Self Portrait (Bob Dylan album)

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Self Portrait
Self Portrait cover
Studio album by Bob Dylan
Released June 8, 1970
Recorded April 24, 1969 – March 30, 1970
Genre Country rock, rock
Length 73:15
Label Columbia
Producer Bob Johnston
Professional reviews
Bob Dylan chronology
Nashville Skyline
(1969)		 Self Portrait
(1970)		 New Morning
(1970)

Self Portrait is Bob Dylan's 10th studio album, released by Columbia Records in 1970.

It was Dylan's second double album, and features mostly cover versions of well-known pop and folk songs. Also included are a handful of instrumentals, original compositions, and live tracks featuring The Band. Most of the album is sung in the affected country crooning voice that Dylan had introduced a year earlier on Nashville Skyline. Seen by some as intentionally surreal and even satirical at times, Self Portrait was given extremely poor reviews upon release. The most memorable reaction was Greil Marcus' opening sentence in his Rolling Stone review: "What is this shit?"

Dylan later claimed in interviews that Self Portrait was something of a joke, far below the standards he set in the 1960s, simply to get people off his back and end the "spokesman of a generation" tags; but he has also given other, contradictory accounts of his motives.

Despite the negative reception, the album quickly went gold in the US, where it hit #4, and it gave Bob Dylan yet another UK #1 hit before it fell down the charts.

Spinner.com named it #1 on 'Most Monumental Album Flops'.

Contents

[edit] The making of Self Portrait

The motives behind Self Portrait have been subject to wild speculation and great debate. Over the years, a few credible theories have emerged from those familiar with the project.

Critic Robert Shelton was under the impression that Self Portrait was intended as a serious release. "I told Dylan that Self Portrait confused me," Shelton wrote in 1986. "Why had he recorded 'Blue Moon'? He wouldn't be drawn out, although obviously he had been stung by the criticism. 'It was an expression,' he said. He indicated that if the album had come from Presley or The Everly Brothers, who veered toward the middle of the road, it wouldn't have shocked so many."

However, in a Rolling Stone interview taken in 1984, Dylan gave a different reason for the album's release:

“ At the time, I was in Woodstock, and I was getting a great degree of notoriety for doing nothing. Then I had that motorcycle accident [in 1966], which put me out of commission. Then, when I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was workin' for all these leeches. And I didn't wanna do that. Plus, I had a family, and I just wanted to see my kids.

I'd also seen that I was representing all these things that I didn't know anything about. Like I was supposed to be on acid. It was all storm-the-embassy kind of stuff — Abbie Hoffman in the streets — and they sorta figured me as the kingpin of all that. I said, 'Wait a minute, I'm just a musician. So my songs are about this and that. So what?' But people need a leader. People need a leader more than a leader needs people, really. I mean, anybody can step up and be a leader, if he's got the people there that want one. I didn't want that, though.

But then came the big news about Woodstock, about musicians goin' up there, and it was like a wave of insanity breakin' loose around the house day and night. You'd come in the house and find people there, people comin' through the woods, at all hours of the day and night, knockin' on your door. It was really dark and depressing. And there was no way to respond to all this, you know? It was as if they were suckin' your very blood out. I said, 'Now wait, these people can't be my fans. They just can't be.' And they kept comin'. We had to get out of there.

This was just about the time of that Woodstock festival, which was the sum total of all this bullshit. And it seemed to have something to do with me, this Woodstock Nation, and everything it represented. So we couldn't breathe. I couldn't get any space for myself and my family, and there was no help, nowhere. I got very resentful about the whole thing, and we got outta there.

We moved to New York. Lookin' back, it really was a stupid thing to do. But there was a house available on MacDougal Street, and I always remembered that as a nice place. So I just bought this house, sight unseen. But it wasn't the same when we got back. The Woodstock Nation had overtaken MacDougal Street also. There'd be crowds outside my house. And I said, 'Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can't possibly like, they can't relate to. They'll see it, and they'll listen, and they'll say, 'Well, let's get on to the next person. He ain't sayin' it no more. He ain't given' us what we want,' you know? They'll go on to somebody else. But the whole idea backfired. Because the album went out there, and the people said, 'This ain't what we want,' and they got more resentful. And then I did this portrait for the cover. I mean, there was no title for that album. I knew somebody who had some paints and a square canvas, and I did the cover up in about five minutes. And I said, 'Well, I'm gonna call this album Self Portrait.'

 ”

As to why he chose to release a double-album, Dylan replied, "Well, it wouldn't have held up as a single album — then it really would've been bad, you know. I mean, if you're gonna put a lot of crap on it, you might as well load it up!"

