The 500 - #303 - John Wesley Harding - Bob Dylan

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: # 303

Album Title: John Wesley Harding

Artist: Bob Dylan

Genre: Folk-Rock, Country-Rock

Recorded: Over three sessions in the late fall,1967

Released: December, 1967

My age at release: 2

How familiar was I with it before this week: One song

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, 337 (Dropping 24 spots)

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest

John Wesley Harding is the eighth studio record by American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Bob Dylan. It is also the third of 11 Dylan records on The 500 list. I wrote about Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind (#411) in August, 2020,and Love And Theft (#385)in January, 2021. It was written and recorded about a year after Dylan’s motorcycle accident and just before the birth of his fourth child, Jakob Dylan – who would rise to fame in the early 90s as the guitarist and singer for the band, The Wallflowers.

Jakob Dylan (front) with his band The Wallflowers

I don't want to be "treading trodden trails" here, so I will skip the biographical information included in those previous posts. I will simply say, John Wesley Harding really grew on me and my respect and appreciation for Dylan continues to grow as I learn to get the "it" of Bob Dylan -- an intangible quality that makes so many fans passionate about this celebrated talent.

Dylan, around the time of this record's recording.

Several months ago, my Facebook feed displayed a public message board posting on a site called If You Grew Up in London (Ontario) by an individual identified by the pseudonym Various Artists.

Homepage for the "If You Grew Up in London" Facebook group

Various Artists hosts a website, blog and podcast under the banner, My Life In Concerts. It is a multi-media diary of experiences attending concerts in the Southwestern Ontario region between 1975 and the present. From reading the blogs, it became apparent the author and I have much in common. We are both Londoners of about the same age, with a love of music who have (independently of each other) chosen to chronicle our interest through blogging and podcasting.

The current My Life In Concert Webpage

Two weeks ago, I had the chance to dig a little deeper into the content on the My Life In Concert website and was really impressed. He (Various Artists) is a skilled writer and dynamic orator. His first podcast detailed his experiences at the same Roxy Music show that a guest blogger, pal Dougie, wrote about on this blog site last year. (See Album #374, Siren).

A partial ticket from that Roxy Music performance in London

Two weeks ago, I contacted Various Artists and discussed our mutual online projects. He was, as I expected after hearing his podcasts and reading his posts, good-natured and agreeable to email conversation about our musical undertakings. Surprisingly, he volunteered to read all of my posts -- nearly 200 of them!

Over the past two weeks, he has done exactly that, while I have been listening to his podcast. We have agreed that, as young adults, our discordant music tastes would likely have made us adversaries rather than friends.

When he saw, through my social media post, that John Wesley Harding by Bob Dylan was next on my list he wrote:

"One of his very best. In my Dylan Top 10, maybe Top 5. This album along with The Band's Music From Big Pink (#34 on The 500) played a big part in launching the roots music movement at the end of the 60s. I love Dylan's stark simplicity and songwriting on John Wesley Harding. A third album that was a key cornerstone to the fledging roots movement of the late 60s was The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo (#120). It certainly wasn't a commercial success in its time, but it influenced the right people and truly launched Gram Parsons career and his second and final record Grievous Angel (#425)."

As a recent convert to the music of Bob Dylan, I have to say that this is my favourite of the three records I've reviewed so far. As I indicated in that first Dylan post two years ago...I am starting to get "it". Gleaning tidbits of information from a fan like Various Artists is certainly helpful in my journey. Perhaps I can entice him to guest-blog or participate in a cross-over event one day.