Planet Waves - Bob Dylan - 1974

Dylan's best album of the 70s. Believe it my friend.

Reunited with The Band for the first time since '67. Dylan was on fire. I reckon this was his break-up album, not Blood on the Tracks. Dirge, Never say Goodbye and Wedding Song. Good grief this is Dylan at his most vulnerable. "I hate myself for loving you" is so raw.

Please do listen and reconsider. The SACD amazing.

 

I love this album. This, then Blood on the Tracks, they belong together. I've enjoyed this since it first came out. Then I was more a Band than Dylan fan actually; Blood on the Tracks leveled the scales.

I like the SACD, but I played the lp a few days ago and was just floored.

 

Loved it then and love it now

 

You're so right in that PW and BotT belong together. I'm flummoxed as to why BotT is considered his 70s classic. PW is OUT there. This is Dylan trying hard and succeeding. Really raw and his most personal album.

Please do reconsider.

 

Always loved it, but it sure does get the "dismissed" treatment by many.

 

It's a good album but to my ears it's not even close to his best album of the 70s. I think not only Blood on the Tracks but also Desire, Street Legal even Slow Train Coming are all better.

 

My favorite of the '70's too, in a weird way for me almost a cousin of Neil Young's Tonight's The Night.

 

Can't get on with Desire and Street Legal. All that gypsy bollocks, I think Dylan started to become a follwer rather than a leader with those.

Open to revisionism with STC.

 

I love playing this album for people who only know his hits.

 

I'm a fan.

 

Or Rod Stewart's hits.

Hats off to Rob Fraboni for talking Bob into putting both versions of Forever Young on the album.

 

Dylan felt he had something to prove.
When his contract came up Dylan wanted a raise from Columbia. They turned him down. It got acrimonious. They also dumped Pete Seeger at about this time.
Dylan signed with David Geffen and Asylum Records.
He was upset with Columbia, and he was gonna rub it in their noses. The Band being on this album did exactly what it was supposed to do, raise interest in the album. Make everybody want to hear this FIRST. It did not make number one by accident. It contains a bunch of tracks I consider classics. On A Night Like This, Going, Going, Gone, and of course Forever Young among others.
Columbia released Heavens Door It topped the charts and then someone got fired. But not before Dylan put out his first live album on Asylum. Once again with the Band. That one is a great album for fans of both acts. That was the last straw as Columbia caved. Then they got Dylan back at any cost. Where he remains to this day. A legacy artist.

 

I think it is always so easily dismissed because we only ever compare it to his best work. We rarely look at it on its own merit.

 

I personally don't think any of these are better. I like Blood on the Tracks as much.

 

YMMV as always, but is there something in the water Dylan listeners here are drinking this week?

Planet Waves is better than Blood on the Tracks. Self-Portrait is better than Blood on the Tracks.

Perverse contrariness and everthing-you-know-is-wrong provocations can be fun. But like Van Morrison fans who claim they can't hear a masterpiece in Astral Weeks, downgrading Bood on the Tracks in deference to the excellent but often strained and forced-sounding Planet Waves is going against a tsunami of consensus and heartfelt love and gratitude.

 

Opinions are not fact. There's a sense of collective spontaneity and fun in Planet Waves that is lacking in many other of his 'seventies releases, and only Blood on the Tracks matches it for me. But I know that's just my personal preferences for music recordings and personal opinion. There's on "canon" we have to follow.

 

This is the way it sounds to me. I know working fast, improvising is Dylan's preferred method. But "rushed" is a good description of how the thing sounds to me. "Forever Young" is a legit classic. And "Going, Going, Gone" is a terrific song. The most of the rest of the material has a slight, thin quality. The writing on all the subsequent albums of the 1970s is much broader, deeper, more dramatic, with more inventive language and flat out more to say. The feel of the album is good, and even some of the slightest material has charm -- like On a Night Like This. But on balance I think most of the material is not all that memorable.

 

Never warmed to it; hated The Band on it, hated most of the songs, the overall sound, hated seeing it on the turntable with the Island label on it. Most of it "just don't fit".

I think Michael Palin summed it up best when reviewing the single from it (On a Night Like This) in NME in '74 -'hasn't he written this before"?

 

It might be worth pointing the OP to the Acclaimed Music site.

If you find Dylan in the Artists Lists you get the following ranking for Dylan albums in the all-time list.

Blonde on Blonde #7
Highway 61 #11
Blood On The Tracks #23

and a long way back...Planet Waves #2,353

Click on each album to see which lists both albums appear in.

Now I'm all for taking sacred cows down a peg or two but placing PW over BOTT flies in the face of such overwhelming evidence from so many people and publications over the years that it is not credible.

Opinions are fine but telling people that they're wrong is not a way to win friends...

 

Well, I'm not a little "touched". I am a Dylan fan -I have *everything* by the man. Vinyl, singles, CDs, SA-CDs, you name it, I've got it. So, I'm quite barking, really.

I don't like Planet Waves -nor do I like "Before The Flood". I can listen to one or two songs on Planet Waves but what sounds to me as "quite wrong" is the 1973/74 sound of The Band backing Dylan on this album. That's not to let him off the hook either -I think that the majority of the songs on this record are lazy, facile, tiresome, plodding product.

"Night like This" is just a rewrite of "To be Alone with You". Every time Bob is stuck for a number he trots out yet another 12-bar blues. "Going, Going, Gone" is the one that should have been called "Dirge". Tough Mama is just forced tripe. And TWO versions of "Forever Young" ! Oh Please! I'd rather have had yet another 12-bar blues. Finally, "You Angel You" is just another "let's rattle something off to get both sides filled and into the shops".

You are perfectly entitled to like this album; but as someone who has been collecting him since forever, listens to him most days, has preordered "Greatest Hits" in our host's new version and has thought long and hard about why I do not particularly care for the material on or sound of Planet Waves, I feel I've earned the right to express my opinion.

 

Since "most" don't consider PLANET WAVES essential Dylan canon, are they/we all touched as well? I don't consider it in a league with BLOOD ON THE TRACKS. Or DESIRE or NEW MORNING for that matter. A bunch of indifferent songs given rickety performances that never catch fire despite the obvious talent present.

Given the fine live performances of BEFORE THE FLOOD and the DESIRE-era BOOTLEG SERIES set, maybe Dylan should have trotted out his '70s material to the arenas before committing it to studio time.

 

No way!

Planet waves is prime Dylan. I deduce that you are not a fan.

Please do reconsider and let the SH forums know when you are sensible again.

By God, i'll not rest until PW ranks alongside BoB.

It is an album as personal as Dylan will ever get.

 

hold on. this is madness.

SH and his forum will prevail, believe me.

 

You're certainly entitled to your opinion. Not one that I remotely agree with, btw.

But my biggest problem with this board and indeed many internet message boards is posters who seem unwilling or unable to see the difference between their opinions and facts.

And I've listened to Planet Waves since the day it was released, Dylan for over 50 years. In my opinion, Planet Waves is a solid Dylan record, not remotely in the same league as his masterpieces, one of which is Blood on the Tracks.

But that's my opinion. And I'd never resort to name-calling those who disagree with it.

 

Hear, hear.