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Freewheelin

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There's very little else to say about this Dylan album other that it's perfection. His insight, humour, ability to invoke introspection from the most common of man is all here. If you're a beginner Dylan fan, this is a great place to start as it has a few that you're sure to have heard a lot (and why you're looking for a full album), if you're more seasoned, this brings the collection together. You can't help but feel that you've been let into his world; and what a great world to be a part of.

One of the single most important albums of the rock canon, THE FREEWHEELIN' BOB DYLAN, along PLEASE PLEASE ME, introduced the 1960s with a bang. Sure, the decade had been underway since 1960, but with this release we finally get the Dylan that will change the face of popular music. Although the album before this one can be entertaining in spots, no one could guess the genius of this sophomore effort by listening to the first Bob Dylan disc. And what genius it is.

Dylan, in the course of 13 songs, covers much of the human emotional genome, from joy to sadness to longing to righteous anger to broken hearts to comedy. The album is as accomplished and stunning as any of his later works, and stands as one of the best albums ever recorded. The sound is sparse, but very effective for the material covered. It also has a lesson producers nowadays could learn from: you don't need tons of instruments to produce effective music. This is just Dylan, a guitar, and a harmonica with the exception of "Corrina, Corrina," and he makes it work. Boy does he ever.

This album produced many of his most important compositions and signature songs, including the song that broke him into the mainstream, "Blowin' in the Wind". Compositions like the aforementioned song, "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," "Masters of War," and "Girl of the North Country," quickly established Dylan as the premier songwriter for the social conscious of the early 1960s, a role Dylan would quickly move away from (just listen to the mid 1960s trilogy of BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME, HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED, and BLONDE ON BLONDE to see how far he left this stuff behind). However, Dylan would never cease to be the premier songwriter of rock and roll, and he is still regarded as the poet laureate of rock and roll.

What makes this album's durability all the more remarkable is that it was recorded in the height of the folk-protest revival, which had numerous songs that do not have long shelf lives. The central problem with protest albums is they have a tendency to become dated and awkward as years go by, but not here. These songs sound just as glorious as when they were first released. Where THE FREEWHEELIN' BOB DYLAN does sound dated, this effect actually enhances the album, especially on the last cut of the album where he is talking to President Kennedy who was alive at the time. That alone gives the cut an endearing quality.

Dylan wisely stayed away from dated political concerns, and instead addressed the problems America was having in the 1960s from a much more universal perspective. Instead of singing about nuclear rain (which "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall was never about to begin with), Dylan invokes an oncoming apocalypse. With "Blowin' in the Wind," he confesses he simply doesn't know the answers to the problems, a very strange thing for an early 1960s folk song to do. Other folkies would have said the answer was social reform, or peace and love, or something along those lines. "Masters of War" stays relevant even today, because Dylan addresses universal concerns, not topical ones.

It is useful to contrast this album with its followup, THE TIMES THEY ARE A'CHANGIN'. THE TIMES is a much more defined album, with Dylan clearly in the "protest mode". While most of the cuts off that record are certainly worthy additions to the Dylan catalogue (considering the stuff that was being recorded at the time by Dylan, did we really need "With God On Our Side,") when taken as an entire album THE TIMES wears its listeners out emotionally. TIMES can get rather monotous as times as well. TIMES has dated much more badly than FREEWHEELIN', though to be fair to that record, it still stands up much better than the other folk records coming out of the Greenwich Village scene by today's standards, especially with the title track.

That is one album that desperately needed some light-hearted moments like "Eternal Circle" or something to break up the monotony. Sadly, two of the best compositions ("Percy's Song" and "Lay Down Your Weary Tune," both available on BIOGRAPH) were left off.

TIMES is a dark, brooding, traditional "protest album", and though evidenced by Dylan's numerous outtakes from that period that he was writing songs far beyond simple protest music, it is obvious Dylan constricted himself to very narrow subject matter and themes. TIMES comes off as a very humourless, serious affair. Dylan does not make that mistake here.

