Self Portrait
LP by Bob Dylan
Released	June 8, 1970
Recorded	April 24, 1969 – March 30, 1970
Genre	Country rock
Length	73:15
Label	Columbia
Producer(s)	Bob Johnston
Professional reviews
All Music Guide (2/5) link
Bob Dylan chronology
Nashville Skyline (1969)	Self Portrait (1970)	New Morning (1970)

Self Portrait is a 1970 double album by Bob Dylan. It consists mostly of covers, with a handful of instrumentals, original compositions (some of which appear in two different takes), and live tracks culled from a set he gave with The Band at the Isle of Wight festival earlier that year. The album was given very poor reviews when released, the most memorable coming from Greil Marcus writing in Rolling Stone, famously opening the review with, "What is this shit?" Dylan has gone on record saying he intentionally made Self Portrait far below the standards he set in the 1960s to get people off of his back, and end the "spokesman of a generation" tags; but he has also given other, contradictory accounts of his motives. Image File history File links Description: Title: en: Self-Portrait Technique: en: Oil on Canvas Dimensions: en: x ( x cm) Country of origin: en: USA Current location (city): en: Detroit Current location (gallery): en: Detroit Institute of Arts Other notes: en: Source: cgfa. ... A gramophone record, (also phonograph record - often simply record) is an analog sound recording medium: a flat disc rotating at a constant angular velocity, with inscribed spiral grooves in which a stylus or needle rides. ... Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman on 24 May 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and poet whose enduring contributions to American song are comparable, in fame and influence, to those of Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams. ... June 8 is the 159th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (160th in leap years), with 206 days remaining. ... 1970 (MCMLXX in Roman) was a common year starting on Thursday. ... April 24 is the 114th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (115th in leap years). ... 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday For other uses, see Number 1969. ... March 30 is the 89th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (90th in Leap years). ... 1970 (MCMLXX in Roman) was a common year starting on Thursday. ... A music genre is a category (or genre) of pieces of music that share a certain style or basic musical language (van der Merwe 1989, p. ... Country rock is a musical genre formed from the fusion of rock and roll with country music. ... A record label is a brand created by companies that specialize in producing, manufacturing, distributing and promoting audio and sometimes video recordings (especially music videos), on various formats including compact discs, LPs, DVD-Audio, SACDs, and cassettes. ... In the music industry, a record producer (or music producer) has many roles, among them controlling the recording sessions, coaching and guiding the performers, and supervising the recording, mixing and mastering processes. ... Bob Johnston (born 1933 in Fort Worth, Texas) is a noted record producer, best known for his work with Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and many Nashville recording artists, as well as Simon and Garfunkel. ... The All Music Guide (AMG) is a metadata database about music owned by All Media Guide. ... Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman on 24 May 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and poet whose enduring contributions to American song are comparable, in fame and influence, to those of Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams. ... Nashville Skyline is an album by Bob Dylan, released in 1969. ... New Morning was released in October 1970 by Bob Dylan, only four months after the controversial Self Portrait. ... 1970 (MCMLXX in Roman) was a common year starting on Thursday. ... A double album is an audio album of sufficient length that two units of the medium in which it is sold (especially records and compact discs) are necessary to contain the entirety of it. ... Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman on 24 May 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and poet whose enduring contributions to American song are comparable, in fame and influence, to those of Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams. ... The Band on the cover of their second album: Manuel, Helm, Danko, Hudson, Robertson The Band were an influential Canadian-American rock and roll group of the 1960s and 1970s. ... The Isle of Wight is an English island, south of Southampton off the southern English coast. ... Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. ... The Rolling Stone logo, designed by Rick Griffin. ...

Still, the album quickly went gold in the US, where it hit #4, and it gave Bob Dylan yet another UK #1 hit before it fell down the charts.

The making of Self Portrait

The motives behind Self Portrait have been subject to wild speculation and great debate. Over the years, a few credible theories have emerged from those familiar with the project.

Critic Robert Shelton was under the impression that Self Portrait was intended as a serious release. "I told Dylan that Self Portrait confused me," Shelton wrote in 1986. "Why had he recorded 'Blue Moon'? He wouldn't be drawn out, although obviously he had been stung by the criticism. 'It was an expression,' he said. He indicated that if the album had come from Presley or The Everly Brothers, who veered toward the middle of the road, it wouldn't have shocked so many." Don (born Isaac Donald Everly February 1, 1937 in Brownie, a small coal-mining town (now defunct) near Central City, Muhlenberg County, Kentucky) and Phil Everly (born Philip Everly January 19, 1939 in Chicago, Illinois) are country-influenced rock and roll performers who had their greatest success in the 1950s. ...

