How ‘Time Out Of Mind’ saw Bob Dylan change his musical style forever: “It was a little sketchy to me”
A lot of artists who found fame in the 1960s struggled their way through the ‘80s, and with there having been plenty of technological advancements during the decade, the organic production sounds that they had favoured were rapidly going out of style in favour of adding a glossy electronic sheen to everything. A lot of artists felt that during this time, they were losing all sense of their identity and unable to recapture what they were beloved for because of either a lack of interest or a shift in creative drive. Bob Dylan was not exempt from this, and he spent much of the period in the creative wilderness.
This would stretch into the 1990s as well when his stock was still diminished compared to the immense success of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Dylan probably had no right to complain about this; he was still highly regarded for his past efforts but wasn’t producing anything new that was exciting his audience or drawing in the attention of new listeners. After the release of 1990’s Under the Red Sky, Dylan avoided releasing any studio albums of new material for seven years, and it seemed as though time had seemingly caught up with him, and he was resigning from the spotlight.
However, in 1997, a new album titled Time Out Of Mind arrived and proved that Dylan hadn’t exhausted all of his best ideas. Considered something of a renaissance for the ageing folk star, it didn’t exactly offer anything new in terms of reinventing his style, but Dylan seemed to have approached it feeling fresh after his brief exile from recording new material.
Working alongside Daniel Lanois, who had previously produced the 1989 album Oh Mercy for Dylan, Time Out Of Mind was a triumph after a lengthy period of mediocrity. During the early part of the ‘90s, Dylan complained of having a bout of writer’s block that prevented him from being able to come forward with new ideas as frequently as he had been in the past, and this effort appeared to have been a return to his old ways of writing songs effortlessly.
However, Dylan didn’t seem entirely satisfied with the results that he presented on the album, and the overall sound of the record was disappointing to him to the point that he decided to self-produce all of his subsequent albums, albeit under the pseudonym Jack Frost. Even though others saw it as a return to form, Dylan perceived the record as more of a catalyst for his late-career resurgence rather than the beginning of it.
In a 2005 interview for Arts & Opinion, Dylan was questioned about Time Out Of Mind and how it represented his creative resurgence, but he was quick to shoot down any notion of it being anything special due to how it lacked cohesion and variety. “It was a little sketchy to me,” the singer argued. “I knew after that record when and if I ever committed myself to making another record, I didn’t want to get caught short without up-tempo songs.”
This may have been why he saw the album as the catalyst for change rather than the point at which things changed themselves. “A lot of my songs are slow ballads,” he continued. “But if you put a lot of them on a record, they’ll fade into one another, and there was some of that in Time Out Of Mind.” Dylan certainly didn’t stop writing slow ballads after this, but he certainly seemed more comfortable in how he was sounding as he entered the new century, and has continued with a steady output of acclaimed records since. It might not have been the masterful return that he was credited as having made, but it certainly brought about a change.
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.