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Pickled Priest Cover Story #13: Talkin' Album Cover Blues: Ranking Bob Dylan's Album Artwork from Worst to Best

After going through all 39 studio album covers from Bob Dylan’s illustrious seven decade career (x Christmas album) I think it’s clear the man, the myth, hasn’t spent nearly enough time considering how he has been visually represented along the way. If I’m wrong and he has spent the time, then he sucks at it. The high percentage of disappointing album covers detailed below is almost shocking when taken in one sitting. This is not necessarily surprising considering the source. Not all artists, despite what you might expect, have a keen eye for graphic design or the desire to spend the time needed to get their album art just right. What I do know is that Bob had enough creative clout to demand something more (or less) if he so desired. In other words, it’s possible that he wasn’t just a part of the problem, but the entire problem. The cold hard fact is that his album art grade point average (AAGPA) is abnormally low when compared to his contemporaries—and I mean ‘kicked out of school’ low. For some, this assessment may seem a bit harsh at times, but if most don’t see my point after perusing our ranking of his album covers from worst to best I’d be mildly surprised.

 

 

PICKLED PRIEST RANKS BOB DYLAN’S STUDIO

ALBUM COVERS FROM WORST TO BEST

 

 

39 Good As I Been to You (1992)

Grade: F-

No shower, no deodorant, no comb. Bad As I Been to You would have been a more fitting title. This cover is so bad it angers me. That’s why it finishes dead last in a race of lame horses. That this photo was taken by a real art director, Jimmy Wachtel, is mind-boggling, by itself grounds for rescinding his artistic license if that was even a thing, which it is not. Jimmy (brother of legendary guitarist-for-hire Waddy) had created album covers for some big names in the past (Bruce Springsteen, Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, Joe Walsh, etc.) with wildly varying levels of success (an underwhelming portfolio imho), and this ranks as his all-time worst creation (close second: CSN’s Live It Up). I suppose a lack of prep time could be to blame. When Dylan calls, you show up—that's how it works. So he did, took a few pictures from a camera he didn't know how to operate, slapped a cover together, which Bob miraculously approved, and moved on to his next job. Dylan didn’t help matters, of course, looking like a homeless drunk on the day of the shoot. Jimmy even had to give Dylan the shirt off his back to make him look presentable. To his defense, Bob didn’t give him much to work with. No wonder he cropped the photo heavily and filled in the rest with chunks of blue sky. The transparent lettering the only thing even remotely redeeming if I must find a positive. That a major artist and an “accomplished” graphic designer could allow such a cheap, truck-stop bargain bin product to be released into the world is a failure of epic proportions.  

 


38 Empire Burlesque (1985)

Grade: F

Do I have to even tell you this was released smack-dab in the middle of the 80s? A time when good taste was completely thrown out the window in favor of gaudy computer-generated fonts, bright pastel hues, pseudo-futuristic graphics, over-styled hair, cringe-worthy clothing (complete with shoulder pads), awkward poses, and a design aesthetic with a shorter shelf-life than grocery store French bread. Shockingly, every one of the listed elements comes into play on the cover of Dylan’s Empire Burlesque, an absolutely shameless and ridiculous attempt to bring Dylan into the MTV age.

 

 

37 “Love and Theft” (2001)

Grade: D-

Excellent record, terrible cover, terrible timing (released 9/11/2001). Dylan’s pencil-thin mustache phase was the not one of his best looks unless he intended to come off like a hybrid of Zorro, Salvador Dali, and a huge glob of hair clogging his shower drain. Amazingly, they hired three photographers to snap photos in the studio and this is all that came of it—a grainy close-up only John Waters could love. The graphics are similarly low rent. Name in red box, white title inexplicably in quotes—now that’s art direction! One thing we'll find in this assessment is that Dylan really would have benefited from design advice from a trusted source, one who could have stood up to him in moments like this and said, "Bob, how about this other idea." 


 

36 Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)

Grade: D

It’s a sad state of artistic affairs that three album covers on this list are ranked lower than this cover, which is not even finished. Supposedly, Dylan was to provide some graphics for the cover, but when he didn’t they just said “Fuck it” and typed the name of the movie onto a white surface and let it fly. But not without making sure everyone knew it was a “Bob Dylan Soundtrack,” of course. Had to sell a few of them, after all. Not even a still from the movie or a crappy pic of Bob sneering at the camera in a cowboy hat or something equally predictable. Just this.