However, in a Rolling Stone interview taken in 1984, Dylan gave a different reason for the album's release. "At the time, I was in Woodstock, and I was getting a great degree of notoriety for doing nothing. Then I had that motorcycle accident [in 1966], which put me out of commission. Then, when I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was workin' for all these leeches. And I didn't wanna do that. Plus, I had a family, and I just wanted to see my kids. The Rolling Stone logo, designed by Rick Griffin. ...

"I'd also seen that I was representing all these things that I didn't know anything about. Like I was supposed to be on acid. It was all storm-the-embassy kind of stuff - Abbie Hoffman in the streets - and they sorta figured me as the kingpin of all that. I said, 'Wait a minute, I'm just a musician. So my songs are about this and that. So what?' But people need a leader. People need a leader more than a leader needs people, really. I mean, anybody can step up and be a leader, if he's got the people there that want one. I didn't want that, though. Abbie Hoffman, New York City, 1970. ...

"But then came the big news about Woodstock, about musicians goin' up there, and it was like a wave of insanity breakin' loose around the house day and night. You'd come in the house and find people there, people comin' through the woods, at all hours of the day and night, knockin' on your door. It was really dark and depressing. And there was no way to respond to all this, you know? It was as if they were suckin' your very blood out. I said, 'Now wait, these people can't be my fans. They just can't be.' And they kept comin'. We had to get out of there. Woodstock may refer to: Woodstock Music and Art Festival, a 1969 U.S. rock festival which inspired a 1970 Warner Bros. ...

"This was just about the time of that Woodstock festival, which was the sum total of all this bullshit. And it seemed to have something to do with me, this Woodstock Nation, and everything it represented. So we couldn't breathe. I couldn't get any space for myself and my family, and there was no help, nowhere. I got very resentful about the whole thing, and we got outta there. Woodstock may refer to: Woodstock Music and Art Festival, a 1969 U.S. rock festival which inspired a 1970 Warner Bros. ... Woodstock may refer to: Woodstock Music and Art Festival, a 1969 U.S. rock festival which inspired a 1970 Warner Bros. ...

"We moved to New York. Lookin' back, it really was a stupid thing to do. But there was a house available on MacDougal Street, and I always remembered that as a nice place. So I just bought this house, sight unseen. But it wasn't the same when we got back. The Woodstock Nation had overtaken MacDougal Street also. There'd be crowds outside my house. And I said, 'Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can't possibly like, they can't relate to. They'll see it, and they'll listen, and they'll say, 'Well, let's get on to the next person. He ain't sayin' it no more. He ain't given' us what we want,' you know? They'll go on to somebody else. But the whole idea backfired. Because the album went out there, and the people said, 'This ain't what we want,' and they got more resentful. And then I did this portrait for the cover. I mean, there was no title for that album. I knew somebody who had some paints and a square canvas, and I did the cover up in about five minutes. And I said, 'Well, I'm gonna call this album Self Portrait.'" Woodstock may refer to: Woodstock Music and Art Festival, a 1969 U.S. rock festival which inspired a 1970 Warner Bros. ...

As to why he chose to release a double-album, Dylan replied, "Well, it wouldn't have held up as a single album - then it really would've been bad, you know. I mean, if you're gonna put a lot of crap on it, you might as well load it up!"

Later, Cameron Crowe interviewed Dylan for his liner notes to 1985's Biograph, a boxed set retrospective of Dylan's career. When asked about Self Portrait, Dylan gave another story: Cameron Crowe (born July 13, 1957) is an American writer and film director. ... Biograph may refer to: American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, a silent movie era production company widely known as Biograph or Biograph Studios. ...

