The Dude Abides: Jeff Bridges picks the best albums of the 1960s
There are fictional characters in film history who we idolise. Despite the fact that we know they aren’t real and are just figments of a writer’s imagination, we end up abiding by the life mantra as opposed to maybe focusing on the writer themselves. Of all the dressing-gown-clad figures Jeff Bridges portrayed, there is one that turned him into a star. We’re referring, naturally, to ‘The Dude’.
The affable slacker of The Big Lebowski unwittingly gave a mantra of contemporary spiritualism to his audience to observe. Whether it was adopting ten-pin bowling as a hobby or passionately hating the Eagles, he laid down a blueprint for counterculture coolness.
While ‘The Dude’ was definitely fictional and an exaggeration of a character, there was also some part of him in Jeff Bridges. Alright, Bridges wanted to debunk rumours that he actually hated the Eagles himself, but he is also a great music enthusiast like ‘The Dude’. Bridges is even a musician himself, and he put out an album recently.
So his taste is analysed like ‘The Dude’s would be, and people are always curious about what drives him. Especially his take on the decade that was conducive to the sort of free-thinking attitude his character exhibited: the 1960s.
“Man, I just love Blonde On Blonde,” Bridges once told MusicRadar. “What an amazing album, all the way through. Of course, I’m into a lot of his records, really. I’ve been following Dylan from the beginning, all the folk stuff and then on to the electric stuff, Highway 61 Revisited, and everything else. It’s kind of mind-boggling.”
Bob Dylan’s album is undoubtedly a classic of the era, but one that was more steeped in the conventions of songwriting that everybody should love. From Bridges in the 1960s, we want something more psychedelic to satiate our appetite, which the next two albums certainly do. The first, however, doesn’t fill the void of surprise, as to many, it acts as the quintessential album of the decade.
Speaking of The Beatles, Bridges said, “They put out album after album too, but suddenly the gap between them got longer than usual,” says Jeff. “We were all expecting something from them, and when they finally put out Sgt Pepper, it was unlike anything we’d ever heard before – and unlike anything The Beatles had ever done before. A phenomenal record and achievement.”
Bridges’ recommendations continued to plunge further into the abstract, picking an album that all lovers of ‘The Dude’ would rejoice to hear. Moondog’s 1969 debut album plays into the contemporary worlds of classical music, following experimental lines of music that are quite simply perfect for sofa-backed nights of introspection. It is, without reducing its genuine merit, an album one would expect to be played by ‘The Dude’.
“I remember seeing him when I was a little kid, probably about 11 or 12,” Bridges remembered of Moondog. “He’d be across from the Hilton Hotel, passing out little leaflets, like, ‘Come to my concert.’ Through the years, whenever I’d come to New York, he was there, rain or shine – so now I’m talking when I was between the ages of 12 and 25. One day, I went into a record store, and I saw his picture on an album cover. I picked it up and looked at the liner notes, and who do you think wrote them? Leonard Bernstein!”
Concluding, “I bought the album and listened to it. It’s very avant-garde, modern music – pretty fascinating. He’d built all of his own instruments and did his own thing. I dig so much of his stuff. T Bone put some of his music in The Big Lebowski.”
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