 

 

35 Triplicate (2017)

Grade: D

Text-only cover #2. There were so many possible options for this cover, especially with this title, but instead they used a standard Goudy Text font and centered it on a burgundy background, which is the only aspect that elevates it even slightly. Once, twice, three times as lazy.   


 

34 Self Portrait (1970)

Grade: D+

How flattering. Is this how you see yourself, Bob? Yes, he's come a long way with his painting over the years, and it’s a healthy way to keep creative between tours, but this self portrait is absolutely childlike. Unsurprisingly, it took him all of five minutes to create it. Yes, anything touched by Dylan will have some intrinsic value and receive praise from some pandering art critic somewhere, but this image comes off as a leftover from a third grade finger painting session. It is fitting one of Dylan’s worst all-time records has such a tossed-off painting to represent it, but the smart decision would've been to abort the whole project before it saw the light of day. Maybe hang little Bobby's art class failure on the fridge for a few days to be nice, but don't let him use it for a goddamned album cover.



33 Dylan (1973)

Grade: D+

Dylan had no say in this cover (Columbia rushed out some unused studio tracks when Dylan "signed" with Asylum in 1974). At its core, it's based on a photograph of Dylan taken from the recording sessions for Self Portrait. Then they fucked with it, almost sarcastically so, perhaps to get back at Dylan for leaving them (he returned two albums later so maybe they were right to feel spurned). They basically swiped it with a few different color paintbrushes and superimposed it on a silver canvas. It turned out to be a mess, but the sad thing is that it could've been cool, too. Unlike some other covers discussed so far, at least there’s some modicum of artistic effort present. The metallic background concept is pretty advanced and a pop of color wasn't a bad way to add some contrast. Somehow they still made a forgettable cover out of some good basic ideas. It’s also not a good sign that most of you, at least for a few moments, forgot this album even existed (Dylanologists excepted).



32 Shadow Kingdom (2023)

Grade: D+

Someone overstayed his welcome under the salon hairdryer and then rushed over to his Beginners Calligraphy class at the local junior college. I'm gonna come out and say it at the risk of sounding ageist—old woman Dylan creeps me out a little bit.



31 Tempest (2012)

Grade: D+

To celebrate Dylan's 50th year recording, we mark the occasion with a red-tinted photo of the Pallas-Athene Fountain in Vienna, Austria, with the album title scrawled in lipstick cursive right over her face. Ooh, and it’s underlined for emphasis! What a brilliant touch. The strokes of genius keep coming as they typed Bob’s name in yellow (?!) New Times Bold before they packed it in for the night, a job poorly done. Perhaps they were counting on Bob not caring about the cover art based on his track record. Yet another budget hack job from the camp of the Nobel Prize winning icon.



30 Planet Waves (1974)

Grade: D+

WTF is this trainwreck? I’ve seen some Dylan paintings I like, but this isn’t one of them. The only thing I appreciate is the anchor tattoo on the main character’s forehead, predicting the face-tattoo era of the 2020s some four decades earlier. Otherwise, this a waste of good ink. Dylan was in the habit of not putting his name on his album covers at this time (four albums from 1969-1974 had no title or artist name included and eight times in his career), which isn't a bad thing. Why would you want anything to impede your enjoyment of a masterpiece like this?



29 Fallen Angels (2016)

Grade: C-

Apparently an old photograph taken way back in 1928, but how could you tell really? It’s a close-up of a dirty hand holding some standard issue playing cards (perhaps a second dirty hand). It could've been taken in 2016 for all I know. At the very least it’s something a little different, but that’s where my faint praise ends. Another incongruous font choice, which is a given at this point.



28 Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020)

Grade: C-

Dylan loves his antique photographs. He’s an old soul and always has been. How else to explain him falling in love with old folk songs in his teens? Here we find a black and white photograph from 1964, but colorized, like something you'd see on Turner Classic Movies. But just as a colorized old movie is a little disorienting, so is this cover, which looks staged and unnatural. I’d much rather the cover be in its original black and white (see below) for authenticity reasons. The font doesn’t help matters—a bit too campy for the scene presented. And, it has to be said, it's not that great of a photograph to being with.

