Main menu
Fretplay home Submit tabs

Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan tabs Bob Dylan discography

Channels
Guitar channel Bass channel Guitar videos Reviews

Message Forum
Guitar forum Bass forum Bands and artists Promote your band Recent discussions All categories

Fretplay.com

Bob Dylan guitar tabs

CD reviews

Self Portrait

Bob Dylan - Self Portrait Audio CD

A fair review of the Bob Dylan "Self Portrait" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Bob Dylan reviews here, or go back to the Bob Dylan tabs.

Band: Bob Dylan
Title: Self Portrait
Rating:

Release Date: 1989-08-24
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: All the Tired Horses 2: Alberta, No. 1 3: I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know 4: Days of '49 5: Early Morning Rain 6: In Search of Little Sadie 7: Let It Be Me 8: Little Sadie 9: Woogie Boogie 10: Belle Isle 11: Living the Blues 12: Like a Rolling Stone 13: Copper Kettle [The Pale Moonlight] 14: Gotta Travel On 15: Blue Moon 16: Boxer 17: Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo) 18: Take Me as I Am (Or Let Me Go) 19: Take a Message to Mary 20: It Hurts Me Too 21: Minstrel Boy 22: She Belongs to Me 23: Wigwam 24: Alberta, No. 2

Fool yourself...and enjoy!
From what I understand this album angered a great deal of people when it came out. I wasn't born when this album came out, if I was I'm sure my opinion of 'Self Portrait' would be different. Many felt it was below the standards Bob Dylan had set for himself in the sixties. I imagine at the time this album was released that it would have been a disappointment after Dylan masterpieces like 'Blonde on Blonde', 'Highway 61 Revisited', etc. . .

I have gotten into Dylan's work like nobody's business over the past few years. I have snatched up all the noteworthy albums from the sixties, seventies, and most of his recent works. After gobbling up, and absorbing all of these, I've found myself wanting to hear more, and I have been scraping the proverbial 'bottom of the barrel', and checking out some of his not-so-well-received-albums. I must say. . . I really enjoyed this one. It's a laid back, often silly, fun record. It's definitely not to be taken seriously.

I like to think of this album as one of 'The Bootleg Series' from Dylan's country experiments. If you do the same, then I do believe it is possible to thoroughly enjoy 'Self Portrait'.

However, if you bought this when it came out, then perhaps this would be impossible for you. . . understandably. I'd probably still be pissed too.

constrast here and now
it almost brought to tears that he had tones at one time. Im constantly reminded that bob had a singing that sounds like this. He voice sounds like a ash tray now. it drives me nuts that he you could hear every note and word he sung. I also liked this cd never bought many of the lp's. I got into Dylan around 1990 when they released those first batches of cd's that are plain as paper, there isnt a remaster yet of SP but the remasters have nicer everything packaging and sound. Bob will rerelease this one his death bed.

I kind of love "Self Portrait..."
I got interested in hearing it again after reading his autobiography, "Chronicles Part 1," in which he demonstrates the degree to which he came into the music scene as a kind of musicologist -- a kind of private collector of American songs without regard for genre. I kind of love "Self Portrait," even though I know the intent behind it was to declare independence from his "leeching" fans. On only a few albums does he allow his love for American music to take precedence over his own songwriting, and this is one of those few. (The others are his first album, and the 1990s collections "Good As I Been To You" and "World Gone Wrong. " Cover versions also appear on some of the Bootleg Series disks, especially #1-3, and #8, and on "Biograph. ") He is a thoughtful, reverent interpreter of the songs he loves, songs he seems to understand from the inside out. That's what threw people off in 1970. If you were going to record an old country chestnut like "I've Forgotten More. . . " you undoubtedly had to have your tongue in cheek, but Dylan croons it with evident sincerity, and pulls off a version that stands with any other. Same with "Let it Be Me," "Blue Moon," and "Take a Message to Mary. "

Some of the other covers of more folkish material are flat-out fantastic, and don't deserve to be dismissed in any way. "Copper Kettle," "Days of '49" and "Alberta" are great recordings, and hold up very well against all the other music he was recording in the period between the classics "Blonde on Blonde" and "Blood on the Tracks. " You could easily assemble a single album out of this collection that would be his second-best album of that period after "John Wesley Harding. " It would include:

