Bob Dylan just announced a box with a ton of outtakes from 1997 comeback album ‘Time Out of Mind.‘
When it was released in 1997, Bob Dylan’s thirtieth studio album, “Time Out of Mind”, was hailed as a masterpiece.
The record picked up three Grammys, including Album of the Year, in 1998. Seen as a real return to form following some patchy ‘80s offerings, it was Dylan’s first collection of original songs for seven years – since 1990’s “Under the Red Sky”.
Prior to its release, Dylan had been plagued by ill health – a life-threatening respiratory infection caused by inhaling fungus spores, which he put down to riding his Harley in the Louisiana swamps.
When “Time Out of Mind” emerged, reviewers tagged it as a ‘mortality album’ – pointing to songs like ‘Tryin’ to Get to Heaven’ (“Trying to get to heaven before they close the door”) or ‘Not Dark Yet’, which is written from the point of view of a man confronting his twilight years.
Critics even suggested it might be the final great Bob Dylan album – it wasn’t of course, but, as it turned out, “Time Out of Mind”, was the last album Dylan made with a producer – all his records since have been self-produced, under the pseudonym Jack Frost. For the brooding and bluesy “Time Out of Mind” – Dylan wrote the songs while snowbound on his Minnesota farm in the winter of 1996 – Daniel Lanois was at the controls. He’d previously worked with Dylan on 1989’s well-received “Oh Mercy”. There are plenty of stories about how Dylan and Lanois clashed in the studio over the sound of “Time Out of Mind” and Lanois’ approach to production. Lanois’ original production was too murky and swampy, and with too many effects on Dylan’s vocals.
The Fat Angel Sings 