Original B&W
Original B&W

27 Shadows in the Night (2015)

Grade: C

The prison-bar graphics approach, complete with one section dropped lower than the others, has been done before and better. I imagine this late-period Dylan release was paying homage to Freddie Hubbard's Blue Note classic, Hub-Tones, but if you’re going to pay tribute, it’s best to do it right. The font, of course, is poorly chosen, positioned, and colored. That’s an automatic at this point. Plus, the image of Bob is creepy, like a pervert sitting across from a playground. The whole thing is just too dark and smarmy for its own good. Good intent, poor execution. It could have been so much cooler. I mean 60's jazz cooler. And it don't get cooler than that, friends.



26 New Morning (1970)

Grade: C

Another album without a title or Dylan’s name on it—the third album in a row from the early-70s (Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait preceding it) holding back such information. I wonder why. Here we get a photo of an unshaven Dylan mounted under a light brown mat, looking very much like a Hobby Lobby frame job in the process. If I didn’t know better I’d think this was an Eddie Vedder bootleg. Nothing else to say. That’s all you get this time. No title, no name, no creativity, no effort, no nothing.


 

25 Knocked Out Loaded (1986)

Grade: C

This cover has been the subject of some controversy. Not because of the content of the image, which features. a woman about to brain a guy with a giant water jug, but the fact it was stolen from an old pulp magazine from the 1940s called Spicy-Adventure Stories without anyone’s permission. For years this fact was kept secret. As you can see below, there’s no doubt at all where the image originated. It’s also not a bad idea for an album cover, but due to the dimensions of the original artwork, they had to condense the image from magazine size to a very constricting 12x12 aspect ratio. For that reason, everything seems just a little compressed, losing some of the impact of the original work in the process. Plus, the whole thing seems strangely washed out. It was a cool concept for a great album title, but I think it would’ve been much better if some artist had re-done the artwork specifically for the LP format. While they were at it, they could’ve added Dylan’s name in the same banner style as the magazine instead of a boring straight line read. It’s the little things, people, it’s the little things. 

Good band name: Daughters of Doom
Good band name: Daughters of Doom

 


24 Under the Red Sky (1990)

Grade: C+

What Dylan was trying to convey with this cover, I do not know. Perhaps nothing. In fact, likely nothing. Here we find Dylan as a TV private detective looking for clues in his snakeskin boots and pinstripe suit, but the location is desolate and destroyed, almost like the aftermath of a nuclear bomb. What happened? And why is the sky red? What’s that? It’s not red? Why wouldn’t they make it red? Or tint it red? Was that too obvious? Well, at least Dylan’s name is red at least. I do like a classic red, black, and white color palette, but there’s really nothing here to glom onto, which could be the point, I guess. It's Dylan, after all.

 


23 Down in the Groove (1988)

Grade: C+

This album isn’t anything special and it never will be. This cover isn’t anything special but it could have been. Oddly, if Dylan had used the original design presented to him, that cover would likely have been ranked with his all-time best covers. Perhaps even he knew that the album was a dog and didn’t want to ruin a perfectly good piece of artwork with his sub-par material. In the end, what we ended up with was a merely decent, but unremarkable photo of Bob playing his guitar on stage. Ho hum. How lazy. But gaze below at the sketch of what could’ve been the cover and you’ll wonder how things got so far off track. In fact, an acrylic painting was made from the sketch by legendary poster artist Rick Griffin, but it was rejected by the label as “incomprehensible.” Since when does anything Dylan-related need to be comprehensible? What a joke. Anyway, that painting has since been lost in a fire, so our imagination will have to suffice. For me, it doesn’t take much imagining to visualize what might’ve amounted to a classic album cover. Bummer.

Feel free to print out and color on your own.
Feel free to print out and color

 

22 Modern Times (2006)

Grade: C+

It’s a cool old photo (once again) from 1947 called Taxi, New York at Night by Ted Croner and it reflects the title concept I suppose—the illusion of time passing us by in a blur—but a million other photos could’ve conveyed the exact same idea, too. Is it acceptable? Yes. But I would’ve liked to see some other options. Grade reduced from a B- because the same photo had been used before by another band. See Luna’s 1995 split-single “Hedgehog/23 Minutes in Brussels” for proof (shown below). That’s a no-no Bobby Z. Have your people do some research next time. 


