Bob Dylan
No Direction Home: The Soundtrack

Inspired Folksinger. Refined Composer. Arrogant Rockstar. Music Pioneer. Amphetamine Poet. Revolutionary Hero.

Bob Dylan has played countless characters over the years. And in this case, we’re only talking about the years from 1959 to 1966. The years that consecrated the figure of this undisputed master of music. A famous phrase from Miles Davis comes to mind: "I have to change, it’s a curse". A curse indeed. An ongoing need to change. To push beyond. An insistent necessity dictated by that constant restlessness which our Bob surely knows all too well.

This precious two-disc collection was released in 2005 as the soundtrack to the eponymous film/documentary directed by Martin Scorsese (highly recommended). It contains 28 carefully selected tracks presented in chronological order. The quality of the tracks is consistently high from start to finish. Though in different ways. Listening to this album, you grow with him. You taste the strong flavor of each artistic phase of his life. But there is more. All the tracks are previously unreleased (except for 2). This is precious material with a delicate and rare aspect. Something fragile. Something that lingers between existence and total nonexistence. 

It starts with the early teenage recordings. Amateur demos with a wonderfully green and pure flavor. Therefore, moving. Among these early rarities, for example, "I Was Young When I Left Home" stands out. A crystalline glimmer of acoustic guitar accompanies a prematurely mature and melancholic voice of a boy just twenty years old.

Then come the songs from the period of "Freewheelin", "The Times They Are A-Changin", "Another Side Of Bob Dylan" and "Bringing It All Back Home". All acoustic for now. The songs that made history are presented here in live or studio versions. They are always new. Masterpieces that are revived in versions often better than the originals. An example above all? The live version of "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall" far surpasses the album version in intensity and expressiveness. As do "Mr. Tambourine Man", "Don’t Think Twice", "Chimes Of Freedom" and "It’s All Over Now Baby Blue". It’s pointless to talk about these tracks; the titles speak for themselves.

In the second disc, masterpieces follow one another frenetically. We are between 1965 and 1966. The most sublime artistic period of Dylan. It’s about an arrogant and venomous Rockstar. A Revolutionary Demigod in word. In music. In the way he pronounces every syllable. Every rhyme. We are in the era of "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde On Blonde". Undisputed Masterpieces. One is enchanted listening to this version of "She Belongs To Me". So undulating and fragile in music and so safe and concrete in words. "Maggie’s Farm" imposes itself as a representative of the historic electric turn of Newport. "It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry" shows us a Dylan incredibly inspired in music and word. Self-assured. Brash and aware. "Tombstone Blues" is a masterpiece with a foundation of dirty and arrogant blues that cradles a text that is nothing short of inhuman. "Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues" is a visionary gem crowned by enveloping and dreamy music that seems to come from another planet. It is followed by the outtakes of "Blonde On Blonde". Masterpieces like "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again" and "Visions Of Johanna" need no introduction. They are timeless masterpieces with no equals. The disc closes with two songs recorded during the historic 1966 world tour. A prophetic and angry tour. Marked by drugs and the hostility of traditionalist fans. The two songs in question are "Ballad Of A Thin Man" and "Like a Rolling Stone" in their most violent and relentless versions.

To conclude, I want to say just one thing:

This collection changed my life. Enjoy listening