Customer Reviews

Bringing It All Back Home (Rm)

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This CD is one of the most excellent collections of Bob Dylan's talent, skill and ability to allow the muse to flow to all generations. Anyone with a true ear and desire for truth as it is, and not as it is presented by the manipulators of the media cannot help but nod in agreement each time truth is revealed in the lyrics. While sometimes the facts are delivered in humor as in "Maggie's Farm", this CD never skips a beat and always hits its target dead on with a bullseye.

I happened to be at one of the first of Dylan's concerts after he had gone "electric". Though myself and the rest of the crowd were definitely acoustic Dylan fans and upset that he had "sold out" we waited for him to come on stage (45 minutes late) and when we settled our grudge with him about 3 minutes into his first set, our hearts and souls had forever changed and his music still lives on and on. I remember with great respect, that Bob did not even acknowledge our gripes... he just stood there and played despite the crowd's displeasure. That is because he is an artist and a messenger not a puppet.

You will never be sorry you bought "Bringin' It All Back Home" it is a classic of folk/rock electrified Truth from my generation to all others forever!

If you only ever buy one Bob Dylan album, this should be the one.
"Bringing It All Back Home" is not a better record than "Blood On The Tracks", but it is the one where everything comes together for Bob Dylan, creating an incredible album of folk, blues, and blistering rock n' roll, and it is the one which best represents the depth and versatility of his talent.

This album is wonderfully surreal. The imagery is gorgeous, smoky and cold. The title of this review is a quote from "Gates of Eden" which is in my opinion one of the best songs on the album. This album fits words together seamlessly. Sometimes the songs make sense and other times they almost make sense.... but that's the point isn't it? It allows you to make what you will of the meaning.
The album is half electric and half acoustic. This is the transition album! I could never pick my favorite Dylan album but this is surely one of them. Other great songs include "It's alright ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", "It's All Over Now Baby Blue", the hilarious and almost sensical "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" - e.g. every song is a winner. The liner notes which were written by Dylan are hilarious and also almost sensical. If you're a Dylan fan and don't already have this, shame on you. If you're a literature buff, you should have it also. You can't go wrong!

Out of print! They were too inexpensive. I couldn't get enough of them. Every song's a winner, half of them knock the wind out of you.

Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home has a good blend of electric and acoustic songs. Regardless there seems to be a nice warm energy that flows throughout the recording. Subterrean Homesick Blues is a neat trippy blues tune while Maggie's Farm has a nice sing a long vibe. The lyrics on Mr. Tambourine Man are quite special as well as Its Alright Ma(I'm Only Bleeding). Like the false start on Bob Dylan's 115th Dream. Its good when musicians record in a loose and relaxed fashion.

Anyway, this record is strong on charm and loaded with good lyrics. Even Dylan's vocals are in good form. It wins my seal of approval.

This is what happens when music is treated with the correct amount of honesty and playfullness. Dylan creates a record that is critic proof. You could try to rip it to shreads and point out flaws but you sure as hell aren't going to change a fans opinion. The songs on here can't be imitated by anyone because no one has it in them. Who could possibly create a song equal to "it's alright ma (im only bleeding)", a song where everyline could be quoted and still holds up today. I dont know though its tough to give a legendary album a review because you have to start using cliches like perfect and amazeing and wonderful to the point where it would start sounding like an acceptance speech. But its just a perfect gateway into dylan if youve never heard him before because these songs are accessible. If you hate it because of his voice then you should just give up on music completly because its an honest voice and a sneeringly delicate one at that.All roads Lead to Dylan.

Released in 1965, this famous record is where Dylan supposedly broke faith with folkie purists. I'm not sure what folkie purists those were because I can remember the excitement when this record first came out. My folkie friends and I spent several hours sussing out the words to "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and we delighted in the record because it is a logical extension of everything Dylan had done up to that time. As a disciple of Woody Guthrie he'd also learned from Elmore James and Charlie Patton and Skip James. This record was not the pallid interpretations of the Weavers or redactions of Pete Seeger's tame protests that the folkie purists preferred. The electricity was real as well and everybody was doing it--Sebastian and the Lovin' Spoonful, John Hammond, Tom Rush. Protest can't be polite and the blues are not for the parlor. In effect, this record is doing exactly what the title says: it's bringing all those essentially American forms and motifs that the so called British invasion had usurped back home where they belong. Dylan brings blues (traditional and talking), shuffle beats, dust bowl ballads, rhythm and blues back into a contemporary folk idiom. Wow!!

Anyway, this is great Dylan where life is surreal and necessarily paranoid at times and you got to laugh to keep from crying. And the raw edge is best. Here we have "Gates of Eden" and "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" as a protests and cautions against the stupidity of war and violence; Maggie's Farm," which I've always heard as Dylan's musical credo; and the curious promise of "Tambourine Man" an anthem of the '60s. Remember what the Burger King looked like?

For those of us that were there at the time of its release the impact of 'Bringing It All Back Home' will always make it a supremely special record. The typical rhetorical bifurcation that the press put out and the angry traditionalist fans lamented missed the whole point. Dylan hadn't merely shifted from folk to rock; he had digested countless musical forms, like Presley, and made "Bob Dylan's music," an entity unto itself. Eclectic, yet unique. Literate but more importantly earthy and mystical at the same time. Folk-rock mined Dylan. He never confined himself to folk-rock. Muddy Waters played electric music. Nobody soiled himself or herself over that.