"Self Portrait was a bunch of tracks that we'd done all the time I'd gone to Nashville. We did that stuff to get a [studio] sound. To open up we'd do two or three songs, just to get things right and then we'd go on and do what we were going to do. And then there was a lot of other stuff that was just on the shelf. But I was being bootlegged at the time and a lot of stuff that was worse was appearing on bootleg records. So I just figured I'd put all this stuff together and put it out, my own bootleg record, so to speak. You know, if it actually had been a bootleg record, people probably would have sneaked around to buy it and played it for each other secretly. Also, I wasn't going to be anybody's puppet and I figured this record would put an end to that...I was just so fed up with all that who people thought I was nonsense." Later interviews only echoed the sentiments expressed to Crowe. For other cities named Nashville, see Nashville (disambiguation). ...

Songs

Self Portrait was heavily criticized for its performances and overall production, with many critics singling out various songs as poor cover choices.

However, one track has managed to draw consistent praise over the years. Written by Alfred Frank Beddoe (who was 'discovered' by Pete Seeger after applying for work at People’s Songs, Inc. in 1946), "Copper Kettle" captures an idyllic backwoods existence, where moonshine is equated not only with pleasure but with tax resistance. Appalachian farmers who struggled to make their living off the land would routinely siphon off a percentage of their corn in order to brew whiskey. Everything produced would then be hidden from the government in order to avoid the whiskey tax of 1791. Pete Seeger, 1944 Peter Seeger (born May 3, 1919 in New York City), almost universally known as Pete Seeger, is a folk singer and political activist. ... Shine Road The name tells the history of this back road Hemingway, South Carolina Moonshining is the making of whiskey, typically surreptitiously and illegally. ... Whisky (or whiskey) is an alcoholic beverage distilled from grain, often including malt, which has then been aged in wooden barrels. ... Whisky (or whiskey) is an alcoholic beverage distilled from grain, often including malt, which has then been aged in wooden barrels. ...

Clinton Heylin writes, "'Copper Kettle'...strike[s] all the right chords...being one of the most affecting performances in Dylan's entire canon." NPR's Tim Riley called it "an ingenious Appalachian zygote for rock attitudes, the hidden source of John Wesley Harding's shadows." NPR logo For other meanings of NPR see NPR (disambiguation) National Public Radio (NPR) is a private, not-for-profit corporation that sells programming to member radio stations; together they are a loosely organized public radio network in the United States. ...

Aftermath

Dylan had his share of negative criticism before Self Portrait. At worst, his 1962 debut was met with quiet indifference. In 1966, his tour with the Hawks was met with open anger from some fans, but the burgeoning rock press countered that reaction with their enthusiastic praise.

With Self Portrait, there were few admirers and far more detractors. Critical disdain seemed universal. At best, a number of journalists, including Robert Christgau, felt there was a concept behind Self Portrait that had some merit. Robert Christgau (sometimes abbreviated in print to Xgau), born April 18, 1942, is an American essayist, music journalist, and rock critic. ...

"Conceptually, this is a brilliant album," wrote Christgau, "organized, I think, by two central ideas. First that 'self' is most accurately defined (and depicted) in terms of the artifacts - in this case pop tunes and folk songs claimed as personal property and semispontaneous renderings of past creations frozen for posterity on a piece of tape and (perhaps) even a couple of songs one has written oneself - to which one responds. Second, that the people's music is the music people like, Mantovani strings and all."

However, few critics expressed any interest in the music itself. "In order for a concept to work it has to be supported musically - that is, you have to listen," Christgau admitted. "I don't know anyone, even vociferous supporters of this album, who plays more than one side at a time. I don't listen to it at all . The singing is not consistently good, though it has its moments, and the production - for which I blame Bob Johnston, though Dylan has to be listed as a coconspirator - ranges from indifferent to awful. It is possible to use strings and soprano choruses well, but Johnston has never demonstrated the knack. Other points: it's overpriced, the cover art is lousy, and it sounds good on WMCA."

In his Rolling Stone review, Greil Marcus warned that "unless [Dylan] returns to the market-place, with a sense of vocation and the ambition to keep up with his own gifts, the music of [the mid-sixties] will continue to dominate his records, whether he releases them or not." The Rolling Stone logo, designed by Rick Griffin. ... Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. ...

The public did not know it at the time, but Dylan's next album was almost complete when Self Portrait hit the streets.