 

21 Saved (1980)

Grade: C+

Groupies

A tale of two covers. The first release of Saved featured a pastel drawing of Jesus’s bloody hand (has he still not washed up from the crucifixion?) reaching down to finger-tap his loyal followers from heaven I gather (ironically, way more contact than Dylan affords his fans). Religious content was not what his label wanted, however—a sure-fire way not to sell a shit ton of records—so they quickly swapped out the cover for the US marketplace. Both were done by a talented young artist named Tony Wright (see below for two of his finest covers). The unimaginative replacement cover is yet another pastel drawing, this time based on a photo Wright took of Dylan onstage. It's actually pretty cool, with a slight homage to Blood on the Tracks perhaps. I give the original Jesus cover a C-grade at best partly because I'm not into the whole Jesus thing, but mainly because I really despise pastels. The less relevant concert shot, while a sell-out of sorts, benefits from much better crucifixion...I mean execution.

Two Tony Wright classics
Two Tony Wright classics

20 Together Through Life (2009)

Grade: B-

Here’s a rare Dylan album where the cover actually complements the content! We find a young couple pictured entangled in the back seat of an old car (new then, of course), presumably just starting a journey together that will last a lifetime. They'll probably hate each other in twenty years, but for now it's destiny. The photo dates back to 1959, taken by photographer Bruce Davidson for his Brooklyn Gang series (see below for more), so there’s a period innocence captured that is both charming and nostalgic. I do wish the photo had been given more real estate on the cover, however. It’s a little hard to see when half the cover is dedicated to other graphics (especially on a CD). That said, I must say I like what they did with the title. Almost like a spool of stickers, the title stretches across the front cover with an appealing and repeating design. A pretty cool idea, which could’ve been made even better if they didn’t center it, but that’s a petty complaint. 

More from Davidson's Brooklyn Gang series
More from Davidson's Brooklyn Gang series

19 Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964)

Grade: B-

There had to be a better way of representing this title. Any ideas? They settled for a high school yearbook photo approach, complete with awkward bent-leg pose (still in use to this very day, I may add). I wouldn’t be surprised to see the caption “Yearbook Editor” underneath the photo because this has all the design savvy of such an amateur production. It’s dull and boring and lifeless and falls far short of what an album containing songs like “My Back Pages,” “It Ain’t Me Babe,” and “Chimes of Freedom” (to name but three) should aspire to be. It's main attraction is another shot of "young Dylan" coming into his own in New York City which is always fascinating. The mythology was just getting started at this point for a guy who wasn't even voted Most Likely to Succeed by his fellow classmates at Hibbing High.

Now this is another side of Bob Dylan (from the same shoot)
Now this is another side of Bob Dylan (from the same shoot)

18 Infidels (1983)

Grade: B-

He looks like a sleazy drug dealer and not a particularly scary one at that. It’s not a bad photo really especially compared to the countless sneering Dylan pics out there, what with the highway line reflecting in his Ray-Bans and all. It’s a good album title, too, even if Dylan just pulled it out of thin air. If I was the art director, I’d have put the title in the large font across the top and Dylan’s name in smaller print for maximum effect. I’m even OK with the black lettering with the light red outline on the bottom. But still, no artistic masterpiece to be found here.



17 Street-Legal (1978)

Grade: B

Bob waiting for his taxi to show with a jacket draped over his arm like an 80 year-old woman does not a rock and roll album cover make. He looks pretty cool, though, and that's all it takes to land in our Top 20 it appears.

Glamorous location shoot revealed.
Glamorous location shoot revealed.

16 Desire (1976)

Grade: B

One of just a few “Happy Dylan” covers, which is always a treat, Desire features a pretty cool photo which captures Bob in full hipster regalia, unlike anything we’ve really seen from him before. So I’ll buy it. Nice job all! Too bad it’s a total rip-off of John Phillips’ album cover for his first solo record, 1969's John Phillips (John, the Wolf King of L.A.). As you will see below, the resemblance is uncanny. Desire’s cover designer, John Berg, claims he’d never seen the Phillips cover before, which could be true, but that doesn’t change the fact the something somewhere reeks of plagiarism. So who is to blame? All claim that Dylan chose the picture, so what was his awareness of Phillips cover? We may never know, but he either played a joke on all of us or it’s just one of life’s weird coincidences. Either way, not a bad image for what it is, but it comes with some baggage.