But watching that armature on the phonograph drop and hearing "Subterranean Homesick Blues" come chunka-chunka larking out of the stereo changed a lot of worlds. It was Bob Dylan underscoring what Thomas Wolf had told us decades before: you can't go home again. And the jaunty song proceeded to enumerate the changes that were happening, that were making remembrance of things past the only way to get there.

"She Belongs to Me" is a successfully tender honorific to a lover spelled out in mystical symbolism, respect for real talents, and that sad recognition that you can't own and love something at the same time."

"Maggie's Farm" is in the same catchy mode as "Subterranean Homesick Blues." It paints a Salvador Dali take on weird relationships and behaviors limited by being stuck in a scene heavily bordered by a frame of gilded necessity.

"Love Minus Zero/ No Limits" is a triumph of language in expressing the wonder of being loved and the genuine nature of the lover midst the ambiguities of contempory life.

"Outlaw Blues" is more blues-rock than folk-rock, following the standard AAB blues line schema. It gives you just what the title proclaims.

"On the Road Again" asks the same question one might ask if he lived with Eugene O'Neil's family: ". . . and you ask why I don't live here?/Man, how come you have to ask me that?" Again the song is psychologically right on, yet portrayed through symbols and interpretations of relationships.

"Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" is an anachronistic kaleidescopic nautical parallel crossing with Christopher Columbus's venture to a contemporarily tainted "New World." It's funny, satyrical, and seductive.

"Mr. Tamborine Man" is familiar to the life they will find in the water they are finding on mars; but anyone who is isn't beguiled by it repeatedly has lost their sense of wonder, their awe at having an opportunity at personal freedom, and the wonder of seeing the same old world in a new way. This had to be the song the Pied Piper played.

"The Gates of Eden" is almost like the surrealistic downside of "Mr. Tamborine Man," like having Sartre whispering in your ear with that breath of bitter French cigarettes that, outside of Eden, responsibility is the other side of the freedom coin. But Dylan also leaves you feeling like being inside Eden is like having checked into the Hotel California.

"It's Alright, Ma" is fully a folk song, a bleak, black acoustic look at the world's ills that renders it's title highly ironic.

The album ends with "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," another look at another side of love, one more in touch with the two dark songs that preceded it. The images are faintly surrealistic yet touch that very real place we are reminded of by the scent of a departed lover's hair on the other pillow. This is fine songwriting. And it almost offers a promise of 'to be continued' when you consider that the very first song on his next album is "Like a Rolling Stone."

To not own this album is to miss an important take on love and life under the menace of a mushroom shaped cloud. It's "Blood on the Tracks" for Dr. Strangelove.

In 1965 Bob Dylan did the unthinkable. He got together a back up band and recorded his fifth album 'Bring It All Back Home'. Knowing that his hardcore folkie fans would never forgive him for going electric, Dylan did it regardless. And who could blame him? He simple couldn't go on strumming on his acoustic and blowing on his harmonica forever. Dylan was destined to get into the rock genre it was inevitable. And it wasn't such a bad change despite what Folk fans say. He still sounds like everbody's favourite folk singer.

The music has improved greatly the album is more commercially appealing and colorful than Dyaln's earlier efforts. Who can forget there first taste of Dylan's electric guitar on the classic SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK BLUES.
The beautiful SHE BELONGS TO ME is a great change of pace for Dylan and it has excellent lyrics. The excellent MAGGIE'S FARM is outrageous fun. LOVE MINUS ZERO/NO LIMIT is another pleasing song while OUTLAW BLUES is a great rocker. The classics ON THE ROAD AGAIN and BOB DYLAN'S 115TH DREAM are vintage Dylan. Of course Dylan was still thinking of his acoustic folk fans. So to satisfy them as best as he could he produced four wonderful acousitc song to close this classic. Everybody knows the classic MR.TAMBOURINE MAN which has become one of Dylan's most classic songs. GATES OF EDEN is a great anti war anthem. The last two songs are my personal faves. IT'S ALRIGHT MA (I'M ONLY BLEEDING) is seven minutes of poetic bliss with a great acoustic riff while IT'S ALL OVER NOW BABY BLUE is just a nice closer for this album. Sure Dylan's voice is really rough on this one but just listen to it he's putting his heart and soul into it. Listen to The Byrds version (on the cd version of TURN! TURN! TURN!) it's a great cover!

'Bring It All Back Home' brought Bob Dylan into new heights of commercial success that he had experienced before. And he would only go on to bigger and better things on his next album 'Highway 61 Revisited' but it's 'Bringing It All Back Home' that's Dylan's turning point or transitional stage and thats what makes it so special.

Overall 'Bring It All Back Home' is another classic from the man himself Bob Dylan. A good place for some Dylan fans to start perhaps as well because it shows both electric and acoustic sides of Mr.Zimmerman. Either way this is an excellent album and once again another one of Bob Dylan's finest records. Highly recommended!

He moves away from his folk roots and adds more rock and roll into his repetoire, which upset many of his fans. The half-electric half-acoustic album contains some of his best lyrics and best songs. "Subterranean Homesick Blues" opens the album, and from here, it's the turning point for Dylan, and was the sign for things to come in his career. Other excellent songs include "Mr. Tambourine Man" "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" and "Love Minus Zero."

This is second to Blonde on Blonde as Bob Dylan's greatest album, and it is certainly one of his definitive, and daring for the time, since it was unheard of in the folk community for a folk artist to plug in.