Nashville Skyline had a huge impact on the direction of popular music when it was released in 1969. At the time, Dylan & the Los Angeles rock group the Byrds were the only artists experimenting with country music.
At the time I was in high school playing in a rock band and Dylan was a scheduled guest on The Johnny Cash Show. I can still recall the entire show vividly. We all gathered around a portable black & white television in renovated barn we used as a rehearsal space. Dylan sang two songs from Nashville Skyline: Lay Lady Lay, and Girl From the North Country which was a duet with Johnny Cash.
Dylan had cut off his wild looking hair-do and was dressed like a country gentleman, not in his usual bohemian style of dress. He dressed like he was on his way to an appearance on the Grand Ol' Opry. It was scary but Dylan almost looked like a clone of Johnny Cash, both in appearance and stage manner.
Later in the show a little known folk singer named Joni Mitchell made her national television debut singing a song titled Both Sides Now. We were completely enthralled. Watching that show also got me interested in the music of Johnny Cash, who was completely under the radar for rock and rollers in 1969.
I went to YouTube to check to see if my memory of that 1969 Dylan appearance on the Johnny Cash Show was accurate. We took a lot of drugs in those days and sometimes your memory plays tricks on you.... But the performance was exactly how I remembered it:
Nashville Skyline was a good album, but not nearly as good as some earlier albums when Dylan was at the peak of songwriting talents. This was the mellow Bob Dylan, and as a matter of personal taste, I preferred the angry Dylan who sang songs like Like A Rolling Stone, Masters of War & Positively Fourth Street.
__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt
|