 

15 John Wesley Harding (1967)

Grade: B

There is a lot to say about this album cover, but very little of it centers around the visual quality of the composition. Yes, the Bauls of Bengali are included in the photo (two Indian gurus Dylan befriended) and so is a random carpenter (in the back of the photo) who was working on manager Albert Grossman’s ubiquitous house (you’ll see what I mean as you read on) at the time. The picture was a hastily taken Polaroid selected by Dylan moments after developing as the cover of his eighth studio creation. In other words, little to no effort expended once again by Dylan when something meaningful or creative was there for the taking. Gotta admit, though, it does crack me up a bit. As with everything Dylan, this cover holds some mystique for Dylanologists who like to pick apart the smallest details and perseverate on them (see this long article for more if interested). For example, many claim you can see seven faces (including the four Beatles) in the linework if you turn the cover upside down. Neato. Such things may add some amusement value for some, but none of its quirks make this generally bland cover really stand out. It looks a little like a fat baseball card in a way. The only thing of special note is that Dylan seems to be smiling on the cover (one of only three-and-a-half covers where that happened), which was a rarity. It’s almost like he was fucking with us and enjoying it.

  

  

14 Time Out of Mind (1997)

Grade: B

One of Dylan’s best albums and the accompanying album cover is also kinda cool. It’s nothing complicated—a trend if you haven’t noticed—just Bob posing in a recording studio, but it’s the composition around the slightly blurry photo (a la Blonde on Blonde) that has a pleasing Blue Note Records feel (circa the 1960s), with color blocking at the top and a touch of whimsy with the word “Out” dropped down below the text line to reflect its literal definition. Considering the crap we had to endure in the 1980s, the 1990s were a godsend for Dylan.


 

13 World Gone Wrong (1993)

Grade: B

It’s an album of traditional folk songs, none written by Dylan, so assuming a retro pose—complete with top hat and umbrella (originally thought to be a walking stick)—makes sense. It’s a calculated photo, taken by photographer Ana Maria Vélez Wood, but the crooked composition gives it a cool, slightly off-kilter vibe with the main character lurking in shadows with his back to the door like an old-fashioned gangster. I like the black strip with the album details, just like we used to make on our Dymo label maker in the 1970s. Overall, a pleasing design that pays attention to the small details, our credo here in the Pickled Priest art department!



12 Shot of Love (1981)

Grade: B

I am about to defend this much maligned album cover which was created by illustrator Pearl Beach, the same artist who gave us the Neville Brothers Fiyo on the Bayou cover (see below) in 1981, mainly because it was a completely fresh take on a Dylan album cover at the time. Totally unprecedented. There’s nothing else quite like it in his discography, and its vibrant colors and cartoonish feel brought a original sense of vitality to Dylan's work as he entered his third decade as a recording artist. At least visually, that is. I’m not in love with how they put his name on the cover in a blue strip at the top—surely there was a better way—but the rest has a superhero comic book vibe that's pleasing to the eye. The cover’s main asset is the element of surprise. This doesn’t look like a Bob Dylan album and that’s why it works. We don’t ask for much.

Why not just jump in the river?
Why not just jump in the river?


11 Bob Dylan (1962)

Grade: B

It blows my mind that my son is the same age as Dylan when this photo was taken. And just like my boy, Dylan still has the face of a very young kid, even retaining a little leftover baby fat in his smooth cheeks. It’s almost impossible to reconcile this photo with what was still to come later. So, I guess what works mostly for me is witnessing the crossing of a precipice from “a complete unknown” to one of music’s most legendary figures. I've always been a big fan of the before and after and this captures that innocence perfectly. It almost looks like he’s waiting for you to warn him about something, but I have no idea what I’d tell him even if I could. Wait, I think I’d tell him to put a lot more effort into his album covers. And to never, and I mean never, grow a pencil mustache. 