Later, Cameron Crowe interviewed Dylan for his liner notes to 1985's Biograph, a boxed set retrospective of Dylan's career. When asked about Self Portrait, Dylan gave another story:

"Self Portrait was a bunch of tracks that we'd done all the time I'd gone to Nashville. We did that stuff to get a [studio] sound. To open up we'd do two or three songs, just to get things right and then we'd go on and do what we were going to do. And then there was a lot of other stuff that was just on the shelf. But I was being bootlegged at the time and a lot of stuff that was worse was appearing on bootleg records. So I just figured I'd put all this stuff together and put it out, my own bootleg record, so to speak. You know, if it actually had been a bootleg record, people probably would have sneaked around to buy it and played it for each other secretly. Also, I wasn't going to be anybody's puppet and I figured this record would put an end to that...I was just so fed up with all that who people thought I was nonsense." Later interviews only echoed the sentiments expressed to Crowe.

[edit] Songs

Self Portrait was heavily criticized for its performances and overall production, with many critics singling out various songs as poor cover choices.

However, one track has managed to draw consistent praise over the years. Written by Alfred Frank Beddoe (who was 'discovered' by Pete Seeger after applying for work at People’s Songs, Inc. in 1946), "Copper Kettle" captures an idyllic backwoods existence, where moonshine is equated not only with pleasure but with tax resistance. Appalachian farmers who struggled to make their living off the land would routinely siphon off a percentage of their corn in order to distill whiskey. Everything produced would then be hidden from the government in order to avoid the whiskey tax of 1791.

Clinton Heylin writes, "'Copper Kettle'...strike[s] all the right chords...being one of the most affecting performances in Dylan's entire canon." NPR's Tim Riley called it "an ingenious Appalachian zygote for rock attitudes, the hidden source of John Wesley Harding's shadows."

"Copper Kettle" was popularised by Joan Baez and appeared on her best-selling 1962 LP Joan Baez in Concert.

Among the original songs written for the album, "Wigwam" later achieved notoriety for its use in the 2001 Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. "Living the Blues" was later covered by Leon Redbone.

And the only song on the album that can be considered psychedelic is the party-friendly romp "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)" which was later covered by Manfred Mann, and for live venues The Grateful Dead and also Phish made this an iconic favorite.

[edit] Outtakes

Self-Portrait, like most Dylan albums, features quite a large number of outtakes recorded for the album but simply did not make the final cut. The majority of the songs have never been released or even circulating. Two notable songs are "Went to See the Gypsy" and "Time Passes Slowly", both recorded for possible inclusion on "Self-Portrait" but issued on "New Morning".

  • A Fool Such As I (Bill Trader)
  • Annie's Going To Sing Her Song (Tom Paxton)
  • Come A Little Bit Closer
  • Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (trad.)
  • Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)
  • House Carpenter (trad.)
  • Little Moses (Bert A. Williams/Earle C. Jones)
  • My Previous Life
  • Pretty Saro
  • Railroad Bill (trad.)
  • Ring Of Fire (June Carter/Merle Kilgore)
  • Running (?)
  • Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay (Steve Cropper - Otis Redding)
  • Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Charles Badger Clark)
  • Tattle O-Day (Eric Andersen)
  • These Hands
  • Time Passes Slowly
  • Thirsty Boots (Eric Andersen)
  • This Evening So Soon
  • Went To See The Gypsy
  • When A Fellow's Out Of A Job
  • Unidentified Song
  • Universal Soldier (Buffy Sainte-Marie)

[edit] Aftermath

Dylan had his share of negative criticism before Self Portrait. At worst, his 1962 debut was met with quiet indifference. In 1966, his tour with the Hawks was met with open anger from some fans, but the burgeoning rock press countered that reaction with their enthusiastic praise.

With Self Portrait, there were few admirers and far more detractors. Critical disdain seemed universal. At best, a number of journalists, including Robert Christgau, felt there was a concept behind Self Portrait that had some merit.

"Conceptually, this is a brilliant album," wrote Christgau, "organized, I think, by two central ideas. First that 'self' is most accurately defined (and depicted) in terms of the artifacts — in this case pop tunes and folk songs claimed as personal property and semispontaneous renderings of past creations frozen for posterity on a piece of tape and (perhaps) even a couple of songs one has written oneself — to which one responds. Second, that the people's music is the music people like, Mantovani strings and all."

However, few critics expressed any interest in the music itself. "In order for a concept to work it has to be supported musically — that is, you have to listen," Christgau admitted. "I don't know anyone, even vociferous supporters of this album, who plays more than one side at a time. I don't listen to it at all . The singing is not consistently good, though it has its moments, and the production — for which I blame Bob Johnston, though Dylan has to be listed as a coconspirator — ranges from indifferent to awful. It is possible to use strings and soprano choruses well, but Johnston has never demonstrated the knack. Other points: it's overpriced, the cover art is lousy, and it sounds good on WMCA."

In his Rolling Stone review, Greil Marcus warned that "unless [Dylan] returns to the market-place, with a sense of vocation and the ambition to keep up with his own gifts, the music of [the mid-sixties] will continue to dominate his records, whether he releases them or not." He also said at the time, "I once said I'd buy an album of Dylan breathing hard. But I'd never said I'd buy an album of Dylan breathing softly."

The public did not know it at the time, but Dylan's next album (New Morning) was almost complete when Self Portrait hit the streets.

