Bringing
It All Back Home
Part I: History
Bringing It All Back Home was the record where Dylan finally plugged in. His first attempts to record amplified music had been in the autumn of 1962, when he produced the frantic but aborted "Mixed Up Confusion" single, the gentler "Corrina Corrina" as its B-side and the even more discreetly-accompanied take of "Corrina Corrina" that appeared on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. There was also the bluesy "Rocks And Gravel" that was cut from that album at the last minute, some rockabilly-styled outtakes of "That's All Right Mama", and possibly one or two others that remain in the can. It seemed that at the time Columbia wanted Dylan firmly as a folk artist, not as a Sun-era rock and roll revivalist. From the three recording sessions he did with backing musicians, only the album cut of "Corrina" survived at that time.
In the intervening two years, though, the music world had moved on a long way. The Beatles had invaded America (and Dylan's consciousness), and a 1964 record by another British band had a particular influence on Dylan's future direction: The Animals' version of "House Of The Rising Sun". They had taken the arrangement from Dylan's first album and recorded it with electric rock backing, producing a huge international hit and laying one of the foundation stones of the coming folk-rock boom.
In December of 1964 Dylan's producer, Tom Wilson, took Dylan's own original solo recording of "Rising Sun" and overdubbed an electric studio band onto it, thinking to maybe create a Dylan cover of The Animals' hit - a strangely circular notion. The same treatment was applied to three other 1961-62 Dylan recordings too, but the four overdubbed songs stayed on the shelf. Dylan presumably didn't like the results, and it's quite likely that the whole thing was Wilson's idea, not his. Note
But whether or not Dylan was influenced by this experiment, a few weeks later a full electric band was booked for the recording sessions for his new album.
Recording
On January 13, 1965, Dylan arrived at Columbia's Studio A with fifteen or so new songs, spent a day putting down acoustic guide versions, and then got started the following day with the group of studio musicians. These included guitarist Bruce Langhorne and bassist Bill Lee, both of whom had played on Dylan sessions in 1962, and Bobby Gregg, who was among the musicians at the previous month's unproductive overdub session.Note Also included were pianist Paul Griffin, whose playing was later heard to much better effect on Highway 61 Revisited and the "One Of Us Must Know" single; 44-year old bass-player Joe Mack, contracted under his proper name of Joseph Macho Jr.; and guitarists Al Gorgoni and Kenny Rankin.
The studio records Note show that on the evening of the 14th, some different musicians were brought in; these included John Sebastian and Steve (né John) Boone from The Lovin' Spoonful, and John Hammond Jr., son of Dylan's former producer. However, none of the recordings from this evening session were used on the album. The next day the first group of musicians were back again,Note and work carried on as though nothing had happened. The whole of the released album was recorded in just two days. The producer was Tom Wilson, the recording engineers Roy Hallee and Peter Dauria.
Mixing
In the 1960s Columbia used different staff engineers to mix the mono and stereo versions of albums; this is one reason why the mono and stereo mixes so often sounded different. Nothing seems to have been written about the mixing of this particular album, but since stereo was still very much a minority format it is likely that Dylan's involvement would have been with the mass-market mono version, particularly as this was the one which would get AM radio airplay. See the separate article on mono and stereo recordings for a more detailed discussion.
Vinyl Releases
Bringing It All Back Home was released in March 1965 in the US, May in the UK, in both mono and stereo.
The mono version was deleted around 1968 in the US and in 1969 in the UK, though it continued in production in some countries into the seventies. In March 2001 it was reissued by the US specialist vinyl label Sundazed, remastered from the original mono mix-down tapes by the label's owner, Bob Irwin.
The stereo LP version has remained unchanged since its release, and is apparently still on Columbia's vinyl catalogue in the US; it has been deleted in the UK and Europe for several years. In 1999 the UK audiophile label Simply Vinyl reissued the stereo album under licence, but this edition also appears to be deleted now.
One result of using different mixing engineers is that songs were often faded out differently in the stereo format. This is very evident on Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, where some tracks differed by half a minute or more. There are several differences of this type on Bringing It All Back Home, but on a much lesser scale: the biggest discrepancy is only 5 seconds. Details are given in Appendix A.
The stereo LP mix also balances the various instruments slightly differently here and there, with the piano in particular being more audible on some of the songs on Side 1. The biggest difference, though, is the thin, weak sound; this is discussed in more detail in Part II.
