Nashville Skyline - Dylan, Bob (Cassette 1990)

You wouldn't know it by my recent reviews, but my god am I on a Bob Dylan kick of late. I can't really explain where it came from -- I'm guessing it's the desire to hear music that isn't one of the three colors of modern popular music: JOY! SADNESS! GRRRR! I wanted something subtle, poignant, memorable, poetic and nuanced.

It began with putting Dylan's second record, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, on the stereo. The arrogant, barely in his 20s Dylan singing about journeys, aging, broken hearts, war and death as though he really understands what these words mean. But such was the beauty and conceit of the lyrics that I kept hitting replay. Then I fed the darkly hued The Times They Are A-Changin' into my player. This led to the whimsical, playful Another Side of Bob Dylan. Then the loping, rock and acoustic diamonds of Bringing it All Back Home. To the fierce, charging setpieces of Highway 61 Revisited.

I spent two days bathed in the words and disconnected imagery of Blonde on Blonde, the instruments in strange tunes, the rhythm spare and fluid. Then I cheated the chronology, went right to the beautiful, bitter heartbreak of Blood on the Tracks; the singularly weird and wonderful Basement Tapes. And now I stop for a while, to pause on this light, honey-toned album that lasts less than half an hour yet feels timeless. Nashville Skyline.

The first thing you'll notice is Dylan is smiling. This is something he did infrequently on his record jackets, preferring a sneer or a yard-long stare, if he was looking into the camera at all. This look seems to be saying "Welcome." And "Enjoy."

The next thing you'll notice, and I mean immediately, is the change in timbre and tone of Dylan's voice for this outing. Gone are the sneers of "Masters of War," the exuberant strangeness of "Motopsycho Nitemare," or the gentle heartbreak of "Just Like a Woman," all done in his trademark thick, talky mumble. No. Here we have Dylan crooning sweetly. It's an interesting choice that is at once disarming, gentle, and warmly human.

And so the album begins, with Dylan covering himself. Girl from the North Country, which was a moving song on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, suddenly occupies its own space and spare, quiet time. Dylan sounds genuinely bittersweet (not arrogant), and Johnny Cash adds volumes with his midnight vocals. Bob and Johnny fall out of time at one point, and at another, they are curiously off-key, but it sets up a dissonance and a humanity that leaves the original ... well, a very different song than this take. Unfortunately, this is the only song where Johnny Cash appears. Fortunately, Dylan's quite fine on his own.

Following is the Nashville Skyline Rag, which lets each of the Nashville session musicians shine in a hoedown (including Charlie Daniels on bass, Charlie McCoy and guitar, Bob Wilson on organ and Kenneth A. Buttrey on drums). It sounds like they're having a blast playing it. This marks one of several ebullient songs that revels in being as country as it wants to be -- the other two being "Peggy Day" and "Country Pie."

But it's really I Threw It All Away, Lay Lady Lay and Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You that I want to talk about.

I Threw It All Away is soft, subdued and humble. Again, this isn't the Dylan of the past (or the future), where he loses a girl but is able to get back on his feet with a combination of bravado and the love of words to heal his heart. No, in this one, he warns the listener to hold tight to the one they love, to not make the mistakes he has made. He keeps the lyrics small and to the point, which makes the verse where he branches out his reach -- "Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand/And rivers that ran through every day/I must have been mad/I never knew what I had/Until I threw it all away" -- that much more arresting.

Lay Lady Lay is a haunting track. It amazes me that Bob Dylan is the first one to have written and recorded it. He has this ability of crafting a moment of time into words that speak with timelessness. His best songs sound like they have always been part of the canon -- that it is absurd to think they didn't exist before him, or that he could possibly have created them all himself. This, my friends, is one of those songs.

A quiet drum, low and sweet organ, steel guitar, Bob Dylan's voice. Such minimal ingredients for such a powerful song. It begins simply enough, with Dylan cooing to his lover "Lay lady lay/Lay across my big brass bed." He repeats this plea. Then the song heads into the realm of the visionary as his voice raises in pitch, and grows with desperation behind the sweetness. "Whatever colors you have in your mind/I'll show them to you and you see them shine." The music goes back to its slow, honey-toned pace. Dylan now asks his lover to "Stay lady stay. Stay with your man a while." Later on he will ask her to stay "until the break of day."

It's this sense of beauty, coupled with the reality that this moment is as temporary as life itself, that gives the song its power. Dylan later asks his lover "Why are you looking for the one you love/When he's standing in front of you?" He then falls to his knees at his most poetic, earnest, and desperate. "I long to see you in the morning light/I long to reach for you in the night." He pauses. "Lay lady lay/Lay across my big brass bed/Stay lady stay/Stay while the night is still ahead." The instruments draw to a close. Barely three minutes have gone by, and you feel like you've just lived through years of experience.

Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You is Dylan at his most comfortable and fulfilled. He uses simple signposts of country (and the blues, for that matter) -- tickets, suitcases, trains -- and he denudes them of their symbology, turns them from symbols fraught with the peril of change and leaving, and makes them into objects; commodities that can be easily ignored.

"Throw my ticket out the window/Throw my suitcase out there, too/Throw my troubles out the door/I don't need them anymore/'Cause tonight I'll be staying here with you."

The joy of this album can be heard fully in this track. He's not going anywhere. "I can hear that whistle blowin'/I see that stationmaster, too/If there's a poor boy on the street/Then let him have my seat/'Cause tonight I'll be staying here with you."

Some critics charge this album as slight in Dylan's discography, the taste of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde fresh in their mouths. They hate his sweet voice. His disarming lyrics. How short this album is.

Well, this album isn't for them. It's for you. 27 minutes of Dylan smiling. Seems a fair exchange for all those times he's only smirked.

Bob Dylan presents a new collection of songs: NASHVILLE SKYLINE. 1969. Girl from the North Country (with Johnny Cash). Nashville Skyline Rag. To Be Alone With You. I Threw It All Away. Peggy Day. Lay Lady Lay. One More Night. Tell Me That It Isn't True. Country Pie. Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You.