Track listing

Side 1

1. "All the Tired Horses" (Dylan) - 3:12
2. "Alberta #1" (Trad. Arr. Dylan) - 2:57
3. "I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know" (Null) - 2:23
4. "Days of '49" (Lomax/Lomax/Warner) - 5:27
5. "Early Morning Rain" (Lightfoot) - 3:34
6. "In Search of Little Sadie" (Trad. Arr.Dylan) - 2:27

All the Tired Horses is a song written by Bob Dylan, released on his 1970 double album Self Portrait. ...

Side 2

1. "Let It Be Me" (Becaud/Curtis/Delanoe) - 3:00
2. "Little Sadie" (Trad. Arr. Dylan) - 2:00
3. "Woogie Boogie" (Dylan) - 2:06
4. "Belle Isle" (Trad. Arr. Dylan) - 2:30
5. "Living the Blues" (Dylan) - 2:42
6. "Like a Rolling Stone" (Dylan) - 5:18

Side 3

1. "Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight)" (Beddoe) - 3:34
2. "Gotta Travel On" (Clayton/Ehrlich/Lazar/Six) - 3:08
3. "Blue Moon" (Hart/Rodgers) - 2:29
4. "The Boxer" (Simon) - 2:48
5. "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)" (Dylan) - 2:48
6. "Take Me as I Am (Or Let Me Go)" (Bryant) - 3:03

Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) is a popular song written by Bob Dylan. ...

Side 4

1. "Take a Message to Mary" (Bryant/Bryant) - 2:46
2. "It Hurts Me Too" (Trad. Arr. Dylan) - 3:15
3. "Minstrel Boy" (Dylan) - 3:32
4. "She Belongs to Me" (Dylan) - 2:43
5. "Wigwam" (Dylan) - 3:09
6. "Alberta #2" (Trad. Arr. Dylan) - 3:12

Personnel

• Byron Bach - Cello
• Brenton Banks - Violin
• George Binkley III - Violin
• Norman Blake - Guitar
• David Bromberg - Guitar, Dobro, Bass
• Albert Wynn Butler - Clarinet, Saxophone
• Kenneth A. Buttrey - Drums, Percussion
• Fred Carter Jr. - Guitar
• Marvin Chantry - Viola
• Ron Cornelius - Guitar
• Charlie Daniels - Bass, Guitar
• Rick Danko - Bass, Vocals
• Pete Drake - Steel Guitar
• Bob Dylan - Guitar, Harmonica, Keyboards, Vocals
• Delores Edgin - Vocals
• Fred Foster - Guitar
• Solie Fott - Violin, Viola
• Bubba Fowler - Guitar
• Dennis Good - Trombone
• Emanuel Green - Violin
• Hilda Harris - Vocals
• Levon Helm - Mandolin, Drums, Vocals
• Freddie Hill - Trumpet
• Karl Himmel - Clarinet, Saxophone, Trombone
• Garth Hudson - Keyboards
• Lilian Hunt - Violin
• Bob Johnston - Producer
• Martin Katahn - Violin
• Doug Kershaw - Violin
• Al Kooper - Guitar, Horn, Keyboards
• Sheldon Kurland - Violin
• Richard Manuel - Piano, Vocals
• Martha McCrory - Cello
• Charlie McCoy - Guitar, Bass, Harmonica, Vibes
• Barry McDonald - Violin
• Ollie Mitchell - Trumpet
• Carol Montgomery - Vocals
• Bob Moore - Bass
• Gene A. Mullins - Baritone Horn
• Joe Osborn - Guitar, Bass
• June Page - Vocals
• Rex Peer - Trombone
• Bill Pursell - Piano
• Robbie Robertson - Guitar, Vocals
• Albertine Robinson - Vocals
• Al Rogers - Drums
• Frank Smith - Trombone
• Maretha Stewart - Vocals
• Gary Van Osdale - Viola
• Bill Walker - Arrangements
• Bob Wilson - Organ, Piano
• Stu Woods - Bass

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman on 24 May 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and poet whose enduring contributions to American song are comparable, in fame and influence, to those of Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams. ... // Albums Singles U.S. / North American releases 12/1962 Mixed Up Confusion / Corrina, Corrina A-side later included on the 1997 revised Biograph; B-side uncompiled 7/1963 Blowin In The Wind / Dont Think Twice from The Freewheelin Bob Dylan 4/1965 Subterranean Homesick Blues / She Belongs To Me...

Reference

http://www.palacefamilysteakhouse.com/2005/03/self-portrait.html - Discussion of the album by Dylan fans