[edit] Miscellanea

Rock critics Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell, writing in their 1991 book The Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time, listed Self-Portrait as the third worst rock album ever, with only Lou Reed's experimental Metal Machine Music and Elvis Presley's concert byplay album Having Fun With Elvis On Stage faring worse. "The breakup of the Beatles shortly before this album's release," they wrote, "signaled the end of the sixties; Self-Portrait suggested the end of Bob Dylan."

In 1973, Knopf published Dylan's song lyrics, sketches, and album notes as Writings and Drawings, with updated versions called Lyrics appearing in 1985 and 2000. In all three editions, the original lyrics from Self-Portrait are never acknowledged, suggesting Dylan's disavowal of the whole album.

[edit] Track listing

  1. "All the Tired Horses" (Dylan) – 3:12
  2. "Alberta #1" (Trad. Arr. Dylan) – 2:57
  3. "I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know" (Cecil A. Null) – 2:23
  4. "Days of '49" (Alan Lomax/John Lomax/Frank Warner) – 5:27
  5. "Early Mornin' Rain" (Gordon Lightfoot) – 3:34
  6. "In Search of Little Sadie" (Trad. Arr. Dylan) – 2:27
  7. "Let It Be Me" (Gilbert Becaud/Mann Curtis/Pierre Delanoe) – 3:00
  8. "Little Sadie" (Trad. Arr. Dylan) – 2:00
  9. "Woogie Boogie" (Dylan) – 2:06
  10. "Belle Isle" (Trad. Arr. Dylan) – 2:30
  11. "Living the Blues" (Dylan) – 2:42
  12. "Like a Rolling Stone" (Dylan) – 5:18
  13. "Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight)" (Alfred Frank Beddoe) – 3:34
  14. "Gotta Travel On" (Paul Clayton/Larry Ehrlich/David Lazar/Tom Six) – 3:08
  15. "Blue Moon" (Lorenz Hart/Richard Rodgers) – 2:29
  16. "The Boxer" (Paul Simon) – 2:48
  17. "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)" (Dylan) – 2:48
  18. "Take Me as I Am (Or Let Me Go)" (Boudleaux Bryant) – 3:03
  19. "Take a Message to Mary" (Felice Bryant/Boudleaux Bryant) – 2:46
  20. "It Hurts Me Too" (Trad. Arr. Dylan) – 3:15
  21. "Minstrel Boy" (Dylan) – 3:32
  22. "She Belongs to Me" (Dylan) – 2:43
  23. "Wigwam" (Dylan) – 3:09
  24. "Alberta #2" (Trad. Arr. Dylan) – 3:12

[edit] Personnel

  • Byron Bach - Cello
  • Brenton Banks - Violin
  • George Binkley III - Violin
  • Norman Blake - Guitar
  • David Bromberg - Guitar, Dobro, Bass
  • Albert Wynn Butler - Clarinet, Saxophone
  • Kenneth A. Buttrey - Drums, Percussion
  • Fred Carter Jr. - Guitar
  • Marvin Chantry - Viola
  • Ron Cornelius - Guitar
  • Charlie Daniels - Bass, Guitar
  • Rick Danko - Bass, Vocals
  • Pete Drake - Steel Guitar
  • Bob Dylan - Guitar, Harmonica, Keyboards, Vocals
  • Delores Edgin - Vocals
  • Fred Foster - Guitar
  • Solie Fott - Violin, Viola
  • Bubba Fowler - Guitar
  • Dennis Good - Trombone
  • Emanuel Green - Violin
  • Hilda Harris - Vocals
  • Levon Helm - Mandolin, Drums, Vocals
  • Freddie Hill - Trumpet
  • Karl Himmel - Clarinet, Saxophone, Trombone
  • Garth Hudson - Keyboards
  • Lilian Hunt - Violin
  • Bob Johnston - Producer
  • Martin Katahn - Violin
  • Doug Kershaw - Violin
  • Al Kooper - Guitar, Horn, Keyboards
  • Sheldon Kurland - Violin
  • Richard Manuel - Piano, Vocals
  • Martha McCrory - Cello
  • Charlie McCoy - Guitar, Bass, Harmonica, Vibes
  • Barry McDonald - Violin
  • Ollie Mitchell - Trumpet
  • Carol Montgomery - Vocals
  • Bob Moore - Bass
  • Gene A. Mullins - Baritone Horn
  • Joe Osborn - Guitar, Bass
  • June Page - Vocals
  • Rex Peer - Trombone
  • Bill Pursell - Piano
  • Robbie Robertson - Guitar, Vocals
  • Albertine Robinson - Vocals
  • Al Rogers - Drums
  • Frank Smith - Trombone
  • Maretha Stewart - Vocals
  • Gary Van Osdale - Viola
  • Bill Walker - Arrangements
  • Bob Wilson - Organ, Piano
  • Stu Woods - Bass
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Related articles

[edit] References

http://www.palacefamilysteakhouse.com/2005/03/self-portrait.html - Discussion of the album by Dylan fans

Guterman, Jimmy and O'Donnell, Owen, The Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time, Citadel, 1991.