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Let's
establish one important fact first: SELF PORTRAIT's not as
bad as people make it out to be. So the prospect of an
album full of outtakes from that unjustly denigrated Dylan
album shouldn't be such an unpleasant prospect after all.
In 1973, Dylan was between deals with Columbia, and
decided to release PLANET WAVES on Asylum. With no new
Dylan material to release, Columbia responding by putting
out DYLAN, full of songs that got left off of SELF
PORTRAIT. There are no original Dylan tunes here, just a
wide assortment of covers that are all over the musical
map (Dylan was apparently in a flighty mood).
Dylan nods to his folk singing contemporaries with unusual
versions of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi,"
Native American folkie Pete La Farge's classic
"Ballad of Ira Hayes" and Jerry Jeff Walker's
evergreen "Mr. Bojangles." Dylan's early rock
& roll fixation is in evidence as well, on a
distinctive cover of the romantic Elvis hit "Can't
Help Falling in Love." Ultimately, DYLAN is just
another example of Zimmy following wherever his muse led
him, even if it was in a direction of no immediately
discernible logic to his followers.
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