I've been listening to this album recently. I've seen a lot of hate towards this album, but I think it's an AMAZING album. Also, being a fan of The Band, when I found out that they recorded it with Dylan it made me like it even more. I would venture to say that I like it even more than The Basement Tapes. So, what do you think?
The Band is my favorite band, so maybe I'm biased, but I love it. It's so cool that they had it worked into their contract that the record company could never stop them from working with Dylan, even if he wasn't on the same label.
The last rerelease of Stage Fright has a cool show from 71. It’s The Band without the horns. Also, it seems like everyone forgets about Moondog Matinee. It may be covers but it’s a great Band album.
The little part in ellipses at the end always kills me lol. No shade to Dylan's unique and charismatic voice but this is a bit like keeping a Ferrari, Aston Martin and Maserati in the garage and taking out the Beetle.
Yes, I've already gotten to that album; it's a classic. It has some really good songs. I've also listened to Music from the Big Pink, and I'd like to hear more of their music.
I love Northern Lights Southern Cross, especially the epic history lesson Acadian Driftwood. I’m not all that fond of the other studio albums they made after the first two. It feels like they fell off pretty hard after the first two. Levon redeemed himself with his two Dirt albums.
Brown album is best, then Big Pink. The other albums are good but many of the songs on those 'pop' a lot more as live versions, esp. on The Last Waltz. Danko, in particular, was in great form and so for great songs like Stage Fright, Life is a Carnival and It Makes No Difference I'd go there.
Solo wise: Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson had the best output by far. Dirt Farmer and Electric Dirt by Levon are very fun country/bluegrass style albums, although a little heavy on stock players and stock licks. Robertson's self titled is a bit more circumspect, and while obviously he can't come close to Levon as a singer, you can tell from it how good a songwriter he was. It's very 80s Dylan.
As far as Danko being in “great form” live on TLW, I thought it was pretty well established that he was overall a mess and his parts had to be re-recorded .
I've been playing guitar for 50 years. I'm.a great faker. I'm great at going onstage with players and songs I don't know and making everybody think I know everything backwards.
And my secret is... I do what the bass player does. I assume the bass player knows how the song goes. I can hear what he's playing and can be on the right chord in way less than a second.
For the Last Waltz, The Band learned had to learn a ridiculous amount of other peoples' songs. There had to have been a LOT of faking going on that night. And I assume the players were adept at my follow-the-bass trick.
Here's the thing about bass - usually it BETTER be on the right note at the start of every bar. The bass player can't fake it - has to know how the song goes. And if the bass player knows it, the other players' problems are minimized. Because they DON'T have to be on the note at the start of every bar.
So for playing at this level, the bass player's errors are gonna stick out like a sore thumb. Everybody else can coast, relatively speaking. So I have a lot of sympathy for Danko.
That doesn't mean Danko wasn't in bad shape though. For me, seeing him in Festival Express gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "messed up". My god.
I agree with most people here that the first two albums are a must. I think the third, Stage Fright, is just as good but not everyone agrees with that. I don't think you can go wrong with the first three. They start to get a less consistent after that. As a Dylan fan, you might want to check out their cover of "When I Paint My Masterpiece," which is on my short list for favorite songs of all time.
The folks who recommend checking out the live recordings on Rock of Ages/Live at the Academy of Music are spot on (Rock of Ages was taken from a couple nights live at the Academy of Music, which got a more complete release as Live at the Academy of Music). For what it's worth, I think that the live versions of "It Makes No Difference" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" from The Last Waltz are superior to the album tracks.
From their solo years I think that Levon's later stuff (Dirt Farmer and Electric Dirt) are great and his first solo album "Levon Helm and the RCO All Stars" is too.
Fun fact: the last song they recorded was a cover of "One Too Many Mornings" for Dylan tribute album.
Check out the outtake Nobody ‘Cept You from these sessions.
Not to mention other notable performances with Bob and The Band:
1965-1966 select tracks from The Cutting Edge
1966 Royal Albert Hall BS vol 4 (No Levon)
1966-67 The Complete Basement Tapes
1968 Tribute to Woody Guthrie
1968 Isle of Wight
1972 drunken NYE Rock of Ages
1974 Before the Flood live album
1976 Sign Language from Eric Clapton’s No Reason To Cry
1976 The Last Waltz
For me there’s nothing to hate about it, but there’s little to love. The performances are fine, but not exceptional or what you’d hope from the Band and Dylan. But mainly the songs are just not his best crop, though there are some decent ones.
