During the fourteen months between the release of John Wesley Harding and the recording of Nashville Skyline, Bob Dylan hardly left his home in Woodstock. He made an exception to play two concerts, one on January 20, 1968, on the stage of New York’s Carnegie Hall in memory of his mentor Woody Guthrie, who had passed away on October 3, 1967. He led a quiet life with his wife and children, Jesse Byron, Anna, and Samuel Isaac Abraham, who was born in July 1968 and was given one of the first names of the songwriter’s father, who died of a heart attack shortly before. Dylan kept making music all the same. He played a lot with the Hawks, who had been recently renamed the Band, and worked on the new songs for his next album.
In July 1968, he put the final touches on “Lay, Lady, Lay,” and later that year played “I Threw It All Away” for George and Pattie Harrison, who came to spend Thanksgiving with him in Woodstock. It was obvious that Dylan was living a serene life. His friend David Blue, who came to see him just before the release of Nashville Skyline, recalled that the songwriter was fulfilled on the personal and artistic levels, and about to realize that he had just recorded the best album of his whole career. Folksinger Eric Andersen remembered Dylan at this time, saying, “The way he talked around the time of Nashville Skyline, he said he had learned how to sing for the first time in his life. Now he knew something about music, knew how to play and sing, and he was very proud of it.”2 Dave Cohen (later David Blue) added more specifically after hearing the album, “When I heard it I knew he was going to be torn apart, even though I thought it was marvelous.”2
In this new work, Dylan did a stylistic turnaround. Nashville Skyline followed the tone of the last two songs of the preceding album, “Down Along the Cove” and “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight.” It was country music, and the influence of Hank Williams was felt throughout. This was very far from Blonde on Blonde, or even the first ten songs of John Wesley Harding. No more allusions, parables, metaphors, or philosophical reflections; Dylan wanted to simply sing love songs. But for an entire generation—those who were demonstrating against the war in Vietnam and for civil rights—country and western was the epitome of conservatism; it was the music of racist and reactionary rednecks. What happened to the Dylan who sang protest music? There were many people who did not understand that, from now on, he had nothing to do with the major upheavals rocking the United States (namely the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, student protests, and the civil rights movement) and had locked himself away.
If some commentators were viciously opposed to this approach, others enjoyed the stylistic change adopted by the songwriter. Newsweek called the record “charming,” while Rolling Stone, the magazine of the counterculture, claimed that Dylan had done the impossible on the artistic level: an affirmation of happiness that was at once deep, human, and interesting. Nashville Skyline was clearly successful, especially after Bob Dylan appeared on the Johnny Cash Show on May 1, 1969 (broadcast on ABC on June 7). The record climbed to third and then first place on the hit lists, both in the United States and the United Kingdom. Three singles came out of it, and the song “Lay, Lady, Lay” was number 7 in the United States, number 5 in the United Kingdom, and number 10 in France.
However, compared to masterpieces like The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan or Blonde on Blonde, Nashville Skyline may have seemed like Dylan’s weakest effort. Nevertheless, this record had a major impact on American music. After years of psychedelic rock, culminating in the Woodstock Festival in August 1969, this humble record influenced a large number of artists, such as the Band; James Taylor; the Eagles; and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, among others, who dove into what could be called “country rock,” a hybrid that was very popular and successful during the seventies.
The photo on the cover was reminicent of The Folk Blues of Eric Von Schmidt from 1963. Bob Dylan, who is photographed from below, seems to wear the same vest and the same hat as on John Wesley Harding. In his left hand he holds one of the guitars of his friend George Harrison. The picture was taken by Elliott Landy, who later on became the official photographer of the Woodstock Festival and who was known for his superb portraits of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison, among others. Contrary to what the title of the album suggested, the photo was not taken in Nashville, but rather in Woodstock. After vainly attempting to immortalize Dylan in front of a bakery with his son Jesse, then in front of the songwriter’s house, Elliott Landy chose a photo session in the nearby woods. Kneeling on ground that had been drenched by a recent rainfall, the photographer finally managed to capture Dylan’s bemused expression wearing his funny hat. With his photograph, Landy went to Columbia’s offices. Dylan’s instructions had been clear: no words on the cover. But the recording company still placed the Columbia Records logo in the upper right-hand corner, which the photographer claimed undermined the three-dimensional perspective of the photograph. Here is an amusing detail: Landy is an anagram for Dylan. The liner notes on the back cover were written by Johnny Cash, who called Dylan “a hell of a poet.”
