Bob Dylan – Time Out of Mind: Happy Ending Review

Giving a positive spin to songs made around the time Bob Dylan nearly died is a hard pitch. But there is much to celebrate with Time Out of Mind. It was an unlikely career comeback that not only revived Dylan’s career, but also seemingly his interest in writing music. Two cover albums and an MTV session precede his Grammy award-winning comeback, and even they were missing the point of contemporary music. Do not be deceived by the so-called Happy Ending. These are early versions of Time Out of Mind songs, which featured on the exceptional Fragments bootleg. Pair that with a live rendition of Highlands, and you have an alternative take on the album. All the pieces are there for those with the mind to put it together. But it’s one thing to do it yourself, another to experience it in the running order laid out on this bootleg to archival piece crossover. It’s not as dark as we’re accustomed to, is what bootlegger Mr. Tambourine notes on the upload. He’s right.  

This is a vibrant and instrumentally sound piece from Dylan. Early versions fit the tone and merit of the songs, but not the message. Time Out of Mind works as that sparse and often discomforting listen, which puts together the reasons we turn to Dylan. His run of form from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, and even moments in the 1980s, are unlike anything else. It is a sole moment of decades-long success that, irrespective of your impression of his voice or tone, is objectively the greatest stretch of music to come from those periods. That’s not an overstatement; it springs to mind when hearing the early version of Red River Shore. Dylan sounds a little clearer here than he does on the original album release, meaning that those vocal changes are a choice, not a shortcoming of his sound. Maybe it’s just the time between the last listen to Time Out of Mind and the return to Fragments pieces, but these songs sound clearer, and cleaner, here.  

Great for those who want an alternative to the original Time Out of Mind, an excellent showcase of how a tempo change and instrumental restructuring can change the very core of a song. Just take a listen to Make You Feel My Love, for instance. This is not a direct translation of Time Out of Mind – there is no Love Sick featured here, after all. But for those who want a different rendition, they would be best served by recent Rough and Rowdy Ways tours and their bootlegs, where Dylan would pull out Love Sick from time to time. The first Red River Shore featured on Time Out of Mind: Happy Ending is a tearjerker of an experience, and most of that is built on the melody and the disarmingly sweet sound of Dylan’s voice. He had put up walls in the ‘80s and much of the 1990s, but here sounds as though he’s breaking it all down.  

Not just the shortcomings of his writing, the apparent burnout that drove him to record cover albums at the start of the ‘90s, but also the caricature he played out for MTV Unplugged. There are moments within Time Out of Mind: Happy Ending that feel truly inspired. They’re all available in the official releases from Dylan, too. Hearing Highlands performed live is an experience worth having in isolation from the quality heard before it. Renditions of Tryin’ to Get to Heaven and Mississippi precede it, and are worthy listens too, but there’s nothing quite like hearing a lengthy track pulled onto the stage. A wonderful celebration of the strengths and depths found on Time Out of Mind, that’s what this happy ending provides – and considering the outcome of the piece, it’s a celebration worth having.