"All the Tired Horses"
"Alberta No. 1"
"I Forgot More. . . "
"Days of '49"
"Early Morning Rain"
"Let it Be Me"
"Belle Isle"
"Living the Blues"
"Copper Kettle"
"Gotta Travel On"
"Blue Moon"
"Take Me as I Am (Or Let Me Go)"
"Take a Message to Mary"
"It Hurts Me Too"
"Wigwam"

That's 16 songs. The other stuff -- sloppy things like the live stuff with The Band, the dumb version of "The Boxer," the pointless "Woogie Boogie" are what drag this album down in the esteem of Dylanologists and overthinkers like Greil Marcus.

But what I suspect really killed its reception from the cradle was Dylan calling it "Self Portrait. " All the fans of that era -- they thought they knew who he was. He was an icon for radicals and pseudo-revolutionaries. Or, he was the epitome of the rock/folk singer-songwriter, the trailblazer for artists like Paul Simon, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Or, he was a poet of the streets, the surreal prophet of chaos. No, Dylan says, here: I'm none of those. I'm just a guy who likes old songs. These songs inspire me. Not just Woody Guthrie, but also those old redneck crooners, too, and those phonies on Broadway. I could play Grand Old Opry without a lick of shame. The Dylan fanatics of 1970 could not accept that.

If he'd posed on the front cover with a guitar in front of a studio in Nashville and called it "The Nashville Project," and trimmed it a little, it might've won a good review in Rolling Stone. But I think it's fair to say that by 1970, Bob Dylan was no longer in search of Rolling Stone's approval. .

Self Portrait cd review
Theres the odd good track (Quinn the Eskimo) but - God! - what on earth is he thinking crooning with himself on "The Boxer"

I can't imagine this being pulled out too much. Hm

Its a pretty wretched album. Its not bad, as such. Songs like Belle Isle, The Boxer. . they're actually good songs

But Dylan sounds really bored. Minstrel Boy - what is that? Even the Band sound bored on that track

Are there interesting tracks? Sure! But so much of this album isn't really sung very well. I mean, God help us, I hope Bob didn't spend much time singing these tracks

Certainly the mans worst double album

Theres always the case of a double album that can be whittled down to a GREAT single album. Blonde on Blonde, The Beatles White Album. . they would've sounded great with songs like "Revolution 9" left off

But where does that leave Self Portrait? Do you just have a 45 single of the tolerable tracks (Wigwam, Sadie, Tired horses)

I can't imagine many Dylan fans really play this album too much. Granted, Down in the Groove is more bland (at least here the songs are more memorable - you NEVER forget Dylan's take on "The Boxer" - ouch!)

His worst? I don't know. Maybe Dylan, or Dylan and the Dead. Or the wretched Budokan double set (which is ruined by a flute on several numbers; indeed you can barely recognize "Maggies Farm"!)

Its an . . interesting . . album. Dylan went into the studio pretty damned quick after the reviews savaged this. Thankfully he went on to better things (the Band helping out bigtime on a live and studio disc on Asylum)

But by this point, Dylan obviously didn't care. Definitely this album is in his bottom 5. The only thing more painful is watching all four hours of Renaldo and Clara

A wretched dispirited disc altogether!.

One song for each hour of every day
Dylan here seems to be saying look here this here might just be me too. Singularly good-humoured and off-kilter album from 1970 that if it teaches anybody anything that lesson just might be how being hep and hip and all the rest of that exhausting and sanctimonious jive is at best irrelevant and at worst dishonest. And personally when I hear him sing a song like say Copper Kettle I'm as happy as a pig in ess haitch one tee to tag along--the dude finagled the same exact sleight of hand in his 2004 autobiography and I'm still marvelling long and hard at the serenely wonky achievement of that tremendous book. So get you some new ears if you have a mind to and give this double dose of Dylan a little extra wiggle room. And while you're at it dust off Street Legal from 1978 too why don't you--from Changing of the Guards to Where Are You Tonight? there's hardly a bum note on this other inexplicably unsung jimdandy.

You can see a complete list of all Bob Dylan discography, or go back to the Bob Dylan tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.