Bob Dylan – Hallelujah, I’m Ready to Go Review

A name is make or break in the massive music industry. Holding a candle to Ricky Skaggs and his smooth, cool suits on the cover of Family & Friends sets a clear tone. No wonder Bob Dylan found himself fascinated by the works of this bluegrass master. Holding comfort in the religious subtext of this track but moving his sound on enough to draw back his usual crowds, Dylan performed Hallelujah, I’m Ready to Go as he tested the waters of God-loving texts in his live shows. Covers are no stranger to the live sets of these tours and it was no exception for one such date in Philadelphia. The turn of the century afforded Dylan a new field of play. His Time Out of Mind release had redeemed him in the populist eyes and so he was presented with a new leeway for old songs and left-field covers. Hallelujah, I’m Ready to Go remains one of the better pieces.  

He captures the swinging tones of the old West which were extrapolated further by Wes Anderson on Asteroid City. Much of the jolly and God-loving tone taken here is founded on the thumping, the constant joy of those percussion interjections. Layer on some notes of “Hallelujah” and here comes a tremendous, religious track for those in the 1999 crowd to experience. Wind the tape ahead twenty-five years and it still holds some semblance of Dylan. In adapting this Skaggs classic he finds a piece of himself which he tried to exorcise and gain favour with on his religious trilogy of records. The closest he got to this was on Slow Train Coming and even then, the hollering country and acoustic headiness alluded him.  

This is an artist at work with clear predilections on what he wants to do. But the major change is his audience is keen to go along with it for they realised it was all part of the process. If we must exchange our time with Skaggs classics then at least we get Time Out of Mind in return. Back then, they formed little intervals between the classics people held out hope for hearing but in the more recent tours, the Rough and Rowdy Ways experience in particular, there is an unspoken hope of hearing Dylan cover one of the greats. Be it his constant shuffling of The Grateful Dead’s discography or the likes of Howlin’ Wolf, hearing Dylan pay tribute to one of the greats or those who have influenced him is rarely skippable. 

It should be no surprise, then, that Hallelujah, I’m Ready to Go holds firm as a fine cover. Tones of death and being ready for the great embrace of a final light are not lost on Dylan and it formed the core of Skaggs’ original. Jesus roaring through the roads with some blinding light and a desire for perfection is filtered by the Dylan version – there is no less religious poise but there is a tonal shift. He brings in the acoustics as a main player rather than the jumped-up piece of unfortunately stereotypical country it now sounds. Nothing wrong with that but it is hard to escape how it sounds like a countryman’s desperate desire to head back into the farming glories of the older generation. The freewheelin’ American Spirit lives in Skaggs’ original, and it dies in Dylan’s, replaced by a necessary reflection which turns the praise of God into a fierce fear of them.