Self Portrait

Self Portrait
Studio album by Bob Dylan
Released	June 8, 1970
Recorded	April 24, 1969 – March 30, 1970
Genre	Country rock, rock
Length	73:15
Label	Columbia
Producer	Bob Johnston
Professional reviews
Allmusic link Robert Christgau (C+) link George Starostin link Rolling Stone link
Bob Dylan chronology
Nashville Skyline (1969) Self Portrait (1970) New Morning (1970)

Self Portrait is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's 10th studio album, released by Columbia Records in June 1970.

It was Dylan's second double album, and features mostly cover versions of well-known pop and folk songs. Also included are a handful of instrumentals, original compositions, and live tracks featuring The Band. Most of the album is sung in the affected country crooning voice that Dylan had introduced a year earlier on Nashville Skyline. Seen by some as intentionally surreal and even satirical at times, Self Portrait received extremely poor reviews upon release. The most memorable reaction was Greil Marcus' opening sentence in his Rolling Stone review: "What is this shit?"^[1]

Dylan later claimed in interviews that Self Portrait was something of a joke, far below the standards he set in the 1960s, simply to get people off his back and end the "spokesman of a generation" tags; but he has also given other, contradictory accounts of his motives.

Despite the negative reception, the album quickly went gold in the US, where it hit #4, and it gave Dylan yet another UK #1 hit before it fell down the charts.

The making of Self Portrait

The motives behind Self Portrait have been subject to wild speculation and great debate. Over the years, a few credible theories have emerged from those familiar with the project.

Critic Robert Shelton was under the impression that Self Portrait was intended as a serious release. "I told Dylan that Self Portrait confused me," Shelton wrote in 1986. "Why had he recorded 'Blue Moon'? He wouldn't be drawn out, although obviously he had been stung by the criticism. 'It was an expression,' he said. He indicated that if the album had come from Presley or The Everly Brothers, who veered toward the middle of the road, it wouldn't have shocked so many."^[2]

However, in a Rolling Stone interview taken in 1984, Dylan gave a different reason for the album's release:

As to why he chose to release a double album, Dylan replied, "Well, it wouldn't have held up as a single album—then it really would've been bad, you know. I mean, if you're gonna put a lot of crap on it, you might as well load it up!"

Later, Cameron Crowe interviewed Dylan for his liner notes to 1985's Biograph, a boxed-set retrospective of Dylan's career. When asked about Self Portrait, Dylan gave another story:

"Self Portrait was a bunch of tracks that we'd done all the time I'd gone to Nashville. We did that stuff to get a [studio] sound. To open up we'd do two or three songs, just to get things right and then we'd go on and do what we were going to do. And then there was a lot of other stuff that was just on the shelf. But I was being bootlegged at the time and a lot of stuff that was worse was appearing on bootleg records. So I just figured I'd put all this stuff together and put it out, my own bootleg record, so to speak. You know, if it actually had been a bootleg record, people probably would have sneaked around to buy it and played it for each other secretly. Also, I wasn't going to be anybody's puppet and I figured this record would put an end to that...I was just so fed up with all that who people thought I was nonsense." Later interviews only echoed the sentiments expressed to Crowe.

Songs

Self Portrait was heavily criticized for its performances and overall production, with many critics singling out various songs as poor cover choices.

However, one track has managed to draw consistent praise over the years. Written by Alfred Frank Beddoe (who was "discovered" by Pete Seeger after applying for work at People’s Songs, Inc. in 1946), "Copper Kettle" captures an idyllic backwoods existence, where moonshine is equated not only with pleasure but with tax resistance. Appalachian farmers who struggled to make their living off the land would routinely siphon off a percentage of their corn in order to distill whiskey. Everything produced would then be hidden from the government in order to avoid the whiskey tax of 1791.

Clinton Heylin writes, "'Copper Kettle'...strike[s] all the right chords...being one of the most affecting performances in Dylan's entire official canon."^[3] NPR's Tim Riley called it "an ingenious Appalachian zygote for rock attitudes, the hidden source of John Wesley Harding's shadows."^[4]

"Copper Kettle" was popularised by Joan Baez and appeared on her best-selling 1962 LP Joan Baez in Concert.

Among the original songs written for the album, "Wigwam" later achieved notoriety for its use in the 2001 Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. "Living the Blues" was later covered by Leon Redbone. "Living The Blues" was also covered by Jamie Saft Trio with Antony Hegarty on the album Trouble: The Jamie Saft Trio Plays Bob Dylan, in 2006.

The only song on the album that can be considered psychedelic is the party-friendly romp "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)," a song from the Basement Tapes sessions, covered to great success by Manfred Mann in 1968. For live venues, The Grateful Dead and Phish made the song an iconic favorite.

Outtakes

Self-Portrait, like most Dylan albums, generated a large number of outtakes, songs that were recorded for the album but simply did not make the final cut. The majority of the songs have never been released or even circulated. Two notable songs are "Went to See the Gypsy" and "Time Passes Slowly", both recorded for possible inclusion on Self-Portrait but issued on New Morning.

