Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding
Everything about the cover photograph by John Berg is peculiar.
The first thing that you notice is the seeming lack of balance in the photo. If Dylan were simply flanked by those two other blokes, then it would seem to make sense, but the fact that there is a fourth, and frowning figure, hovering in the background disrupts the entire scene. It seems nonsensical and, I’m assuming, deliberately haphazard. Take a look at Dylan and you’ll notice that the colour of his hat and jacket are an approximation of the colour of the tree’s trunk behind him, as though, yes, he is being sucked into the blackness (the void) of the tree itself. The idea that a tree could be black – I know it’s a black and white photo – as though it’s one of those trees you’d see in a forest that has been ravaged by fire. Here, though, somewhere in New York State deep in a nasty dry winter the whole scene is somewhat dismal. But the thing is Dylan and the two other blokes are grinning dumbly in spite of it all, yet we as the people who are looking at the photo can’t escape the almost menacing gaze of the bloke in the back.
More stuff to note:
check out the foreground, there is a hat, down the bottom, probably attached to a head; when was the last time you saw cover art so poorly cropped?
the bloke in the background is a carpenter who was working on Dylan’s house the day the photo was taken;
the two blokes in front are from the Bengali Bauls, a South Asian traditional music group, apparently;
the pale brown frame is odd and ugly, particularly the rounded-off corners at the top;
and, finally, that dreadful font (name?) is perfect, almost flat and lifeless, but seemingly with a little “zing” to the starting “J” and final “G”.
Music notes: the new “enhanced” ultra-expensive CD sounds great, but a crappy second hand vinyl version sounds just as good.
