Rocks In The Attic #116: Bob Dylan - ‘Bob Dylan’ (1962)

I’m guessing this isn’t one of Dylan’s favourites. Although - and maybe because - there’s only a few Dylan compositions on here, most of the album doesn’t really fit with his later albums. It’s almost as though he hadn’t worked out to be the enigmatic, mysterious folk singer that everybody knows now.

There’s a whole lot more fun on this album than on later ones - he spends a few moments whooping and hollering on some of the songs (especially Freight Train Blues), which sounds out of character with the serious personality he would become. The liner notes explain that one of his strongest influences is Charlie Chaplin, and that he would borrow some of the actor’s gestures on stage. That sounds pretty terrible - but I guess this influence manifests itself in something like the ‘music video’ that accompanied Subterranean Homesick Blues.

There’s not really a ‘hit’ on this album - but plenty of songs that are familiar in retrospect. Probably the most famous song on here - his cover of House Of The Risin’ Sun was made world-famous by The Animals two or three years later. Similarly, In My Time Of Dyin’ was popularised by Led Zeppelin on Physical Graffiti, and the song Highway 51 suggests that Dylan was listening to the same vein of blues that Jimmy Page would later base his supergroup around.

Hit: House Of The Risin’ Sun

Hidden Gem: In My Time Of Dyin’

Rocks In The Attic #105: The Police - ‘Outlandos d’Armour’ (1978)

As far as debut records go, this has to be one of my favourites. It’s a little bit punk, a little bit reggae, and all wrapped up in a minimalist pop recording. People don’t tend to like The Police because of Sting’s later crimes against music, but I prefer to ignore his faux-bohemian noodlings and concentrate on his work in this band.

They’re just a perfect band: in Sting, you have a bass-playing, pop song-writing vocalist (with an unmistakable, high-register voice that’s very difficult to emulate); in Stewart Copeland, you have a jazz inflected drummer, who’s not scared to try something new (his timing and beat on Roxanne takes it uncharted territory for a pop song); and in Andy Summers, you have a slightly older guitarist (he played on stage with Hendrix, and counted The Animals as one of his former bands!), with a very progressive approach to chord progressions.

Those sort of attributes can sometimes weigh a band down - but probably because they’re all as equally talented, you don’t really hear anything too weighty or self-indulgent. I’ve heard David Fricke from Rolling Stone magazine say that after the assassination of John Lennon, the next big event in pop music to have a global impact on the youth of the day was when The Police split up in the mid-80s. Although they became a watered-down version of themselves on their later albums, you can understand, with this debut, how they made such an impact.

Hit: Roxanne

Hidden Gem: Next To You