I’ll be damned if you don’t picture some Western outhouse window displaying the contrasting words on hand-painted signs.
This scene shows the depth to his songwriting, but what makes him one of the greatest artists of all time is the fact that he ventures into this territory in the first place. Most albums that set out to be escapist reveries wouldn’t have the courage to mention the predicament of elusive contentment everlasting, but Dylan’s one of the most cognisant artists of all time, and he’s not willing to be phone even when offering up a record that assails the joys of a spiritual spring. He might have disavowed politics here in search of something sunnier, but he hasn’t abandoned the truth.
In many ways, the album’s rejection of any political connotations and ever-deepening existential introspection upheld an even grander universal truth than his earlier works within the rapidly modernising world: society at large may underpin freedom, but our lives are not governed by circumstance and even less so politics, but rather how we experience the world. Get away from it all and take some time just to be calm and happy—even if it’s just ‘looking out your backdoor’ as Credence Clearwater Revival sang a few months before.
In New Morning, this simple and beautiful message soars to triumphant heights so lofty that even Dylan himself seems surprised, giving off a refreshed roar in the lilting refrains. He had been a complete unknown even when people were trying their darndest to define him and on New Morning he finally shrugs their grubby mitts off of his coattails and finds peace and a productive new page in the wilderness of creative freedom unburdened by public expectation.
That sense of liberation sends the notes skipping along as an R&B aura proves perfectly fitting for his tales of dancing over troubles. Finding himself invigorated in this new realm, he even has time to punctuate the epic romance of the ‘The Man in Me’ with a “la la la” chorus, touching on a truth only noticed in the moment you hear them: all the best choruses are simple “la la las” or “na na was” or some other unsprung repetition of melodic babbling. It’s the sort of mindless exultation that music is all about.
Backed by a band who send these songs to strange places with a welter of textures, New Morning has a gorgeous sense of power. So, even when things feel a touch corny on tracks like ‘Three Angels’ and the culturally appropriated pastiche of soul on ‘If Dogs Run Free’, you can forgive these blemishes because they seem to ride the same wave of artistic liberation. And Dylan’s deliverance from the weight of the world at large is as meaningful and pretty as anything he’s ever done providing us sinners with sweet, sweet, musical salvation.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.