The 1985 Project Part 16: Bob Dylan - Biograph

Fifty-three songs telling a big story about a big artist

I’ve been writing about the albums that placed in the 1985 Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll and plan to keep on going until I run out of 1985 records to consider.

I think it started with the Longines Symphonette Society. Well, rather, I think it started before that, but some of my earliest memories were the magazine ads for boxed sets of light symphonic works. The records were always scattered across the floor, usually with parts of one on top of another, which pretty much guaranteed these records would be scratched. In fact, as my day job has long been working in record stores, I partially blame these ads for normalizing mistreatment of records and thus destroying such a large percentage of what people bring in to sell.

Alright, maybe historically things go back further. The term “record album” actually began in the late 1930s, when record companies started packaging multiple 78s into a folder with cardboard covers on each side of several sleeves glued into the spine. This was a way for classical compositions to be spread across several 3 minute records, or for all the tunes from a single Broadway musical to be sold together, or for simply a collection of hits from a popular artist. In the early 1950s, when the 33 1/3 rpm speed allowed for all these cuts to be placed on one 12 inch record, the term album migrated. But of course, the urge to put together even more music in one salable object eventually led to the boxed set. I really don’t know if the Longines Symphonette records were first to this marketable idea, but they did advertise heavily for a long time.

Rock music fans pretty much ignored box sets for a long time. Oh, sure, George Harrison put three albums into a box with All Things Must Pass but almost everybody knows that was just a reason to put Apple Jam into the world so that nobody actually had to buy it or even listen to it more than once. (To this day, I don’t think I’ve seen a used copy of that album that had a single scratch on that third LP.) He also packaged The Concert for Bangla-Desh in a three-record box, but that special occasion did not lead to an explosion of multi-LP sets.

In 1985, Columbia Records released Biograph, a five-record collection of Bob Dylan songs from multiple sources. At that time, Dylan was 24 years into his recording career – nobody could dream he’d still be releasing albums up to 40 years later. The idea of this box was not to do an ordinary greatest hits collection, even considering it would have been expanded to such a great length. Instead, the records inside this box would tell stories, would make connections across different eras of Dylan’s career, would reveal truths which might not have been readily apparent in a simple chronological retrospective.

At this point, I should point out that I’m working at a disadvantage in writing about this collection. I apparently sold my copy of Biograph sometime over the years, or at least I misplaced it. And we don’t currently have a copy at the record store. So, I can’t look at the liner notes which were the first occasion for Dylan to comment on so many of his songs at length. I remember finding them to be incredibly interesting, and they helped to understand the reasons for some of these songs being included. But, I can’t remember details after decades have passed, so I’ll go on without them.

I have enjoyed Bob Dylan’s music since I fell in love with “Watching the River Flow” (not included in this set) back in 1971. (I know there aren’t many Dylan fans who started with that one, but we all get exposed to something for the first time in different ways.) But I didn’t start getting his records until a friend gifted me New Morning in 1981. By 1985, I had most of the big albums, but still had huge gaps in my collection. So Biograph offered me plenty of new treats in addition to the 18 (of 53) previously unreleased songs in the box. This is probably why I didn’t notice some of the obvious themes of the records – I wasn’t hearing songs in a new way so much as I was often hearing songs for the first time.

But now, I can tell that side one is all about love, and side two is all about protest, and side three is all about misunderstanding, and is all about deception, etc. (These are broad categories, at any rate.) Putting “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)” next to “Mr. Tambourine Man” allows me to see how each song refers to a magical jester who can make things better just by being there. “Tangled Up In Blue” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” share the color blue and the end of love affairs. “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window” is from the view of the jilter to the jilted; “Positively Fourth Street” is the other way around.

There are so many great previously unavailable performances here – live recordings, studio outtakes, demos. And there are performances I’m still not as familiar with – singles and cuts originally released on compilation albums. Side ten includes three of the songs people who don’t even own a Bob Dylan album might know – “I Shall Be Released,” “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” and “Forever Young.” I haven’t heard this take of “I Shall Be Released” often, and “Knockin” is from the Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid soundtrack I’ve never actually owned, while the demo of “Forever Young” was available nowhere else. These three songs all sound brand new to me even though I’ve heard them hundreds of times in other forms.

I imagine the critics who voted this set into 16^th place in 1985 were as impressed with the very concept of paying such homage to a long-lasting career – and at the time, 24 years was as long a steady career as anybody could have in rock music – as they were with the high quality execution. The next year, Bruce Springsteen released a five LP box of live performances. After that, box sets started trickling and then deluging into record stores. The real explosion came once CDs outpaced LPs for sales, and the boxes didn’t have to be so big and clunky. I must have acquired fifty or sixty of the things. They were a great way to catch up on the music I hadn’t heard yet. As such, a good chunk of my education came by way of the people who compiled so many songs into career overviews or even better thematic constructions. I still love a good box set, though I don’t think I’ve gotten any in seven or eight years at least.

This one has to get 9.5 points out of 10 – it would have gotten the extra half point if only it had anything from Infidels on it.