 


10 Oh Mercy (1989)

Grade: B+

You never know when lightning will strike in the art world. One moment you’re doing a mural on a wall outside a Chinese restaurant, the next thing you know Bob Dylan is paying you $5,000 for the rights to use that very same mural for the cover of his next album. Well, that’s exactly what happened to a New York artist known only as Trotsky (no connection to the Soviet Revolutionary of the same name). The cover choice was a nice change of pace for Dylan, who clearly didn’t spend much time worrying about his album covers throughout his career. What exactly attracted Dylan to this particular work isn’t known (from what I’ve read), but it does seem to match the vibe of Oh Mercy, a record famously recorded with Daniel Lanois down in New Orleans. If any art work represents the New Orleans aesthetic perfectly it’s this one, with two people dancing in the streets to some music possibly emanating from some Bourbon Street nightspot. This cover also has a refreshing blast of motion and color, something generally absent from most Dylan covers. The artist name and title placement is pleasingly complementary to the mural as well. Do you see how cool it is when a good record has a cover that lives up to the music?

Since painted over, sadly.
Since painted over, sadly.

09 Blood on the Tracks (1975)

Grade: B+

This is a cover you need to be careful with. It’s a landmark record, one of Dylan’s finest, so the cover gets a boost through association. So let’s look at it for what it is, music aside. I like the chosen focus color, burgundy by all accounts, which is rich and saturated on the left and hinted at on the right. The clean text is written on straight parallel lines like they are railroad tracks heading into a switching yard. That’s consistent with the title, I guess. The hazy pointillist rendering of Dylan is cool, although completely unrelated to the record’s overall theme. In fact, the image is a photograph heavily manipulated in post-production by a then 20-year-old English kid named Paul Till who took the photo, doctored it, and then sent it to Dylan unsolicited! One of the most unlikely album art stories of all-time! I love how it looks like a painting, but it’s not. Neat trick.



08 The Basement Tapes (1975)

Grade: B+

The half of this cover visible in the racks of a record store is, by itself, instantly attractive to the eye, but if you don’t follow the action over the gatefold you miss the full scope of its eccentricity, which shows Dylan and the Band hanging out with several of the characters present in the album’s lyrics (see if you can spot Tiny Montgomery, for example). Just as you don’t want one-half of an open-faced roast beef sandwich at a diner, this is a cover that demands the full tanning reflector treatment—fold it open, prop it on your lap, and spend some quality time dissecting its many nooks and crannies. In a way, the back cover is a direct descendant of the Doors Strange Days cover, which included some circus sideshow attractions performing on a sidewalk. Same concept here, but in a basement. Sadly, this basement is not the same basement referenced in the album’s title—Big Pink in Saugerties, NY—but rather a Hollywood YMCA basement near Columbia’s home office. What a shame. Fun cover aside, I’d still rather have had a simple photo of the boys from the scene of the music in lieu of a heavily staged cover after the fact. That said, on its own merits, it is a great example of a lively and interactive cover, one where the listener can play along at home as the record rotates.

The full gatefold
The full gatefold


07 The Times They Are a-Changin’ (1964)

Grade: B+

In stark black and white with a very downcast Bob Dylan on the cover, the times were indeed a-changin’—even when it came to Dylan’s album covers. This time, we see a jarring turn away from the lightness of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan toward a more hardcore Woody Guthrie-esque Dust Bowl approach. Things were getting real. Dylan’s raw songwriting, heavy on stripped-down ballads, was perfectly reflected in the tone of the cover. The bold title announces an anthem—or mantra if you will—for a new generation. A powerful statement, albeit understated visually.

Inspiration
Inspiration

 


06 Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

Grade: B+

This is a pretty good representation of the Dylan you would meet if you ran into him in the summer of 1965. That he held this same general gaze for pretty much the next 50 years is indicative of what it must’ve been like to be deified as the second coming at such a young age—skepticism of anyone and everyone, even those closest to you. All of this accomplished with one click of Daniel Kramer’s camera (not the camera shown hanging from friend Bob Neuwirth's hand behind him). Yup, the same guy who snapped the previous year’s Bringing It Back Home cover and in the same location, too (Albert Grossman’s house), except on the front porch this time. It’s a moment in time and that’s it, no special connection to the material included. But for an individual who became an endless source of fascination for many, no number of photos is too many. The only interesting side note is that he’s wearing a Triumph motorcycles t-shirt under his fancy silk blouse just a month prior to the motorcycle accident that would alter the trajectory of his career for years after.

