One of the strangest and most unexpected openers of an album Ive ever heard ‘All The Tired Horses’, is still a stand out track although it only has two lines sung by a female choir and not Dylan himself. Amazing!

Listening to these songs now and looking at the album artwork, I can’t help thinking ‘what the hell was Dylan going through’ when he made this…its not like any other Dylan album really, well except maybe one of The Bootleg Series. Scrapped together with covers, instrumentals and some live out take originals this one is probably for the completists and was never gonna win Dylan any new fans but I think that was exactly the point. At the time, Dylan was fed up with his public image and apparently wanted to deliberately piss some people off with this collection. That said, it contains some great takes including an epic version of Blue Moon, and the few tracks with cello and violin are amazing. Overall, its a very country sounding album like Nashville Skyline which is very alright by me.

Produced by Bob Johnston and Released June 8, 1970

Recorded April 24, 1969 – March 30, 1970, his tenth studio album and his second double album after BLONDE ON BLONDE at the time of release it received negative reviews but still reached No 1 in the UK and No 4 in the US.

I can’t help thinking, if this was a single 10 or 12 track album, with the standouts instead of the 24 track double, would it have received all the negative reviews.

In defence of the bad reviews, Marc Bolan had this to say “Please, all the people who write bitterly of a lost star, remember that with maturity comes change, as surely as death follows life”.

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