Critical, commercial, and audience reactions are rarely unanimous. What may work for the critics could be despised by audiences. What could find itself at the top of the charts could be ridiculed by listeners of a professional and passive variety. Rarely is the trifecta of love or hate accomplished. Bob Dylan would manage it often with the albums to follow Nashville Skyline, at the time, an album received coldly but carefully. Self Portrait blew what little goodwill listeners had left for Dylan out of the water. It has been his blueprint in the studio ever since. Not when it comes to music or the writing but in how a reactionary audience can be played. This is a chance for Dylan to lash out at the “voice of a generation” sentiment. He has done so with almost every album since then. He continues to create that distance. Self Portrait started it all.
Although he may see the album as a joke, it still holds great beauty. Perhaps it is after years of listening to Dylan, but when Self Portrait finally clicks into place, and it will do sooner for some than it does for others, it becomes a euphoric moment. A truly heartwarming realisation that these jokes and stitch-ups are of a similar quality to the genuine efforts, the protest thrills preceding it and the rocking ways to follow. These mistakes found throughout are intentional. The chase of a sound quite unlike the electrified controversy, the acoustic fundamentals, is a rewarding one. Dylan seeks out a sound which will separate him from not just the public perception, but the expectation levelled at him every time he entered the studio. Traditionals, covers of contemporary artists, and just a few spots of original material, the mix here is maddening.
There is a sense of Dylan becoming an artist who must rely on active participation in writing, rather than the subconscious wordplay which preceded this release. Every release Dylan has made since Self Portrait has served the self, not the audience, not the message of the times, but the pursuit of completing Dylan. “I wish these people would forget about me,” is what he told Rolling Stone in the 1980s. Loading up Self Portrait with what he perceived as “crap” has backfired once more, though, as there are some rare gems and real moments of quality to be found within. His cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s Early Mornin’ Rain is a delight and Wigwam remains one of his most-covered songs, somehow. Tinges of the instrumental on In Search of Little Sadie begin a tone and instrumental style continued by The Man in Me from New Morning. Those little flickers of the past, the slight connections, are what keep Self Portrait frustratingly relevant for Dylan.
That trifecta of critical, commercial, and audience reception was not unanimous for Dylan here. It may be a surprise to note it was the critical letdown which stopped it, rather than anything the audience thought at this point. They spoke with their cash, catapulting Self Portrait to the top of the charts in the UK and fourth, close enough, in the United States. Using this and the lesson of defying expectations is the blueprint Dylan now makes. Be it a trilogy of cover albums which pushed listeners to their very limit (who needed five albums worth of covers across three years, after all?) or a triple bill of born-again religious efforts which, once revisited, become a true delight, Dylan was pushing for a separation between himself and his audience. Unfortunately, his listeners could not be any more connected to him than they are right now.
Nashville jams are what Dylan offers, not the “crap” he once dubbed this album. This is Dylan defying expectation because he had to, not, necessarily, because he wanted to. Musically, the album remains a folk-pop fascination. It has the tone expected, the acoustic sentimentality and the blistering strings, the occasional pop of brass, but not the message associated with the period. Take Self Portrait at face value and it is easy to confuse these light cover pieces recorded with the Nashville groove as a statement of intent from Dylan, a sense of a changing artistic perception. A slap of the canvas for the album cover and the title attributed because of it would suggest as much, and people rightly made the connection. Dylan learned from this album, not musically, but in what his image meant, what he could do with it.
It would take a bit of time, but there is a subtle understanding. Audiences around the world will take almost anything they can from Dylan, so long as he means it. Empire Burlesque and Knocked Out Loaded struggle because they do not feel like sincere efforts. One heard Dylan try and compartmentalise himself to synth-pop undertakings, the other felt like a half-hearted apology for that attempted change. It is not in the tracklist that Dylan forms a blueprint for his releases, but in the reception to the project. Listeners will accept almost anything from an artist they love if they are doing what they want. So long as what they want is truth, then the artist in question can tinker with anything. Self Portrait, over the years, has been received with a warmth which, at the time of its release, seemed impossible, if critics were to be believed.
Take Rough and Rowdy Ways as an example of this. Dylan writes a sixteen-minute track charting the highs and lows of pop culture across the twentieth century. It is lauded, and rightly so. His heart is in the right place, and as such, the listener can recognise the genuine nature, the warmth which only comes when an artist is truly trying. Self Portrait is not lacking effort, but it does lack a shape or form recognisable to audiences who are clearly prepared to hear the leftfield styles, the out-there choices. Blue Moon and The Boxer from this release hear out a set of covers which, just twenty years later, would be lauded by gig-goers as a surprise to latch onto. Those cover albums, World Gone Wrong and Shadows in the Night, shine a little brighter when guided by the context of Self Portrait.
We must give artists a longer leash when they get to creating. Take a closer look at Self Portrait and, amid the essential covers of Simon and Garfunkel, Richard Rodgers, and Lightfoot, are some of the very best songs of Dylan. Tracks like Quinn the Eskimo would be covered by Noel Gallagher. It would kickstart, in a way, The Bootleg Series, as Dylan was fed up with others profiting from the unlicensed recording of his work. An Isle of Wight performance of Like a Rolling Stone is tucked away nicely on this double LP. Be it the desire to offer audiences an official route to his recorded rarities or a chance to push them that little bit further out of their comfort zone in modern times, Dylan has Self Portrait to thank for providing him a blueprint which, since its release on this day in 1970, has been beyond valuable.