Can't take my eyes of the orange striped shirt!
Can't take my eyes of the orange striped shirt!

  

05 Nashville Skyline (1969)

Grade: B+

Anytime you can get Bob Dylan to smile on an album cover you get at least a grade higher from me. On top of that, I like the angle of this Elliot Landry photograph, looking up at Bob who looks pleased to be meeting you, thank ya kindly, complete with doff of hat and sweet acoustic guitar in hand. A traveling minstrel perhaps. Bob seems to understand that his move to country music for the album meant he had to go all in and act like a good country gentleman for a spell. It’s not a common look for the man, so the impact of this photo is likely disproportionate to actual artistic value. So my reason for ranking this so high is that I like to see Bob in a good mood for once. It makes me happy. Nothing wrong with that.

 

On a side note, Elliot Landry, the photographer here, had quite a decade in the 1960s, becoming one of the most known shutterbugs in the rock community, including but not limited to, being the “official” photographer of the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival in 1969. He also spent a lot of time with Dylan and the Band, hence his ability to get Bob to loosen up a bit for this photo. Not an easy task to say the least.

Two closed quotation marks? Using the word skyline loosely here.
Original concept with double closed quotes for some reason.

 


04 Slow Train Coming (1979)

Grade: A-

We’re only looking at artwork in this entry so you’re not gonna get a lot of commentary on Bob’s conversion to Christianity, which famously coincided with the release of this album. What you do get is Dylan’s finest album cover that isn’t a photograph. Does that mean the cover was divinely inspired or blessed perhaps? Not quite, but who can definitively say? We do know it was created by the artist and approved by Dylan in about a day's time. Artist Catherine Kanner provided a couple options based on a concept provided by Dylan—a train traveling on tracks that were in the process of being built. In other words, this train had to be beyond slow, beyond snail-like even, and barely "coming" at all (I've been on this train a few times in my life!). With this direction, Kanner’s goal was to make a pen and ink drawing that mimicked an engraving. Mission accomplished! The drawing, on tan canvas, is very old-timey like it was taken from a book circa the 1800s. The tie-in to Dylan’s move to religion isn’t quite clear, although the main worker is using a pick-axe which resembles a cross to pound in the spikes. Perhaps indicating that the road to Christ is a long one, one that needs a lot of work, a lifetime pursuit. That’s my best guess. As far as I know Kanner never did another album cover for anyone, so her career success rate is pretty amazing. One-for-one and an inductee into the Album Cover Hall of Fame, to boot, which I didn’t even know existed until a couple days ago.

 


03 Bringing It All Back Home (1965)

Grade: A-

When a record is as great as this one, it’s easy to overvalue every last thing about it, including its album cover. I have tried to avoid doing that when assessing Dylan’s album covers on this list. The cover stands alone. That said, I haven’t done a clinical study on this, but my hypothesis is that great albums often have great covers because the artist is proud of what they have created and want the cover to aspire to that high artistic standard. It doesn’t always work that way, of course. Especially with Dylan. In the case of Dylan’s astonishing Bringing It All Back Home (my favorite Dylan record), the cover lives up to its contents by rewarding detailed, almost forensic analysis. Just as you will hang on every word from the untouchable set of songs within, there’s a lot to study on the cover as well. At the time, people were extremely interested in everything Dylan. What was he eating, reading, watching, thinking, or listening to? Who was he hanging out with, dating, breaking up with, or fascinated/influenced by? Through photographer Daniel Kramer’s soft-edged camera lens—that you might also see in a Guy Maddin film (i.e. The Saddest Music in the World)—we get a window into Dylan’s intellectual world. At the time, that’s exactly what people wanted. Extensive legwork has been done to dissect the scene presented on this cover (see Wikipedia), but the major question was, who is the woman? As it turns out it was Sally Grossman, wife of Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman. How lucky is she to be included on the cover of one of the greatest albums ever made? She was likely just hanging around that day doing god knows what and months later she’s there in every record store looking cool next to the world’s most intriguing musician— Instagram long before social media existed! “Here I am hanging with my bestie Bob Dylan, playing records LOL.” Personally, I hate her and I'd troll her if I could. What this album cover does so well is take the listener into the world and mind of the artist. You can stare at it for a while and research what you see. You can look at it while the songs blow you away one by one. What inspired them? Where do they come from? Maybe this cover holds some of those clues, then again, maybe not. 

