Title: John Wesley Harding (1967)

Length: 38min 24s

Number of songs: 16

Best tracks: John Wesley Harding, As I Went Out One Morning, All Along the Watchtower, Dear Landlord, I’ll be Your Baby Tonight

If I could choose just one track: Dear Landlord

Freshlyworded rating: 8.5/10

Bob Dylan’s 8th studio album runs for less than 40 minutes – the shortest of the albums he had recorded by then – but is full of great storytelling songs.

After a number of albums full of blues, rock and even pop, this album marks a return to Dylan’s folky, semi-acoustic roots. It also includes some exceptional harmonica playing that brings a poignant tone to many of the songs.

The album, which has a gentle, rambling feel to it, draws out tales of eccentric and colourful characters that seem rooted in the old West like the gunfighter and lawyer, John Wesley Harding, whose story kicks off the album and gives it it’s name.

A kind of Robin Hood figure, Dylan sings that Harding is a “friend to the poor” but who “traveled with a gun in every hand”. Sticking with the theme of quintessential American characters, Dylans sings about the “Lonesome Hobo” who was once prosperous, but who was brought down by “petty jealousies”.

One of my favourite songs on the album is ‘As I Went Out One Morning” where the narrator falls for “fairest damsel that ever did walk in chains”. It evokes the cotton fields and slavery of the Deep South

The album also features three songs widely regarded as Dylan classics: the medieval-themed “All Along the Watchtower” featuring the Joker and Thief. It’s a song famously covered by Jimi Hendrix and featured in the opening scenes of one of my favourite movie Withnail & I. U2 also did a rather forgettable version. For me, Dylan’s original version is the best and I just love the mysterious and poetic lyrics including lines like:

Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”

The other famous tracks are the wonderfully pleading “Dear Landlord” which though I have struggled to make sense of its meaning is my favourite song out of the 16. The other classic is the very sweet, love song “I’ll be Your Baby Tonight” which has a bluesy undertone and great lines like:

Kick your shoes off, do not fear
Bring that bottle over here
I’ll be your baby tonight

I also loved the slow and moving “I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine”. Perhaps the most interesting song on the album (also the longest) is “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest” which has no chorus but presents as a kind of moral fable with biblical undertones about a simple man (Frankie Lee) led astray and to his doom by the cunning Judas (and by Lee’s own moral failings). It’s sung in Dylan’s distinctive manner of over-emphasising certain words.

Overall, I really loved this album. The songwriting is superb, the harmonica adds depth, resonance and poignancy and the simpler, semi-acoustic sound makes it a perfect backdrop to a country stroll or whilst staring into a crackling fire.

John Wesley Harding is another classic album you should definitely listen to a couple of times!

Review here