Time out of Mind
Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1997
Review by Paul Mitchell
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 60
Autumn 1998

There were a number of shock occurrences on the world stage in 1997, but none greater than Bob Dylan producing a decent album. Time Out of Mind sees Dylan team up with producer Daniel Lanois, the man with the Midas touch who produced Dylan's last album of note, 1989's Oh Mercy! Why Dylan works with anyone else is a mystery nearly as big as why he waited so long to link arms with Lanois again.

Maybe it was the fact that his son, Jakob (of The Wallflowers), was globe-trotting around with a collection of songs that made the old man pull up his socks. Whatever it was that inspired Dylan to the heights of Time Out of Mind (it's clear some lost love hasn't hurt his muse), his fans will be hoping it doesn't desert him for another eight years. Dylan himself has said that it took so long to release this album because he wanted to record songs that would be able to stand up to the other classics he plays night after night. Not a bad artistic problem to have.

How difficult it is to contextualise a Dylan album. We're not dealing with an artist, we're dealing with an art form. One reviewer, assessing Dylan's famous Christian conversion album, Slow Train Coming, articulated this problem well: "Great Gospel, bad Dylan." But Time Out of Mind is great Dylan. Of course, it was never going to be the Dylan of the '60s and that shouldn't be the standard against which he's judged. If Dylan is an art form, that form has been revisioned according to the age and experience of its only protagonist; the 56-year-old, world weary, beaten by love, just-recovered-from-a-serious-illness, spiritually wired chameleon that is Dylan. We should get an album which speaks articulately, both musically and lyrically. It should draw us into 'Dylan-space', move us, then tumble us out the other side all the better for the experience. Anyone who is able to listen to music without stylistic hang-ups should be able to get that out of this album. Its songs consist of smoky, back room blues with a few drunken staggers toward country. They are "filled with the dread realities of life", as Dylan says of them. His voice is falling apart beautifully at the seams. He is vocally convincing and economic in his lyrical imagery, with the occasional flourish (hear "Highlands" with its apocalyptic cafe chat with a waitress who represents America).

Dylan has been an endless source of covers for other artists, to the point where they are digging into Bobby's obscure back catalogue to find gems (Australia's Tex Perkins, Charlie Owen and Don Walker did a passable version of Dylan's unknown treasure, "Blind Willie McTell", a few years back). But a pop savvy Billy Joel has already jumped on "Make You Feel My Love", the classic ballad from Time Out of Mind. Time Out of Mind, though dominated by the lost love theme, also looks deeply at mortality (perhaps care of a recent near fatal illness) and all the traipsing through memory and spiritual exploration this brings. Dylan has said he is not into placing complex symbolic meanings into his songs anymore. He is now much more of the postmodern mind, allowing the audience to be the meaning projector as well as interpreter. Still, his songs remain dotted with images and lines which point to his faith ( "I know that God is my shield and that he will not lead me astray"; "My heart's in the highlands and I'll go there when I feel good enough to go . . . I can only get there one step at a time"; "I know the mercy of God must be near"); a bottom line security which supports the drifting, collapsing bar room prophet persona which stalks these songs.

When questioned about his faith recently in the New York Times, Dylan said that when people ask him about it these days he points them to the "old songs" from which he drew inspiration. "Those old songs are my lexicon and prayer book . . . I believe in a God of time and space, but if people ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back toward those songs". He said all his beliefs come out of songs like "Let Me Rest on that Peaceful Mountain" and "Keep on the Sunny Side". "I believe in Hank Williams singing 'I Saw the Light'. I've seen the light, too," Dylan says, adding that he doesn't these days subscribe to any organised religion. Could we expect anything else but iconoclasm from a man who is a music style, whose every utterance is still held by many with the same reverence as Scripture, but who wishes to remain intensely private?

Paul Mitchell is Associate Editor of Zadok Perspectives.