Self portrait

Self portrait
Compilation album by Bob Dylan
Publication (s)	June 8, 1970
Label (s)	Columbia Records
Format (s)	Double LP
Genre (s)	Country , pop music
Title (number)	24
running time	73min 15s
production	Bob Johnston
chronology Nashville Skyline (1969) Self portrait New Morning (1970)

Self Portrait is a double album by Bob Dylan with cover versions of well-known songs as well as instrumental titles, original compositions and live recordings. It was released in June 1970, reached number 4 on the Billboard 200 , received gold status for more than 500,000 units sold, and is still one of the artist's most controversial publications. He himself described it as the answer to the numerous bootlegs that were in circulation at the time.

Emergence

In the week of the release of the previous album Nashville Skyline in early April 1969, Dylan went with producer Bob Johnston to Columbia Row Music Studio in Nashville to record some contemporary music classics, especially from the blues , folk and country genres . These included a few pieces by Johnny Cash , suggesting that the recordings were made in preparation for Dylan's appearances on Johnny Cash's new television show. A total of three recording sessions took place, but the material stayed for about a year before further recordings were made in New York in March 1970 , including pieces newly written by Dylan. In April 1970, the shoot for Self Portrait in Nashville was completed. Some of the sessions took place without Dylan, during his absence various strings and wind instruments were re-recorded and overdubbed at the direction of producer Johnston . Affected were the saxophone in Woogie Boogie , the entire instrumentation of Belle Isle and Copper Cattle , the violin in Blue Moon , the horns and other brass instruments in Wigwam, and the arrangements of It Hurts Me Too and the two parts of Alberta . The live recordings of Dylan's headlining concert in August 1969 at the Isle of Wight Festival , which were included on the album, were also reworked .

Why Dylan recorded a version of Paul Simon's song The Boxer is still unclear. Some critics suspected that Dylan viewed the song as a parody because he thought Paul Simon was a "wannabe Dylan" and wanted to mock him.

The album was released on June 8, 1970. It contains a total of two previously unreleased pieces written by Dylan, as well as four live recordings, 16 cover versions of contemporary songs, of 1950s pop classics and traditional folk and country pieces . The record cover shows a self-portrait of Dylan in oil .

reception

The album is one of the most criticized in rock history. The best-known review of the album, written by music critic and Dylan fan Greil Marcus for Rolling Stone , begins with the sentence “What is this shit?” (German: “What kind of shit is that?”). Varesi described the album as "ridiculous", the live recordings of the Isle of Wight Festival can be forgotten, very few of the songs on the album are worth listening to, and Robert Christgau aptly noted that no one is themselves can listen to more than one record side at a time. One of the main reasons that Self Portrait was such a bad album, says Varesi in the work of producer Johnston. His mix is bad and the use of strings and winds is usually out of place. He also criticizes Dylan's vocal performance as "soulless and uncommunicative", with some songs he seems to want to parody himself. In addition, Dylan does not show any system when selecting the cover versions, they appear arbitrary. Dylan received harsh criticism for the fact that he passed the new arrangements of traditionals such as Alberta , It Hurts Me Too or Belle Isle as his own songs. Varesi sums up that the album has nothing in common with a self-portrait of the artist. Seth Rogovoy, on the other hand, saw Self Portrait as a mixture of all styles and songs that had influenced Dylan's music until then. Lee Marshall complained that the album was not consistent, the live recordings were scattered over the entire album without a recognizable system. Dylan himself stated that he released the album as a deterrent; he was of the opinion that he was receiving more attention than he would have liked. In an interview for Biograph magazine , however, Dylan said that he was bothered by the countless bootlegs of his recordings and that he therefore released his own bootleg with Self Portrait . In his autobiography Chronicles , he described the process of creating the album with the words “I put together a double album by throwing everything I could think of on the wall and publishing what stuck. Then I scraped up everything that had fallen and pushed it afterwards. ”Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic summed up that there has never been an album that was so clearly designed to offend the audience. Although it has become easier over the years to listen to the album, it is still obscure and difficult to access.

