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List Price: $9.98 | | Label: Sony
Salesrank: 91485
Released: October 25, 1990 |
| Our Price: $9.01 |
| Used Price: $3.03 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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John Wesley Harding Track Listing:
1. John Wesley Harding
2. As I Went Out One Morning
3. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
4. All Along the Watchtower
5. The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
6. Drifter's Escape
7. Dear Landlord
8. I Am a Lonesome Hobo
9. I Pity the Poor Immigrant
10. The Wicked Messenger
11. Down Along the Cove
12. I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Editorial Review:
Bob Dylan's remarkable first album after his debilitating 1966 motorcycle accident isn't as urgent as the ambitious folk and rock songs he wrote earlier in the decade. Even considering the rocking "All Along the Watchtower" (covered famously by Jimi Hendrix), the album's overall feeling is soft and laid-back, all gently strummed guitars, perfectly timed harmonicas, and some of Dylan's best pure singing to date. The 1968 release sounds as if the songwriter and his three sidemen set up a few tape recorders in a bedroom and began playing as soon as they woke up in the morning. They open with the title track (a folk fable), move into the piano-driven "Dear Landlord," and close with the sweet love song "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight." --Steve Knopper
John Wesley Harding Reviews:
One Of Dylan's Underated Gems 
2006-11-26 - Hard for me to add to some of the outstanding reviews of this incredible - and often underated work. It seems in part a summary of the previous seven albums in its scope with shades of things to come. As a hard core listener, it might be the one I had to choose if I could only choose one of his.
There was a wicked messenger
2006-09-25 - Why is the way Bob Dylan's structured his career so damn important to the history and existence of rock music? For the answer to that question, I give you 1967's John Wesley Harding, not because of its quality (which is impeccable, I'll get there), but because its sound was such an about face to the climactic fullness of Blonde on Blonde that it appeared career suicide, because the world was on a sex-drugs-and-rock kick that summer and Dylan denied all three by releasing a record of spiritual asceticism, and because to this day it remains amongst the most inscrutably mercurial and fascinating records ever made. I'll give you my take - Dylan was recovering from his motorcycle accident at the time, and broke with his long-term manager Albert Grossman. The record reflects a deep turning inward for Dylan by reflecting on the state of society, being disgusted by everything he saw, and turning that hatred inward upon realizing he's guilty of all that he accuses. Listen to "I Dream I Saw St. Augustine" - "No martyr is among you now/ whom you can call your own/ but go on your way accordingly," he sings. All of the characters he fastens himself in and out of during the record make the same assessment, and Dylan himself feels on trial - he's the drifter of "Drifter's Escape," the hobo of "I Am a Lonesome Hobo," and the Judas of "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" doing time for everything except being true to who he is. The record, then, becomes stripped musically of everything in Dylan's quest to reemerge - he cocoons, if you will, and comes out singing "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," a bit of a love song to himself, predicting safe, pastoral times ahead (see New Morning). Plus, it features a little song called "All Along the Watchtower," a song that redefined the word "ominous," and one that brilliantly wagered the idea that we may not deserve what waits for us, good or bad, but at all costs, we have to approach it. That may be the defining statement of Dylan's career.
Bob Dylan at his Best
2006-09-04 - Recorded with a set of Nashville musicians, this is one of Bob Dylan's best albums. The music is superb and the lyrics draw you right in. These are songs with a story, with a purpose. and there is even a love song thrown it, "Down Along the Cove" and to my way of thinking its one of the best love songs ever written. Coming out after his long hiatus after "Blonde on Blonde" (supposedly because of his motorcycle accident) the way it did, his fans were probably starving for music and they snatched this one right up (or so I'm told). Still, it must have been a little bit of a shocker to his fans, you know, the direction his music was taking. A few years later they would be shocked even more, because Dylan is not your basic static musician, he's ever growing, ever changing and this incantation of the never the same Bob Dylan is truly one of the best.
a let down from earlier albums but still good 
2006-08-28 - i dont know who john wesley hardung is but he must be somebody because nes got an album named after him.ill cut right to it.this album is pretty average in comparison to anything hed done by 1967 with 2 glaring exceptions......they are "all along the watchtower" which is a great great song".jimi hendrix who is a fellow musical genius covered that one and the other is the love song "ill be your baby tonight".pretty plain and slower than you may be used to.
Plays on in Your Head Long After You've Turned off the CD Player
2006-04-02 - My older brother thinks this is the best Dylan album ever. Is it? I don't know. "Blood on the Track," "Desire", "Highway 61" and "Blonde on Blonde" are all records I like better, but right after them, I'd but "JWH" maybe tie it with "Oh Mercy." Don't get me wrong. JWH is a must own album. Not only because you can see here how he transitions into his country period with "Nashville Skyline" and "New Morning," but because it's a record that plays on in your head long after you've turned of the CD player. JWH was not only a change of direction in Dylan's music, but it was written while he was recovering from his motorcycle accident, so one could also assume his life was taking a new direction as well. I'm not sure about that, but I would think a long recovery would make you think about life and what it's all about, that's what this record seems to be about anyway. At least that's what I take away from it.
