The longer you stare at the album artwork for Bob Dylan’s controversial 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home, the more hidden Easter eggs appear. And indeed, one such detail was so very small and obscure that most Dylan fans wouldn’t be able to spot it.
But that’s okay. Joan Baez immortalized the detail forever in a biting song she wrote about the iconic singer-songwriter ten years later.
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Behind Bob Dylan’s ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ Artwork
Bob Dylan’s fifth studio album, Bringing It All Back Home, marked a pivotal turning point in the singer-songwriter’s career. He was in the middle of transitioning from traditional acoustic folk to an electric blend of folk, rhythm and blues, and rock ‘n’ roll. Although Dylan lost plenty of fans after this shift, he gained just as many, if not more.
Tracks like “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, “Maggie’s Farm”, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, and “Mr. Tambourine Man” certainly helped seal the deal for existing and new Dylan fans. And while they listened, they had plenty to look at in the album artwork.
Shot by Daniel Kramer, the cover of Bringing It All Back Home features Dylan sitting in the foreground with a cat on his lap. Sally Grossman, the wife of Dylan’s manager, sits in the background in a red dress with a cigarette in her hand. Strewn around the room are various newspaper clippings, magazines, and vinyl sleeves that offer deeper insight into Dylan’s artistic vision and the current events of the day.
Even the cuff links he was wearing in the photograph were a subtle nod to his contemporary, Joan Baez, who had bought them for Dylan. It was a small, almost unnoticeable detail that Baez would later immortalize in her 1975 track, “Diamonds And Rust”.
Joan Baez Helped Immortalize Those Iconic Cuff Links
Bob Dylan might have his fair share of scathing breakup songs, but this writer would argue that Joan Baez’s “Diamonds And Rust” rivals any “see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya” tracks that Dylan’s written over the course of his entire career. Baez’s song was, of course, about Dylan, most notably the failed relationship between the two musicians. Her song is angry, to be sure. But it’s also wistful, nostalgic, and even a little romantic. Sometimes, “bittersweet” hurts worse than “angry.”
In the second verse of “Diamonds And Rust”, Baez highlights the attraction and condescension that co-existed in her relationship with Dylan. “As I remember, your eyes were bluer than robin’s eggs / my poetry was lousy, you said / Where are you calling from? / A booth in the Midwest.” She then brings up two gifts, one named and one not. “Ten years ago, I bought you some cufflinks / You brought me something / We both know what memories can bring / they bring diamonds and rust.”
Baez’s memories paint the picture of a woman who felt left behind by a man who was always “good at keeping things vague,” ending the song with one final, cutting line: “If you’re offering me diamonds and rust, I’ve already paid.” Indeed, the rest of the world might have overlooked the cufflinks Dylan was wearing on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home, but Baez wasn’t going to let Dylan forget.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images