Bob Dylan

Item: Time Out of Mind
Author: James F. Laverty

Time Out of Mind

(1997)

Reviewed by James F. Laverty

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Label Columbia RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth1998

blues rock folk rock

Shortly after the release of Empire Burlesque (1985) Bob Dylan appeared on Rockline (a call-in program aired across North America) and surprised even the show's host when he confessed to having seriously considered abandoning his career as a singer/songwriter. It is obvious in retrospect that Dylan was not taking these impulses too seriously because four years after Empire Burlesque came out he recorded Oh Mercy (produced by Daniel Lanois), a work thought by many fans to be his finest in years. However, by the time his 30th anniversary of recording was celebrated in 1992 there were signs Dylan was beginning to slow down as a songwriter. The most apparent sign was the absence of original material on his albums Good As I Been To You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993) which featured traditional music by the likes of Blind Willie McTell and Doc Watson but nothing penned by Dylan himself. Dylan's revisitations of the classics were perceived by some as an indication that his contributions as a songwriter were spent at last. Thankfully, in the same year in which a heart illness almost took his life, Dylan recorded 11 new songs which comment on the twilight of life. Time Out of Mind by Dylan's own admission is the album he had been wanting to make for years. "Many of my records are more or less blueprints for the songs," Dylan told Jon Pareles of the New York Times. "This time I decided I wanted the real thing." Perhaps the death of Dylan's good friend and fellow musician Jerry Garcia prompted him to put pen to paper. Time Out of Mind is world weary, the ruminations of a drifter in his final hour. The album's voice belongs to The Wanderer who had set out at one time on a journey "to taste and to touch and to feel as much as a man can before he repents." He's returned. In fact, he's the one trudging along through "streets that are dead" to the dirge-like cadence of "Love Sick," the album's first cut. Hold-overs from Dylan's "Unplugged" tour, Bucky Baxter and Winton Watson appear alongside veteran Dylan-collaborator Jim Keltner, giving Time Out of Mind a vintage R&B sound reminiscent of the roadhouse scene of the early 1960s. Most prominent on Time Out of Mind is the Hammond B3 organ which meanders and weaves its way from beginning to end carrying Dylan's tales of the old days with it. The fresh, live quality Daniel Lanois has infused into the songs keeps things moving. The journey Dylan's drifter set out on offered up its fair share of experiences but did not take him too far as seen in the song "Million Miles":

I am drifting in and out of a dreamless sleep/ throwing all my memories in a ditch so deep/ did so many things I never did intend to do/ I'm trying to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you."

All of this searching has cast a shadow of meaninglessness over what is left of life, causing Dylan to lament, "I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from" on "Not Dark Yet." It might be tempting to dismiss the central figure of Time Out of Mind as a has-been until you note the enduring hopefulness and unwillingness to see love die. Nowhere is this sentiment more evident than in the heart-on-sleeve tribute "Make You Feel My Love":

The storms are raging on the rolling sea and on the highway of regret/ the winds of change are blowing wild and free/ you ain't seen nothing like me yet/ I could make you happy/ make your dreams come true/ nothing I wouldn't do/ go to the ends of the earth for you/ to make you feel my love.

Bob Dylan has captured on Time Out of Mind the desperation we experience when we know life is ebbing away and "it's not dark yet but it's getting there" ("Not Dark Yet"). Desperate to forget the differences in a relationship and to embrace the love that really matters, he sings: "I can't wait/ Wait for you to change your mind/ it's late" ("Can't Wait"). Life has grown tired and routine, but there are still a few reasons to keep on living, and one of them is to recover the love we have lost or to cherish the love we have.

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