Basic Dylan

In person, Folk Singer-Poet Bob Dylan spoke for an age. Over the roaring roll of his guitar, he rasped out sarcastic, sardonic cries of anger, anxiety and alienation that made the young generation wince with the pleasure of recognition. In seclusion in Woodstock, N.Y., since a motorcycle spill in the summer of 1966, he became a legend. Folkniks trembled at rumors. Was he dead, dying, mindless, voiceless? To one of the few reporters who breached his fortress, Dylan laughingly replied: "They're all true." Meanwhile, Dylan in absentia loomed larger than Dylan in the flesh; last year four of his LP albums broke the million-dollar sales mark, something none had done previously.

Last week Columbia's production line spun out Dylan's first post-accident LP. He had shown up at Columbia's Nashville studios in December only after exacting a promise of top secrecy. And if the pressagents were quiet, the recording sessions were quieter still. Dylan, 26, has abandoned the electric guitar and big-noise backing that thundered out from his last few albums, and has returned to his earlier acoustic-guitar-plus-harmonica framework.

Moral & Misanthrope. The new songs are shapely and graceful, but their simplicity is deceptive. Several of them are suffused with religious feeling--a sorrowing series of meditations on the Christian ethic, outlined in a language that is close to simplistic. One, The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, is a parable on temptation: Judas lures Jesus into a bawdyhouse, where he dies. "The moral of this story, the moral of this song,/Is simply that one should never be where one does not belong." I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine, an easygoing paraphrase of Joe Hill, becomes a jeremiad on mankind's inhumanity:

/ dreamed I saw St. Augustine,

alive with fiery breath,

And I dreamed I was amongst the

ones that put him out to death.

Oh, I awoke in anger so alone

and terrified

I put my fingers against the glass a

nd bowed my head and cried.

Other pieces work toward universality from even humbler beginnings. I Pity the Poor Immigrant, chanted to a tune that is as basic as one of the late Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl ballads, is a melancholy portrait of a misanthropic, malcontented wanderer "who passionately hates his life and likewise fears his death." The album's title song, John Wesley Harding (who "was never known to make a foolish move") is an oldtime saga about a kind of Nietzschean super dream man.

Poetry & Prophecy. All this is a long way from the steamy atmosphere of the familiar Dylan outcry, and Dylan's own musical style has kept pace with his growing control over poetic expression. His melodic style has deepened; the bluesy Dear Landlord (in which Dylan accompanies himself on a tinny barroom piano) is a subtle, intense, spacious tune. Moreover, there are times when he abandons his customary foghorn speech-song in favor of something identifiable as singing.

Whether Dylan's new album signals an actual return to public performance is fogged with conjecture. He still hides from reporters, and no plans have been announced for concerts beyond an appearance at Manhattan's Carnegie Hall next week at a memorial concert for Woody Guthrie. But whether he is in or out of sight, Dylan's power as a trendmaker and prophet for the college-age crowd is sure to grow with the appearance of John Wesley Harding.

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