New Morning is the eleventh studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on October 21, 1970 by Columbia Records.
Coming only four months after the controversial Self Portrait, the more concise New Morning received a much warmer reception from fans and critics. Most welcome was the return of Dylan's familiar, nasal singing voice. While he has a slightly nasal tone to his voice on "Alberta #1" from Self Portrait, this was the first full album with his familiar voice since John Wesley Harding in 1967, after which he began singing with a country croon.
New Morning reached No. 7 in the United States, quickly going gold, and gave Dylan his sixth and last UK number 1 album until Together Through Life in 2009. The album's most commercially successful song is "If Not for You", which was also recorded by George Harrison, who played guitar on a version of the song released on 1991's The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3, and was also an international hit for Olivia Newton-John in 1971.
Details Dylan discusses the recording of New Morning at length in one chapter of his autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. 1. Several alternate, preliminary forms of the album have been documented, including tracks which later appeared on the unauthorized 1973 album Dylan. He has played only four of the album's twelve songs in concert: "If Not for You", "If Dogs Run Free", the title track and "The Man in Me". "If Dogs Run Free" made its live debut on October 1, 2000, within weeks of the 30th anniversary of the album's original release.
Recording sessions New Morning was released just four months after Self Portrait and there was some speculation that it was recorded hastily and rushed out as an immediate response to the scathing criticism that surrounded Self Portrait. In fact, much of New Morning was already complete when Self Portrait was officially released.
"I didn't say, 'Oh my God, they don't like this, let me do another one,'" Dylan said in 1975. "It wasn't like that. It just happened coincidentally that one came out and then the other one did as soon as it did. The Self Portrait LP laid around for I think a year. We were working on New Morning when the Self Portrait album got put together."
During the March sessions that yielded most of Self Portrait, Dylan attempted three songs that he later rerecorded for New Morning: "Went to See the Gypsy", "Time Passes Slowly", and "If Not for You". A number of performances were recorded, but none to his satisfaction.
After work on Self Portrait was virtually completed, Dylan held more sessions at Columbia's recording studios in the Columbia Studio Building at 49 East 52nd Street in New York, beginning May 1, 1970. Held in Studio B, the first session was accompanied by George Harrison, bassist Charlie Daniels, and drummer Russ Kunkel. A large number of covers and old compositions were recorded in addition to several new compositions. The results were rejected, although "Working on a Guru" and alternate versions of "Time Passes Slowly" and "If Not for You" have since been released.
Sometime in the spring of 1970, Dylan became involved with a new play by poet Archibald MacLeish. A musical version of The Devil and Daniel Webster was titled Scratch. "New Morning", "Father of Night" and others were all written for the production. Though Dylan enjoyed talking with MacLeish, he was never confident about writing songs for the play. "Archie's play was so heavy, so full of midnight murder, there was no way I could make its purpose mine," he would later write.
Eventually, a conflict with the producer over "Father of Night" prompted Dylan to leave the production, withdrawing his songs in the process. Al Kooper, who is credited as co-producer of New Morning, would later say that these three songs were "pretty much the fulcrum for [New Morning]... That got him writing a little more."
The next session for New Morning would not be held until June 1. By this time, Dylan had written several new songs, including "Three Angels", "If Dogs Run Free", "Winterlude", and "The Man in Me".
Dylan vacated Studio B and moved into Studio E, both of which were in the Columbia Studio Building, where he stayed for the remaining sessions. For five straight days, ending on June 5, Dylan recorded most of New Morning; he even recorded a number of covers with the intention of including a few on New Morning. The June 1 session was devoted entirely to covers, but Peter La Farge's "Ballad of Ira Hayes" was the only one given any serious consideration for inclusion. The June 2 session produced a solo piano rendition of "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue"; Al Kooper felt it was a strong candidate for New Morning, but it was ultimately set aside. Jerry Jeff Walker's "Mr. Bojangles" and the traditional "Mary Ann" were also recorded on June 2, with "Mr. Bojangles" receiving serious consideration for inclusion.
On June 9, several days after those initial June sessions, Dylan accepted an honorary doctorate in music from Princeton University. Dylan did not enjoy the experience, and it inspired him to write a new song, "Day of the Locusts".
Weeks later, a session held on June 30 was dedicated to recording new versions of "Blowin' in the Wind", but those recordings were left on the shelf.