Commercial win

Despite the bad reviews, the album was able to place in the charts. In the US, it reached number 4 on the Billboard 200 and received gold status for more than 500,000 units sold. In Great Britain it went straight to number 1 on the album charts, in Germany Self Portrait reached number 29 on the media control charts.

content

1. All the Tired Horses (Dylan) - 3:12
2. Alberta # 1 (Trad .; Arr. Dylan) - 2:57
3. I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know (Cecil A. Null) - 2:23
4. Days of '49 (Lomax / Lomax / Warner) - 5:27
5. Early Morning Rain ( Gordon Lightfoot ) - 3:34
6. In Search of Little Sadie (Trad .; Arr. Dylan) - 2:27
7. Let It Be Me ( Gilbert Bécaud / M. Curtis / Pierre Delanoe) - 3:00
8. Little Sadie (Trad .; Arr. Dylan) - 2:00
9. Woogie Boogie (Dylan) - 2:06
10. Belle Isle (Trad .; Arr. Dylan) - 2:30
11. Living the Blues (Dylan) - 2:42
12. Like a Rolling Stone (Dylan) - 5:18
13. Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight) ( Alfred Frank Beddoe ) - 3:34
14. Gotta Travel on ( Paul Clayton / Larry Ehrlich / David Lazar / Tom Six) - 3:08
15. Blue Moon ( Lorenz Hart / Richard Rodgers ) - 2:29
16. The Boxer ( Paul Simon ) - 2:48
17. The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo) (Dylan) - 2:48
18. Take Me as I Am (Or Let Me Go) ( Boudleaux Bryant ) - 3:03
19. Take a Message to Mary ( Felice Bryant / Boudleaux Bryant ) - 2:46
20. It Hurts Me Too (Trad .; Arr. Dylan) - 3:15
21. Minstrel Boy (Dylan) - 3:32
22. She Belongs to Me (Dylan) - 2:43
23. Wigwam (Dylan) - 3:09
24. Alberta # 2 (Trad .; Arr. Dylan) - 3:12

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Seth Rogovoy: Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet . Simon and Schuster, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4165-5915-3 , pp. 128 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Anthony Varesi: The Bob Dylan Albums: A Critical Study . Guernica Editions, 2002, ISBN 978-1-55071-139-4 , pp. 99 .
3. ↑ ^{a b} Seth Rogovoy: Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet . Simon and Schuster, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4165-5915-3 , pp. 131 .
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Lee Marshall: Bob Dylan: The Never Ending Star . Polity, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7456-3641-2 , pp. 139 .
5. ↑ ^{a b} Seth Rogovoy: Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet . Simon and Schuster, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4165-5915-3 , pp. 130 .
6. ^ Anthony Varesi: The Bob Dylan Albums: A Critical Study . Guernica Editions, 2002, ISBN 978-1-55071-139-4 , pp. 98 .
7. ^ ^{A b} Anthony Varesi: The Bob Dylan Albums: A Critical Study . Guernica Editions, 2002, ISBN 978-1-55071-139-4 , pp. 100 .
8. ^ Lee Marshall: Bob Dylan: The Never Ending Star . Polity, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7456-3641-2 , pp. 140 .
9. ^ Anthony Varesi: The Bob Dylan Albums: A Critical Study . Guernica Editions, 2002, ISBN 978-1-55071-139-4 , pp. 101 .
10. ↑ Bob Dylan, Chronicles , pp. 130 f.
11. ↑ Chart tracking Self Portrait , officialcharts.com, accessed on December 29, 2015.
12. ↑ Chart tracking Self Portrait , www.chartsurfer.de, accessed on December 29, 2015.

literature

• Anthony Varesi: The Bob Dylan Albums: A Critical Study . Guernica Editions, 2002, ISBN 978-1-55071-139-4 , pp. 98-102 .
• Seth Rogovoy: Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet . Simon and Schuster, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4165-5915-3 , pp. 128 ff .
• Lee Marshall: Bob Dylan: The Never Ending Star . Polity, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7456-3641-2 , pp. 139-141 .

Web links

• Self Portrait at Allmusic (English)
• John Howells: The Story Behind Self Portrait