While I digressed to discuss this album's followup, contrasting TIMES with FREEWHEELIN' is useful in that it helps show what makes FREEWHEELIN' so successful. TIMES is a straight laced, no nonsense protest album, though with better track selection (like most of Dylan's work), it could have been a much different, and in TIMES' case, better, album. Listening to TIMES is emotionally draining, and while certainly has some great songs, overall the album does not stand up as well, though there are individual songs that match anything on FREEWHEELIN'. TIMES is much more limited in its emotional range, whereas FREEWHEELIN' is a much broader record, and a better one at that.

While THE FREEWHEELIN' BOB DYLAN certainly qualifies as a protest album, due to Dylan's deft skill he crafted the album to be much more universal than strictly topical, and he has been rewarded with creating a rather timeless piece of music. While he did go radically reinvent himself several times over, Dylan never sounded better here, and while he may have come up with music as good as the songs on this album he never made one that surpassed it.
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One of the greatest album of the 60's.
Original master recording. Mobile fidelity did a great job!! very quiet,les timbres sonores sont magnifique!!!!!

I love this CD and am glad to add it to my Bob Dylan collection which is in its infancy.

Y'know when you just read something that hits you where it feels good? Or hear something that makes you realize that the universe is infinitely vast&chaotic with goodthings lurking behind shadows and food&drink waiting by that roaring fire? Or when walking down your city street becomes an adventure - or the rural road stretches to nowhere and everywhere at the same time and your feet are more eager to tred the untrod then the beatendown? I know the word 'perfect' doesn't mean anything to anyone but this album is goddamn close.

I am not a Dylan fan. But I've got an SACD player, and whenever I notice a retailer selling off their SACD stock cheaply, I tend to hoover it up.

I've always felt a bit guilty about not liking Dylan, given that he has had millions of fans, and was, at least until his motorbike accident in 1966, as big as Elvis and the Beatles. I think the problem is that I was born a decade too late, and music has always been much more important to me than lyrics. It may be heretical to say this but, as a teenager in the 1970s, I found the music of bands like Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers more catchy than Dylan (great though the 'Desire' LP was).

But Dylan doesn't go away, and he's now one of the few popular artists to have much of his output available on SACD. THE FREEWHEELIN' BOB DYLAN was one of the key visual references in the recent Cameron Crowe movie VANILLA SKY.

I think you have to have lived through the era to really appreciate the impact of what Dylan was doing. Coming late to the era, it matters little to a new fan that 'Highway 61 Revisited' was the first electric folk rock album. There are now hundreds, if not thousands, of electric folk rock albums to choose from, and if anything, the later ones are likely to smoothe off the rough edges of the first.

But now I have a wad of Dylan SACDs and the opportunity to wade through them in chronological sequence. And I keep coming back to THE FREEWHEELIN' BOB DYLAN because it possesses a great purity and enthusiasm. As other reviewers have said, it's just the man, his mouth organ and his guitar (apart from on 'Corrina, Corrina'). SACD captures the simplicity of his performance superbly. NB This is SACD Stereo -- not Surround Sound, nor Dolby 5.1.

The music is part folk, part blues. Yes, it's slightly repetitive in that it lacks the diversity and creative input you could get from a wider group setting. But for me, this is solo Dylan at the top of his game, bristling with confidence that an enormous audience would take to the album. To enjoy this CD, you don't need to organise a sit-in, protest march or late-night coffee with a few student friends. It really is OK to listen to this in the car or while exercising or even (heaven forbid!) as background music while working or giving a dinner party. Dylan probably foresaw none of these uses for his music, and I suspect the only protest at such abuse would come from his diehard folk fans -- the same ones who protested about his later transition to electric instruments. Me, I just love it because it's so uncluttered. (And normally I don't like folk music!)

His best "folk" period (accoustic) recording and possible his most individual creation to this point.

The public was exposed to the genius of Dylan's early folk writings in this album, and the results are phenomenal. It's hard to imagine the 60's without this album, as many cuts became classics. If you are intersted in Dylan's folk phase, start here.

Blowin in the wind may be the Folkies only good tune ever
he is just terrible and for 1963 Losers that were beat up
by the Football teams back in the day that were cool.

Dylan's first three albums: Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and The Times They Are A-Changin' immediately established him as a songwriter of great distinction. If you like Bob Dylan these three albums are a must for your collection.

May I also recommend a book that is available on this web site: "The Bob Dylan Albums" by Anthony Varesi. The book by Varesi is a fair and honest review of the albums by Dylan.