• A Fool Such As I (Bill Trader)
• Annie's Going To Sing Her Song (Tom Paxton)
• Come A Little Bit Closer
• Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (Traditional)
• Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)
• House Carpenter (Traditional)
• Little Moses (Bert A. Williams, Earle C. Jones)
• My Previous Life
• Pretty Saro
• Railroad Bill (Traditional)
• Ring Of Fire (June Carter, Merle Kilgore)
• Running (?)
• Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay (Steve Cropper, Otis Redding)
• Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Charles Badger Clark)
• Tattle O-Day (Eric Andersen)
• These Hands
• Time Passes Slowly
• Thirsty Boots (Eric Andersen)
• This Evening So Soon
• Went To See The Gypsy
• When A Fellow's Out Of A Job
• Unidentified Song
• Universal Soldier (Buffy Sainte-Marie)

Aftermath

Dylan had his share of negative criticism before Self Portrait. At worst, his 1962 debut was met with quiet indifference. In 1966, his tour with the Hawks was met with open anger from some fans, but the burgeoning rock press countered that reaction with their enthusiastic praise.

With Self Portrait, there were few admirers and far more detractors. Critical disdain seemed universal. At best, a number of journalists, including Robert Christgau, felt there was a concept behind Self Portrait that had some merit.

"Conceptually, this is a brilliant album," wrote Christgau, "which is organized, I think, by two central ideas. First, that 'self' is most accurately defined (and depicted) in terms of the artifacts—in this case, pop tunes and folk songs claimed as personal property and semispontaneous renderings of past creations frozen for posterity on a piece of tape and (perhaps) even a couple of songs one has written oneself—to which one responds. Second, that the people's music is the music people like, Mantovani strings and all."^[5]

However, few critics expressed any interest in the music itself. "[I]n order for a concept to work it has to be supported musically—that is, you have to listen," Christgau admitted. "I don't know anyone, even vociferous supporters of this album, who plays more than one side at a time. I don't listen to it at all. The singing is not consistently good, though it has its moments, and the production—for which I blame Bob Johnston, though Dylan has to be listed as a coconspirator—ranges from indifferent to awful. It is possible to use strings and soprano choruses well, but Johnston has never demonstrated the knack. Other points: it's overpriced, the cover art is lousy, and it sounds good on WMCA."^[5]

In his Rolling Stone review, Greil Marcus warned, "Unless [Dylan] returns to the marketplace, with a sense of vocation and the ambition to keep up with his own gifts, the music of [the mid-sixties] will continue to dominate his records, whether he releases them or not."^[6] He also commented, "I once said I'd buy an album of Dylan breathing heavily. I still would. But not an album of Dylan breathing softly."^[7]

Rock critics Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell, writing in their 1991 book The Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time, listed Self-Portrait as the third worst rock album ever, with only Lou Reed's experimental Metal Machine Music and Elvis Presley's concert byplay album Having Fun With Elvis On Stage faring worse. "The breakup of the Beatles shortly before this album's release," they wrote, "signaled the end of the sixties; Self-Portrait suggested the end of Bob Dylan."

In 1973, Knopf published Dylan's song lyrics, sketches, and album notes as Writings and Drawings, with updated versions called Lyrics appearing in 1985 and 2000. In all three editions, the original lyrics from Self-Portrait are never acknowledged, suggesting Dylan's disavowal of the whole album.

Track listing

Side one

1. "All the Tired Horses" (Dylan) – 3:12
2. "Alberta #1" (Traditional, arranged by Dylan) – 2:57
3. "I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know" (Cecil A. Null) – 2:23
4. "Days of '49" (Alan Lomax, John Lomax, Frank Warner) – 5:27
5. "Early Mornin' Rain" (Gordon Lightfoot) – 3:34
6. "In Search of Little Sadie" (Traditional, arranged by Dylan) – 2:27

Side two

1. "Let It Be Me" (Gilbert Bécaud, Mann Curtis, Pierre Delanoë) – 3:00
2. "Little Sadie" (Traditional, arranged by Dylan) – 2:00
3. "Woogie Boogie" (Dylan) – 2:06
4. "Belle Isle" (Traditional, arranged by Dylan) – 2:30
5. "Living the Blues" (Dylan) – 2:42
6. "Like a Rolling Stone (Live)" (Dylan) – 5:18
   • Recorded live August 31, 1969 at the Isle of Wight Festival.

Side three

1. "Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight)" (Alfred Frank Beddoe) – 3:34
2. "Gotta Travel On" (Paul Clayton, Larry Ehrlich, David Lazar, Tom Six) – 3:08
3. "Blue Moon" (Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers) – 2:29
4. "The Boxer" (Paul Simon) – 2:48
5. "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo) (Live)" (Dylan) – 2:48
   • Recorded live August 31, 1969 at the Isle of Wight Festival.
6. "Take Me as I Am (Or Let Me Go)" (Boudleaux Bryant) – 3:03

Side four

1. "Take a Message to Mary" (Felice Bryant, Boudleaux Bryant) – 2:46
2. "It Hurts Me Too" (Traditional, arranged by Dylan) – 3:15
3. "Minstrel Boy" (Live) (Dylan) – 3:32
   • Recorded live August 31, 1969 at the Isle of Wight Festival.
4. "She Belongs to Me" (Live) (Dylan) – 2:43
   • Recorded live August 31, 1969 at the Isle of Wight Festival.
5. "Wigwam" (Dylan) – 3:09
6. "Alberta #2" (Traditional, arranged by Dylan) – 3:12

Personnel

Notes

References

• Guterman, Jimmy and O'Donnell, Owen, The Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time, Citadel, 1991.

External links

• Discussion of the album by Dylan fans
• Review of Self Portrait