For a guy universally lauded as one of the premier songwriters in human history, Bob Dylan has been counted out on more than a few occasions. Part of it is his mercurial nature and his willingness to challenge critics by veering off in unexpected musical directions, which can often leave those critics feeling like Dylan has lost his way.
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But there was one occasion when we could indeed, to paraphrase LL Cool J, call it a comeback. That was in 1997, when Dylan released the towering Time Out of Mind, an album that stands toe-to-toe with the other masterpieces in his catalog. In that case, he was coming back from not just a period of artistic frustration, but also from a scary illness. Before we can tell you about the triumphant comeback, however, we have to set it up with a look back to what led him to the low point from which he needed to rebound.
Ready for the Gold Watch?
In 1992, music luminaries like George Harrison, Johnny Cash, and Neil Young gathered at Madison Square Garden for a massive concert to celebrate Bob Dylan’s 30th anniversary as a recording artist. Even though Dylan was actively touring around that time, the event felt a little bit like a retirement sendoff, with the artists playing Dylan classics and giving warm testimonials to the man.
You could understand why folks might have felt the Bard’s best days were behind him. The ‘80s were a rough era for Dylan, with the general consensus among critics and fans being that only one album in the decade (Oh Mercy in 1989) rose to previous heights (and even that album was followed by the 1990 clunker Under the Red Sky).
While Dylan toured with impressive tirelessness throughout the first half of the ‘90s, his studio output was limited to two beautifully-performed but relatively unheard albums of old folk songs he didn’t write. Never before had he gone so long without recording new, original material. Was he washed up after all?
A New Beginning…And Very Nearly the End
In 1996, Dylan began finding inspiration again, and the spout of new material, which had been hopelessly clogged, suddenly burst forth with some outstanding songs. Even though the two had clashed during the making of Oh Mercy, Dylan decided to reunite with producer Daniel Lanois to make the album that would become Time Out of Mind. While the rest of the world believed him to be artistically spent, Dylan was quietly making a doozy.
But fate nearly intervened in the worst possible way. In the spring of 1997, Dylan started experiencing chest pains that were initially dismissed as insignificant by a doctor. His daughter Maria Himmelman didn’t like the way her father looked during a 56th birthday party for him and urged him to get another opinion. It’s possible that intervention saved his life.
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Dylan was actually suffering from a fungal infection he likely contracted during a motorcycle ride earlier that year. It was announced that he was suffering from an affliction that was potentially fatal because of the damage it could do to his heart. Concern came pouring in from all over the world when the news broke.
Luckily, doctors were able to treat the infection in time, although Dylan suffered from intense pain while recuperating. He spent much of the summer on the mend before he started to feel like himself again. That turned out to be good timing, because he was about to release an album that was bound to silence all the naysayers.
Just in Time
Since it was released on the heels of his serious illness (on September 30, 1997), many fans assumed that Dylan wrote the songs on Time Out of Mind about this specific incident. In actuality, the record was already in the can when he started feeling sick. But you could excuse people for this mistake, considering that many of the songs ruminate on mortality, regret, and other topics generally associated with someone at the end of the line.
After all, the album’s first line, sung by Dylan with a harsh croak over pea soup-thick atmosphere conjured by Lanois, announces, I’m walking through streets that are dead. Elsewhere, Dylan bemoans that he’s trying to get to Heaven before they close the door, that he’s 20 miles out of town in cold irons bound, and, most moving of all, that it’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there.
Dour though the subject matter may have been, Dylan actually sounded reinvigorated. On closing track “Highlands,” he admits there will be a day when he has to move on to some great, redemptive somewhere, but there are still many miles to travel and much work to be done: But I’m already there in my mind / And that’s good enough for now.
The combination of jagged rockers and gloomy blues that comprised Time Out of Mind blew everyone away upon its release, with Dylan receiving some of the finest notices of his career. It would go on to win the Album of the Year award at the following year’s Grammys, beating out the cool kids’ choice, Radiohead’s also-seminal OK Computer.
And more good news: Time Out of Mind wasn’t a flash in the pan. It instead spearheaded a hot creative streak that never abated much at all thereafter. You can argue about where it belongs in the overall Dylan album pecking order, but it’s hard to deny that Time Out of Mind is Dylan’s greatest comeback—a stunning reaffirmation of his genius, delivered from the brink of the abyss.
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