“I really thought I was through”: the era that made Bob Dylan want to quit making music
It’s every artist’s choice whether they want to continue making music or not. As much as people like the idea of being the traveling musician that keeps moving from town to town and leaving their mark however they can, there are always going to be those moments when time catches up with them or they are starting to lose the love of their craft and start treating everything like it’s a job. Bob Dylan usually never had to worry about such things when he did whatever he wanted, but he wasn’t safe from a few times when everything started to go dim in terms of creativity.
But it’s hard to think of Dylan as the kind of person who simply hangs it up after a while. No poet ever seems to give up the craft simply because they’re tired. There are always new avenues to work in, and looking at Dylan’s trajectory, there isn’t a single record in his catalogue that was meant to be anything more than a document of where he was at the time, even if it manages to resonate with a new generation.
When working on some of his later records in the 1970s, though, Dylan was almost trying to take some of the shine off of himself. Self Portrait was never exactly going to be welcomed with open arms in the same way that something like Highway 61 Revisited was, nor was it supposed to. He needed to take a step back, but albums like Blood on the Tracks were also introspective looks into the kind of person that he was underneath all of that rough-and-tumble mystique.
Around the time that he began making gospel records in the 1980s, though, it looked like things had turned a corner for him. He was no longer interested in making the same kind of revolutionary singles that he made back in the day, but it was also clear that some of his biggest fans didn’t want to be preached at in the same way that he was doing on records like Saved.
“I didn’t want to make any more.”
Bob Dylan
Although he did manage to have pristine production on some of his later 1980s records like Oh Mercy from people like Daniel Lanois, it wasn’t exactly breaking new ground in the same way his old records were. He was starting to look more like a relief in his mind, and for a while, he felt that the next decade was as good a time as any to hang things up and start making oldies records.
When discussing the early 1990s, Dylan felt that he might not have anything more to say, recalling, “I really thought I was through making records. I didn’t want to make any more. I thought, ‘I’ll make a couple more records and just have them be folk songs, in a really simplified way – no big production or anything.’ Beyond that, I didn’t want to record anymore. I was more concerned with what I do in personal appearances. It was clear to me I had more than enough songs to play.”
But had he decided to quit right there, that would have meant leaving a lot of his most personal music on the table. As much as his voice had changed over the years, hearing him make records like Time Out of Mind all the way to Rough and Rowdy Ways showed that he had a tremendous amount to give to the world aside from the traditional folk songs that appeared on his early 1990s records.
Or maybe he saw the way that everything had come full circle with The Travelling Wilburys and felt that it would be a good way to put a bow on his career. But as in the case of any great artist, they don’t simply stop because they want to. They can grow tired of the relentless process of recording and touring, but the hunger to make something new is always going to be there.
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