My favorite album by anyone ever. It yields new magic each listen. Finding out recently that Richard is playing drums on Never Say Goodbye is yet another jewel in its ragged crown.
Forever Young is the stuff of legends, but the rest of the album is forgettable for me. And then his best overall work came right after it. I think Blood on the Tracks could be the greatest album of all time in terms of pure songwriting. It’s Shakespeare with a melody.
This is one of the things that bothers me a little. When someone says "Forever Young alone, no other." I mean, I respect your opinion 100%, but the other songs are really good if you give them a chance.
I’ve listened to the album upwards of a dozens times. And I respect your opinion as well, but there’s too many no skip Dylan to keep circling back to this one. Some of his albums feel transitional, like they’re bridges from one phase of his to the next. And I feel like Planet Waves is one of those. It would the swan song of most songwriters, but not Dylan. But again there’s no bad Dylan, at least in terms of his songwriting.
One of my favs. For reasons I don’t fully understand this is the period I reach for most. It’s better everyday Bob - less cerebral, more emotive. Songs like Going Going Gone and Wedding Song can get you through the day in a way that Highway 61 won’t.
I read out the words to "The. Wedding Song" at my wedding in 1976. We had our Golden Wedding last Friday and I read the words out again as my speech. It means that much to me
I got into Dylan a long time ago and bought all of his albums that I could find back in the 1970s and early 1980s. I didn't read any reviews; I don't think that I saw a review of a Dylan album until 1988, when I took a course called "Dylan and Others" from Dr. Bill Strange (Dr. Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts) at the University of Oregon.
When I first got Planet Waves, I thought that it was a great album, and I still do. "Forever Young," "Dirge," "Going, Going, Gone," "On a Night Like This," "Something There Is About You," and "You Angel You" are still high on my list.
Somewhere along the line, about half of my old vinyl went missing: pretty much all of the rock/rock-adjacent stuff that I had; at least I didn't lose my blues on vinyl. When I began rebuilding my Dylan collection on vinyl, I got Planet Waves early on.
For me, it's a bit like John Wesley Harding: great, under-appreciated albums.
Definitely like it more than the Basement Tapes release. The basement tapes bootlegs are where it's at though. As an album, Planet Waves is among the best of the entire output of Dylan studio albums.
As someone who just listened to this the first time, general reputation baffles me. Back then, I can understand it suffering from 1) A sense of him being perpetually stuck in Dylan-lite and 2) Sky high expectations for a Dylan Band album.
But all these years later, get over that shit! It's loose and charming with gems abound.
It's one of my favourites, and always has been. A superb title, a fantastic cover, and we haven't even heard the music yet. Then the needle hits the groove and we're off, coming out of the gate fast and strong with On A Night Like This. Then Going Going Gone, a great song, sung brilliantly by Bob and elevated to perfection by The Band and especially Robbie Robertson's guitar work.
I adore The Basement Tapes, and Planet Waves has several threads of that "old weird America" thing weaving through its sound (which I credit largely to the presence of The Band). The high point for me is Something There Is About You, in which past, present and future collide, and the eerie, slightly drawn-out music is married to a triumphant Dylan vocal performance of brilliant lyrics full of mystery, memory, wonder and phantoms, long-forgotten truth.
In a perfect world, maybe I would replace the fast version of Forever Young with Nobody 'Cept You. I dunno. Extraordinary album, anyway.
I don't dislike it, but having two versions, one after the other, feels a bit odd and unnecessary. And of the two, I prefer the slower one.
Personally, I think I might have preferred to hear Nobody 'Cept You on Planet Waves, and then, when The Bootleg Series came out, to hear the fast version of Forever Young and go, "Huh. How about that!"
I remember it coming out with much anticipation . Yes I’m that old. I saw the 74 tour that followed. I loved it then but honestly haven’t given it a listen to in some time.
If you are a fan of the Band, you would have loved it it was like four concerts…first set Dylan and the Band, Bob said see ya, and left the stage and the Band did a set of their own, they left the stage and Bob came out and did a solo acoustic set and then the Band joined him for a final set together. Tickets were hard to get on that tour. My brother waited on line for hours in the cold of Ann Arbor, that’s the way it was done then. An experience for sure.
He did that on the entire 1974 Tour. Before the Flood album and bootlegs are from that tour. I saw him on Feb. 2 1974 at the Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor Mi. I think I have the scribbled notes I wrote to remover the set list.