CD Releases
The album was first released on CD in the United States, in 1987. While it has previously been thought that this was produced from a vinyl cutting master, Note the audible evidence contradicts this. Close comparison of the CD with the stereo LP reveals that the album must have been remixed for the CD from the multi-track studio tapes. Many tracks are longer than on the LP, and here and there individual instruments have received different treatments. No information has emerged about who did this remixing; however, it could possibly have been Tim Geelan, the Columbia staff engineer who remixed Blonde On Blonde for CD around this time. Note
Curiously, where songs from this album have been included in CD compilations, the versions from the Bringing It All Back Home CD have not been used; the tracks appear instead to have been derived from the stereo LP master.
As an aside, a quite bizarre CD release appeared in China around 2000; this is a mono CD, but not mastered from the original mono mix. It appears rather to be a mono reduction from the normal stereo CD master. All tracks except the first have the first second or so cut off, so the mono sound is probably just an accident of inept mastering. Despite sporting a Sony catalogue number (Sony CD-116), this is quite likely a pirate release. I only mention it here to dispel any legend of an official mono CD release of Bringing It All Back Home.
September 2003 brought us the momentous hybrid SACD reissue of the album. Although no mention of it is made on the sleeve, the album was actually remixed from the studio four-track tapes. This, according to Sony's Steve Berkowitz, was because the original stereo master tape was no longer usable. The remixing was done by Michael H. Brauer, who has previously done excellent remixes of Street Legal, Live 1966 and Blonde On Blonde. Steve Berkowitz provided some guidance in the mixing process. The new edition has Brauer's stereo mix in both normal CD and SACD formats (mastered by Greg Calbi), and also his 5.1 surround mix (mastered by George Marino).
Most recently Brauer's stereo remix has been reissued as a plain CD, providing a less expensive alternative to the SACD edition. This is sold as a "remastered" edition in a jewel case. The audio content is identical to the CD layer of the hybrid SACD. The original CD version seems to have been withdrawn, leaving the much improved remix as the new standard edition.
Album Sleeves
Rod MacBeath made an excellent, detailed study of this album's cover in his series on Dylan's record sleeves in The Telegraph some years ago. He identifies, for example, practically all the LP sleeves (within a sleeve) so carefully strewn around in the front cover photograph, and even names the cat (Rolling Stone, if you must know).
The record cover was a field day for Daniel Kramer, with that brilliantly staged colour photo of Dylan and Sally Grossman on the front, and six monochrome shots on the back showing Dylan in the company of various famous friends of the time - Joan Baez, Peter Yarrow, Allen Ginsberg, film-maker Barbara Rubin.
As was standard Columbia practice in the sixties, the
stereo edition compromised the original front sleeve design by dropping the
title and picture down in order to accommodate the stereo serial number and the
"360 Sound" double-arrow logo. As a result the white space below the
picture pretty well disappeared.
On the US rear sleeve Columbia printed their logo and the catalogue number in the top right-hand corner of the photo of Dylan with Joan Baez. This proved difficult to adapt for the UK market, which required the CBS logo and a different catalogue number; so the background was cropped from the upper part of this photo, Dylan and Baez appearing as cut-outs.
France, as usual in the sixties, did its own thing with the sleeve. The original edition was a gatefold, with the rear photos rearranged and Dylan's sleeve notes omitted in favour of advertising for other French Dylan LPs and EPs. To make up for that the centre spread contained transcribed words for all the songs (generally closer to the recorded versions than the words published elsewhere), with some interpretative notes on the songs in French. Note
The sleeve variation that has provoked most comment and
perplexity over the years is the one released by CBS in the Benelux
countries and Germany.
Here, to cash in on the popularity of Dylan's latest hit single, they actually
changed the title of the album to Subterranean Homesick Blues. The album
is otherwise identical. Amazingly, the variation carried over into the CD era,
and as far as I know was only dropped with the advent of the 2003 SACD and 2004
"remastered" CD editions.
The 2003 SACD edition comes in a digipak whose front is based on the original mono LP design. It has the original rear picture photos, marginally cropped, on the back, but omits the original sleeve notes. These notes appear in the booklet, along with five new Daniel Kramer photos, mostly from the recording sessions. Two more session photos appear on the inside cover and beneath the disc tray.
The new standard "remastered" CD edition has a jewel case with the inserts very much following the external design of the SACD. The booklet is pretty much the same as for the SACD, but for one strange exception. On the penultimate page, where the SACD booklet has a Daniel Kramer photo of Dylan with producer Tom Wilson, the jewel-case CD booklet has instead a detail of the large photo that's on page 2 of the booklet (showing just Dylan's forehead and shades), cropped to not quite the right shape to fit the space. Nonetheless, Wilson still gets his production credit on the same page of the booklet. Note
Last updated July 2005