I get a new turntable and dust off some old records. Vinyl Tap #14:
The underrated Planet Waves orbits from a Country-Gentlemanly New Morning to Blood On The Tracks-style yearning and bitter loss. “Hold on to me so tight / And heat up some coffee grounds” begins the first track, the affable and welcoming “On A Night Like This.” But there’s a little blood on these tracks, too, as the last line of the last song “Wedding Song,” prepares us for the reflections and recriminations to come on the later album: “And I could never let you go, no matter what goes on / 'Cause I love you more than ever now that the past is gone.”
The 1974 Planet Waves, tossed off in a three-day recording spate — and sounding like it, too, with raggedly refreshing results -- constitutes, then, a rough-hewed and ramshackle bridge from Bob Dylan’s post-crash laid-back country-rock period, to 1975’s pointed and poignant Blood On The Tracks, in which the break-up of his marriage haunts his dreams to poetic and expressive affect.
In Planet, these night visions are equally tender and tough: In “Never Say Goodbye,” Dylan sings of his dreams “made of iron and steel / With a big bouquet / Of roses hanging down / From the heavens to the ground." This back and forth bonhomie and melancholy plays throughout the release, which appropriately finds a dualistic Dylan in fine voice, alternately biting and genial.
And if you’re going to hastily record a rickety down-home and downcast, overlooked and undercooked work that depends on nuance over bombast, the go-to guys are The Band, at their Basement Tapes best. Robbie Robertson’s responsive guitar dynamics and Garth Hudson’s swirling organ ebb and flow mark particular musical marvels throughout the LP, evoking a recent past — and one as perhaps a prelude to long-ago memories...
"Thought I'd shaken the wonder and the phantoms of my youth / Rainy days on the Great Lakes, walkin' the hills of old Duluth,” says Dylan in the pensive and questing “Something There Is About You.” He's in an introspective mood, and the subject of youth and the passing of time crop up repeatedly in Planet, and not just in the album’s best-known song, the resonant and lovely “Forever Young,“ with its earnest wish: “May you build a ladder to the stars / And climb on every rung / May you stay forever young."
![Before The Flood [Live With The Band, 1974]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51m9fBi0R7L._SL120_.jpg)
Article comments
1 - Penelope
I LOVED your article on Planet Waves--so much that now I'm going to buy it...p.s. I love Dylan too (or at least my view of him)....
2 - Rodney Welch
Gordon,
I've been listening to nothing but Dylan for a solid week; sometimes I just get in those moods. Planet Waves hasn't been part of the mix, as yet, because I've never really warmed up to the disc all that much. I notice you focus a lot on "Wedding Song," which is about the only song on it I ever play.
Something I wrote two years ago, after buying it: "Planet Waves was released [several years after Nashville Skyline], in 1974, and it's a spotty record as well, but it certainly has more spark and spontaneity. He's backed by the Band, which is not, to my way of thinking, his best band, but the one which he is most comfortable with. It's not remotely at the level of inspiration they achieved with The Basement Tapes -- in fact it's probably the least of their collaborations together -- but it comes close to evoking the same spirit, the same loose, funky feel, with playing that's often a good deal more inspired than Dylan's songs. "Cast-Iron Songs and Torch Ballads," the cover promises, and in fairness it does have the spirited "On a Night Like This," a good version of "Forever Young" (inexplicably followed by a alternate, shitty one) and the lively "You Angel You." Women been on Dylan's mind in the making of this disc, with elegies to women both soft ("Hazel") and hard ("Tough Mama"); wives, apparently, too, in the haunting and fascinating "Wedding Song," which I'd love to believe was something he wrote for Sara after they went to a couple's retreat. On this record, we hear Dylan at his lamest ("In this age of fiberglass, I'm searching for a gem") and his best ("I love you more than ever now that the past is gone.") A game effort."
3 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Thanks, Penelope, for the comments. I like the idea of "my view of him."
4 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Rodney--thanks for sharing that fine piece about "Cast-Iron Songs and Torch Ballads" you had written a couple years back. I get in those inexplicable moods to listen to a particular album--and that's what happened when I chose Planet Waves this time. Now maybe I can get "Tough Mama" from endlessly going through my head.
5 - Rodney Welch
Gordon,
Ket's do a roundtable discussion on Dylan sometime. I got a head full of ideas that are driving me insane.