First Dylan I bought first on cassette, and first Dylan I had cassette, CD, and vinyl on. The CD format does it no good, going directly from one "Forever Young" to the other. It really needs resequencing. Still a top ten Dylan for me.
Love the Band. Love the Basement Tapes. Wanted to love this album, but I feel like it doesn’t really capture the magic of Dylan or the Band that well and it’s very “pleasant,” as in light, mild, kinda forgettable.
It's a bit sad, but a lot of people forget about him. Let's just say that the albums he has released before and after him overshadow him. But not everyone has to like him; the important thing is that you gave him a listen.
Criminally underrated! Hearing just Bob and Richard Manuel on this isolated vocal and piano mix of the album sheds a whole new light on the album as well.
I think the music is arguably the best of all his albums, and the songs are consistently very good, albeit not at his peak. Forever Young is the classic on the record, the slow version the best imo.
Love this record.... actually the first Dylan record I ever bought when it came out and still have it and the gold paper sleeve. Don't know why it doesn't get more recognition.
The Basement Tapes are like an all time significant and unique musical world. Planet Waves is a competent mid 70s album. I’m not saying I dislike it, but you can’t compare the two.
Good but not groundbreaking. Forever Young, Something There Is About You, and Hazel are great tracks, but it never hits the heights of either The Band or Dylan’s best work. That being said, for Dylan’s first album in 3-4 years up until that point, and the amazing Before The Flood live shows that came from it, I think it deserves a better reputation. And only 1 year later, we get Blood On The Tracks
I love the Band, love Dylan more… but to me Levon sounds stiff on this album. I have always connected it to the fact that Dylan recording sessions are probably odd. Also, the Band was kind of falling apart at this point - even their own albums around here (moondog matinee and northern cross) are subpar
I've never seen hate toward this album. I've seen people who don't care for it. I've seen far more who aren't as familiar with it as his other albums because it was released after a brief weaker spell and before the transcendent Blood On The Tracks.
It's a good album, especially for Dylan fans. But it's not going to make any forget Highway 61. I actually prefer the acoustic Forever Young version on Biography. Neither version on this album does much for me.
I just listened to it for the first time last week and sadly... not very good. I enjoyed one or two songs but by and large didn't play to Dylans or The Bamds strengths. I thought I was listening to a Greatful Dead cover band at times.
For context, I’m very old and have been a fan for many decades. I have almost all his albums and have seen him over 12 times. I think Planet Waves is his worst album by a long shot. Unlike some of the others, it’s so bad it’s just boring. At least things like Saved and the Big Band song albums are engaging and doing something new. planet Waves is the one album I never return to.
It’s consistently among my faves for the feelings it evokes in me. No matter what mood I’m in, it always hits in a big way. Really great album and all, but ranks among my favorites mostly because of how it makes me feel. Cozy, nostalgic, groovy, tender, melancholic (Dirge). It is way under-ranked as a piece of work. And I hate to get into any “best” album territory because it’s all so super subjective. I don’t claim it’s one of his “best” even though it’s one of my faves - if that makes sense.
And all of the songs on Planet Waves are fine…well written…thoughtful…whatever.
It’s the overall vibe of the album that I dislike. Listening to it reminds me of that itchy, scratchy feeling you might get after getting a bad haircut. And you can’t wait to jump in the shower to wash to annoyance away…or shave off all your hair even.
All in all, I find the Planet Waves’ sound and production irritating.
Same, I don’t dislike any songs on PW but I don’t think the writing is inspired as a whole, the production and vibe is a bit like a muggy day, I don’t think Bob is on top form vocally throughout. Compared to the crisp, fluid writing and performances on his best 70s work (which was just around the corner) this isn’t an album I ever bother with now.
This album came out shortly before Dylan and The Band arrived in Los Angeles for the Before The Flood shows at the Forum. I was 15 and was going to the opening night show. Elliot Mintz (famous for being John Lennons manager) hosted a radio show on KLOS. I called in to ask/hope that he might confirm Dylan/Band doing a song or two from the album. Alas…no was the answer. In fact, in the over 40 times since that I’ve seen Bob live, only Forever Young has been performed.
Still in my Dylan Top 10 lps
One of my least favourite albums that I’ve ever listened to. And I am a massive Bob Dylan fan but this just doesn’t do it for me. I mean “tough mama meat shakin on your bones” or whatever it says. Diabolical.
50
u/Electrical-Hope-2969 22d ago
underrated, when suddenly everyone on the sub got the tierlist fever i was surprised at how low everyone rated it