When Bob Dylan landed at the Ramada Inn in Nashville, just before beginning this album’s recording, he had four songs that were ready to be recorded: “Lay, Lady, Lay” and “I Threw It All Away,” as well as “To Be Alone with You” and “One More Night.” On February 12, he played them for Bob Johnston. The singer and the producer then agreed on which musicians to recruit. Charlie McCoy and Kenneth Buttrey were once again solicited, as well as Pete Drake, who had also played on John Wesley Harding. Then three newcomers appeared: pianist Bob Wilson, who also played on Naturally by J. J. Cale in 1971; guitar player Norman Blake, a bluegrass specialist who had already performed with Johnny Cash and had a brilliant career afterward; and, finally, the great Charlie Daniels, a guitar and fiddle player who was famous in Nashville and who worked with a multitude of artists, including Leonard Cohen, the Allman Brothers Band, Hank Williams, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Three other names appeared on the list, although their presence could not be confirmed: Hargus “Pig” Robbins, the famous pianist from Blonde on Blonde, and guitarists Wayne Moss (who also performed on Blonde on Blonde) and Kelton “Kelso” Herston.
Dylan told Jann Wenner how he worked with musicians: “We just take a song; I play it and everyone else just sort of fills in behind it. No sooner you got that done, and at the same time you’re doing that, there’s someone in the control booth who’s turning all those dials to where the proper sound is coming in… and then it’s done. Just like that.”84 Nashville Skyline was recorded on February 13, 14, 17, and 18. Charlie Daniels told Manfred Helfert in 1991 that the songwriter was at ease during the recording sessions: “Dylan did change some of the songs somewhat… But he seemed to have come to Nashville very well prepared.”36
The album was completed in four sessions, the last day being totally set aside for the duo of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. But the overall results are questionable: barely twenty-eight minutes of music was recorded. By comparison, John Wesley Harding contained over thirty-eight minutes, and Highway 61 Revisited more than fifty-one. Also, of the ten songs on the track listing, there is an instrumental, and the famous duo of Dylan and Cash on a song that was already six years old. Was the songwriter short of inspiration? Did family life in the country stunt his creativity? Even though certain songs like “Lay, Lady, Lay” or “I Threw It All Away” show the opposite, some people might have been concerned about his creative production.
Available in stores as early as April 9, 1969, the record was surprising, first of all because Dylan’s voice was much lower than before, and he definitely was not singing rock ’n’ roll. He explained this to Jann Wenner, “There’s not too much of a change in my singing style, but I’ll tell you something which is true… I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking, my voice changed… so drastically, I couldn’t believe it myself. That’s true. I tell you, you stop smoking those cigarettes… and you’ll be able to sing like Caruso.”84 What was also astonishing was the mood of the work, which was highly serene, resolutely optimistic, and nearly carefree. Some of his fans believed it was because of his involvement with Johnny Cash.
Although it was surprising how much Dylan’s voice had developed, Bob Johnston claimed he never changed mics to record him: “Hell, if they came in singing like the Chipmunks, and if Johnny Cash came in playing a ukulele, I couldn’t care less, because they all knew something no one else knew—they were artists.”85 Johnston’s production methods and the recording setup of Columbia Recording Studios in Nashville seemed to be identical to the ones used for preceding albums. Dylan and Cash were seen recording “One Too Many Mornings” in the studio in the 1969 documentary Johnny Cash! The Man, His World, His Music, directed by Robert Elfstrom. And apart from the remarkable Neumann U47s, there might have been Beyer M160 microphones, which are usually used for recording guitars. Two sound engineers were involved in the technical production: Charlie Bragg, who had already worked on John Wesley Harding, and Neil Wilburn, a newcomer in Dylan’s world.
Nashville Skyline was the second album where the cover shows Bob Dylan holding a guitar. The first time was in 1962, on the cover of his very first work, Bob Dylan—he was timidly smiling, clutching the famous Gibson J-50 that launched his career. Here, apart from his honest, warm smile, there was a Gibson guitar of another caliber: it was a superb J-200, which was supposedly a gift from his friend George Harrison. Did he use it in the studio? No one could tell. He was seen playing a Martin 000-18 on the Johnny Cash Show on May 1, 1969, slightly more than two months after the end of the recording sessions. And what about the Martin 0-18 from John Wesley Harding? And the Nick Lucas? Unfortunately, many of these questions cannot be answered. As for the harmonicas, he only used two of them, in the same song: in F and C on “Nashville Skyline Rag.”