Fire Marshall Warning: Chaise placement not advised
Fire Marshall Warning: Chaise placement not advised

 


02 Blonde on Blonde (1966)

Grade: A

As with many artists in the 1960s, the photograph was the primary source for album covers. It was the easiest and quickest way to get an album into stores, especially because release dates back then were so close together and waiting on custom designs wasn’t practical. Such is the case for the early years of Dylan, of course, with the legendary Blonde on Blonde (BoB, for short—a coinkydink?) his seventh studio album since 1962. But that doesn’t mean Dylan took the obvious path with his album covers. Here's case in point. After a photo shoot with photographer Jerry Schatzberg that included many crystal-clear shots taken during a freezing cold New York City day, Dylan opted for one of the blurry shots, likely caused by a frigid photographer’s shaky hands. Considering what Dylan had gone through in the past six years or so with countless people wanting to know him better by asking him unanswerable questions, it’s no surprise he chose a blurry shot, one that seems to evade those seeking any kind of clarity. Plus, he looked cooler than ever in this shot, with stylish checked scarf, matching coat, Jewfro, and his trademark scowl. Not only a great cover, but it was continued over the gatefold so you can take in the full majesty of his chic double-breasted jacket.* At this point, Dylan was untouchable, so no need for any graphics or lettering either. The cover tells you everything you need to know, which isn’t much.

 

*Fashion tidbit: He wore the same jacket on the cover of John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline as well!



01 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)

Grade: A

This iconic cover, featuring Dylan arm-in-arm with then girlfriend Suze Rotolo, captures a magical time in music history—the sudden emergence of perhaps the most groundbreaking artist of the 20th century (or at least the second half of it). Here, found in his assumed habitat, the streets of (West) Greenwich Village, New York City, Dylan looks positively human, cavorting with his lady like he hasn’t a care in the world. The picture (taken by CBS staff photographer Don Hunstein) perfectly complements the album’s title, with the presumed lovers relishing their youth, bright futures still ahead of them, casually walking down the middle of a narrow street, framed by tall apartment buildings and parked cars (including a sweet VW bus). Try this nowadays, and an Uber driver or cabbie will surely run you down with impunity on the way to LaGuardia, some stockbroker in the back, with the artistic community long forced out of the area due to gentrification. But for this moment, an icon was being born, one who would soon transform the musical landscape. All this captured by a single spontaneous, well-framed photograph, and, like the Beatles’ Abbey Road, is a shot fans could replicate if they had the gumption and a camera (the location now an easy find). Compositionally, I like how Dylan’s name is broken up on either side of his head and the listing of songs listed over the snowy surface of the road. Nice touches of whimsy that reinforce the freewheelin' vibe of the album. If only Dylan had actually been so freewheelin’ himself, it might’ve worked even better. Let’s face it, it’s not the word that springs to mind when summarizing his legacy. Nonetheless, he was still young at the time and this conveys a naïve sense that “the sky is the limit” and that feeling is dramatically enhanced in retrospect.

 

On a side note, how timely it was for Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s then girlfriend, to be included so prominently on the cover of one of the most important records ever made. A blessing and a curse surely, as from this point on her obituary was destined to start with “Suze Rotolo, most known for her brief relationship with Bob Dylan and for appearing on the cover of his Freewheelin’ album, passed away today…” no matter what else she may personally have accomplished during the rest of her life on this planet (note: she dead now). Oddly, in the movie A Complete Unknown, her name was changed to Sylvia Russo (a request from Dylan himself) to protect her privacy, despite the fact that Rotolo herself wrote a full book on the subject of her time with Dylan, titled A Freewheelin’ Time: Greenwich Village in the 60s, which featured him right there on the cover. So much for anonymity or privacy, I guess. That horse left the barn over 60 years ago, Suze. Nonetheless, she was more than just arm candy for Bob, which the book highlights. But we don’t have control of our own stories sometimes, let’s face it. To this day, I would jump at the chance to be on an album cover of any of my favorite artists. My obituary could use the boost, to be honest. And feel free to use my name in the movie, too.

This also would've made a cool cover photo.
Outtake: Also would've made a good cover shot.

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The Freepicklin' Priest needs to scoot now.


Cheers, The Priest

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