6 - Anne-Marie
Gordon, your article on this album is very thought provoking, I enjoyed it immensely. I purchased Planet Waves when it was first released and it has been one of my favorite Dylan albums ever since. Could never understand how so many reviews of this album described it as nothing more than a bit of drabble. The songs are moving and the music is haunting. But then that's Dylan, isn't it...
7 - Jay
Rodney,get over it man! planet waves is, as noted by Gordon, totally under-rated. while not as polished as many other great dylan albums it has a feel and intensity that is right up there. Dirge, Something there is about you, on a night like this, you angel you are all great songs by any standard. Thanks Gordon for shining the light on this one.
8 - Glen Boyd
Gordon,
The first time I ever saw Dylan was on the 1974 "Before The Flood" comeback tour with The Band, which was in support of Planet Waves. The show was amazing and I became a life long Dylanologist as a result.
But I always thought Planet Waves was a rather underwhelming album in the Dylan canon. Based on your review, I'm definitely going to back and take another listen. One thing your review did remind me was how cool a song "Tough Mama" is. I'd also forgotten that one and it is a great little rocker powered along by The Band.
Definitely gonna pull out my dusty copy of Planet Waves and give it another spin. Right now it's filed somewhere inbetween "Self Portrait" and "Knocked Out Loaded"...the other Dylan albums I rarely go back to.
Another Dylan album that doesn't get a lot of respect is "Street Legal." Like Planet Waves, "Street Legal" was a transition album for Dylan...he was basically between the "Rolling Thunder" period and the Jesus Years which began with his very next album "Slow Train Coming."
"Changing Of The Guard," "Where Are You Tonight," and "Is Your Love In Vain" from "Street Legal" rank right up there with his best songwriting in my view.
Maybe you oughtta tackle that one next Gordon.
-Glen
9 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Thanks Rodney and Anne-Marie. I don't consider me as being comprehensively Dylan-savvy (can't afford to own a lot, lots of gaps)so I think I'd be too inconsistent to be much good in a roundtable setting.
But Planet Waves is one of those exceptions, not a classic but a schizophrenic special case that didn't seem to warrant its lukewarm reviews. It always struck me that certain songs foreshadowed a tone and theme more fully realized on Blood on the Tracks, and I don't recall reviews on Planet discussing that too much.
10 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Thanks Jay and Glen, for the comments. In this feature, I'm trying to stay away the usual classics and shine a revisionist light on some undervalued albums.
As Glen alluded to, "Tough Mama" has always been a fine song, one that, for whatever reason, plays a lot in the random shuffle of my mind, if you will. And there's always something of interest in the more dismissable Dylan album I've heard--in his "born-again" phase, "Every Grain of Sand" (from Shot of Love) stands with his finest work.
11 - Kevin Davis
Gordon, thanks for the great article. As a die-hard Dylan fan, I always enjoy reading people's musings on the man. That said, Planet Waves was honestly one that never made much of an impact on me. The songs are mostly decent, but there's something about the record that rubs me the wrong way. Most likely, it's the Band, who I always found irritating. But "Dirge" and "Hazel" are up there with the best of them; "Hazel" was once described to me as the "Dylan fan's Dylan song," meaning that if you find someone who is serious about Dylan, "Hazel" will likely hold some kind of special place in their hearts. From people I've met, it seems to be at least relatively accurate.
Street-Legal is a wonderful album with some kickass songs (if Dylan had never written anything besides "Changing of the Guards," it would still be enough to qualify them among the greats), but I don't think "Is Your Love in Vain?" is one of them. It has a nice tune, but the thing that ruins it for me is the lyrics, especially the "Can you cook and sew/And make flowers grow?" line. "Senor" is great too, though the studio version is ass compared to latter-day live versions from the Never-Ending Tour.
Agreed about "Every Grain of Sand," too. "In the Summertime" is another great song off Shot of Love.
In my opinion, the ultimate underrated Dylan album is World Gone Wrong, his album of blues and folk standards from 1993. The atmosphere to that record is ridiculous, and Dylan's guitar playing is phenomenal. Easily in my top ten favorite Dylan records.
12 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Kevin--thanks for the comments and the Dylan album buyer's guide of sorts, and further incentive to add to my collection some of the lower-profile works I had passed up mostly for empty-wallet reasons. "World Gone Wrong" sounds especially inviting from your description.
On Planet Waves, which can justifiably be attributed to "Bob Dylan and The Band" I can see where the opinion about the Band, in part, could be a deciding factor.