Oh Mercy
| Oh Mercy | ||||
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| Studio album by Bob Dylan | ||||
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Publication |
September 22, 1989 |
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| Label (s) | Columbia Records | |||
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Format (s) |
LP |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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running time |
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| occupation |
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Daniel Lanois |
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Studio (s) |
March to April 1989 |
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Oh Mercy is Bob Dylan's 26th studio album from 1989. It stands chronologically between its predecessor Down in the Groove (1988) and Under the Red Sky, which was released in 1990 . Compared to other Dylan albums from the 1980s, Oh Mercy did well on the critics. Some critics even rated it as the best Dylan record of the decade. The opener Political World and the gloomy ballad Man In the Long Black Coat were described as outstanding pieces .
Content and background
The song material for Oh Mercy was created after a grueling tour of Canada , during a recovery period for which Bob Dylan had retired to Minnesota . Between November 1988 and March 1989, Dylan not only wrote the pieces for the new album. With his Never Ending Tour he also planned the concept for future live performances. The recording of Oh Mercy found in New Orleans held producer was Daniel Lanois . The number of guest musicians involved, including Cyril Neville from the well-known R&B formation Neville Brothers , and producer Lanois, was comparatively low at around a dozen.
This time, the song material on the record came exclusively from Dylan himself. In contrast to the previous productions, the music is dominated by a heavily blues- influenced, slimmed-down singer-songwriter sound with the main instruments being the organ and piano . Political World, the record's opener, is about the individual's search for love in a world that ultimately is all about power and economic interests. Ring Them Bells is a slow song with a religious content. Disease of Conceit treats religion in a moral way. According to Dylan, the title was inspired by the sex scandal involving Baptist preacher Jimmy Swaggart , who stumbled over contact with a prostitute . Like a number of other Dylan's pieces in the past, Most of the Time is a love song about a past relationship. Similar to Political World, the blues piece Everything Is Broken deals with a broken world and broken values. In Shooting Star, What Good Am I? and Where Teardrops Fall , moral and existential issues are also brought to the fore. The second pulling track on the record, alongside Political World, is Man in the Long Black Coat, a dark song about a stranger in a long black coat, to which the protagonist of the song is magically drawn. Finally, the final title What Was It You Wanted is also pictorial . Strongly influenced by the guitar , it follows the tradition of early Dylan songs like It Ain't Me, Babe. In terms of content, Dylan expressed a new lack of understanding in view of the excessive interest in his person. Dylan describes the recording time in New Orleans in detail in his autobiography "Chronicles One", in chapter 4 "Oh Mercy".
Reception and criticism
Many critics rated Oh Mercy as by far the best Dylan album of the entire 1980s. The production work by Daniel Lanois was also highlighted positively or rated as a lucky choice. The renowned music magazine Rolling Stone took Oh Mercy as an opportunity to compare Dylan's artistic status with that of the Rolling Stones , who had also released an album at the same time ( Steel Wheels ). The Dylan author Olaf Benzinger placed Oh Mercy in the overall oeuvre of the singer with the following summary : “'Oh Mercy' is a haunting album with songs full of intuition and a poetic and powerful language again. The main theme can be found in the opening song 'Political World': the trials and tribulations that the individual experiences in a world that is out of order. In his mixture of songs of hopelessness and the small and very private happiness in between, an artist shows himself who has found his place in the world again without having to condemn or colorize this world. "
Outtakes and cover versions
As with other Dylan studio albums, several tracks from the recording sessions were not released on the record. Dignity, a better-known Dylan song, was first published on the album Greatest Hits Vol. 3 (1994), Series of Dreams on Bootleg Series Vol. 3 and God Knows, Born in Time and Dignity (as a piano demo) on Bootleg Series Vol. 8 . Some pieces of the Oh Mercy repertoire were re-released on other Dylan albums or - partly by other musicians - re-recorded. Man in the Long Black Coat was part of the soundtrack for the TV series Heroes . Most of the Time experienced two new versions - once in the form of an alternate take on Bootleg Series Vol. 8 and once in the version by Sophie Zelmani on Masked and Anonymous , the soundtrack to a film in which Bob Dylan played the leading role.
Like most of Bob Dylan's tracks, Oh Mercy's tracks have been covered more or less often by other artists. The record opener Political World covered, among others, the bluegrass formation Carolina Chocolate Drops and the Dylan cover artist Michel Montecrossa , who also recorded a cover version of Man in the Long Black Coat . The piece became the most frequently interpreted title on the record with interpretations by the art rock formation Emerson, Lake and Palmer , by Steve Hackett , Steve Gibbons , Joan Osborne , Mark Lanegan (ex- Screaming Trees , on the soundtrack album too the Dylan biopic I'm Not There ), Barb Jungr and the German nu-jazz formation Nighthawks . Other songs by Oh Mercy have also found their way into the repertoire of other artists . Ring Them Bells has been interpreted by Joe Cocker , Joan Baez , Steve Gibbons and Barb Jungr , among others , Most Of the Time by the beatboxing formation Bauchklang , Everything Is Broken by the blues musician Kenny Wayne Shepherd , Bettye LaVette and Mr Hudson . Finally, What Was It You Wanted , country musician Willie Nelson added to his repertoire.
Others
The cover image of Oh Mercy is a mural with the expressionistically simplified image of a man and a woman. According to circulating reports, Dylan noticed the painting sprayed on a garage door on 57th Street in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood while riding his bike into the studio to work on the final mix for the upcoming Oh Mercy release . The mural entitled Dancing Couple was created by the graffiti artist Trotsky. According to reports on the Internet, the use of the motif on the cover of Oh Mercy is said to have led to several follow-up orders for the artist.
Track list
- Political World - 3:47
- Where Teardrops Fall - 2:32
- Everything Is Broken - 3:15
- Ring Them Bells - 3:00
- Man in the Long Black Coat - 4:32
- Most of the Time - 5:05
- What Good Am I? - 4:44
- Disease of Conceit - 3:43
- What Was It You Wanted? - 5:02
- Shooting Star - 3:14
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Olaf Benzinger: Bob Dylan. The story of his music. dtv , Munich 2006/2011 (updated new edition), ISBN 978-3-423-34673-3 ; P. 225 ff.
- ↑ Bob Dylan: Oh Mercy , Anthony Decurtis, Rolling Stone, Sept. 21, 1989
- ↑ Olaf Benzinger: Bob Dylan. The story of his music. dtv, Munich 2006/2011 (updated new edition), ISBN 978-3-423-34673-3 , pp. 232-233.
- ↑ according to information in the iTunes Store , accessed on December 31, 2013
- ↑ New vinyl reissue of Bob Dylan's 'Oh Mercy,' and the story of the cover art , Harold Lepidus, examiner.com, August 15, 2011
- ↑ Original Study by Trotsky for Bob Dylan Lp Oh Mercy , Jim Linderman, chalktalkbooks, accessed December 31, 2013
literature
- Olaf Benzinger: Bob Dylan. The story of his music. dtv , Munich 2006/2011 (updated new edition), ISBN 978-3-423-34673-3
- Bob Dylan: Chronicles, Volume One. Autobiographical work. Simon & Schuster, New York 2004, ISBN 978-0-7434-7864-9 (English; German by Kathrin Passig and Gerhard Henschel, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 978-3-455-09385-8 ; Kiepenheuer and Witsch , Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-04052-4 ).