Bob Johnston was still credited with production, but by July he was absent and would not return. Instead, Dylan and Kooper created the preliminary sequence for New Morning. The process was wrought with frustration, possibly the result of the negative criticism over Self Portrait. The first sequence of New Morning included a few covers as well as a new version of "Tomorrow Is a Long Time", an original composition dating back to 1962.
Meanwhile, Kooper convinced Dylan to record orchestral overdubs for "Sign on the Window" and "New Morning". An overdub session was held on July 13, but Dylan left those overdubs out of the final mix. These alternate mixes would later appear on Volume 10 of The Bootleg Series. Kooper then convinced Dylan to record overdubs for versions of "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue", "If Not for You" and "Went to See the Gypsy". That overdub session was held on July 23, but Dylan would ultimately reject these recordings.
"When I finished that album I never wanted to speak to him again," Kooper said. "I was cheesed off at how difficult [the whole thing was]...He just changed his mind every three seconds so I just ended up doing the work of three albums...We'd get a side order and we'd go in and master it and he'd say, 'No, no, no. I want to do this.' And then, 'No, let's go in and cut this.'... There was another version of 'Went to See the Gypsy' that was really good... It was the first time I went in and had an arrangement idea for it and I said, 'Let me go in and cut this track and then you can sing over it.' So I cut this track and it was really good... and he came in and pretended like he didn't understand where to sing on it."
Dylan ultimately decided to re-record "If Not for You" and "Time Passes Slowly", holding one final session on August 12. During that session, he also recorded "Day of the Locusts", which by now had been finished. For the album's final sequencing, these three recordings were placed at the beginning of New Morning, while covers of "Ballad of Ira Hayes" and "Mr. Bojangles" were dropped.
While New Morning neared completion, Dylan and his manager, Albert Grossman, formally dissolved their business relationship on July 17, 1970. Grossman retained certain rights from previous agreements, including royalties on work produced under his management, but their publishing company, Big Sky Music, would be replaced by Ram's Horn Music before the end of 1971, putting an end to any joint ownership in publishing. Dylan would gain complete control over his personal management and his own music publishing.
Songs
"If Not for You" The album opens with "If Not for You", which was also recorded for George Harrison's album All Things Must Pass released a few months after this album. A sincere, sentimental love song with modest ambitions, it was Dylan's only single from New Morning. The song was later covered by Olivia Newton-John and was also the title song of her first album in 1971.
"Day of the Locusts" "Day of the Locusts" is Dylan's account of receiving an honorary degree from Princeton University in June 1970. David Crosby was present, and later commented: "Sara was trying to get Bob to go to Princeton University, where he was being presented with an honorary doctorate. Bob did not want to go. I said, 'C'mon, Bob it's an honor!' Sara and I both worked on him for a long time. Finally, he agreed. I had a car outside, a big limousine. That was the first thing he didn't like. We smoked another joint on the way and I noticed Dylan getting really quite paranoid about it. When we arrived at Princeton, they took us to a little room and Bob was asked to wear a cap and gown. He refused outright. They said, 'We won't give you the degree if you don't wear this.' Dylan said, 'Fine. I didn't ask for it in the first place.'...Finally we convinced him to wear the cap and gown."
The song's lyrics refer to Brood X of the 17-year periodical cicada (often misidentified as "locusts"), whose sounds blanketed Princeton at the time of his visit:
"Sure was glad to get out of there alive. And the locusts sang such a sweet melody. and the locusts sang with a high whinin' trill, Yeah, the locusts sang and they was singing for me..."
In a 2008 interview with the Aspen Institute, Crosby revealed that a line in the song, "The man next to me, his head was exploding", was in reference to Crosby's presence during the event.(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
"Time Passes Slowly" This is another deceptively simple song where Dylan appears to sing the praises of stability and stasis. There is some sense with lyrics like "ain't no reason to go anywhere" and "time passes slowly and fades away" that maybe Dylan is not as satisfied with inaction as he appears on the surface. "Time Passes Slowly" is one of a few songs on New Morning originally written for Archibald MacLeish's play Scratch. An alternate version of the song featuring George Harrison's guitar playing and harmony vocal appears on The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969–1971).
"Went to See the Gypsy" It is often assumed that Dylan wrote "Went to See the Gypsy" after meeting Elvis Presley, as the song mentions visiting with a mysterious and important man in a hotel. The song also contains the line, "A pretty dancing girl was there, and she began to shout... He did it in Las Vegas, and he can do it here. This lyric was seen by some as a reference to Elvis' record-breaking run of performances in Las Vegas (his series of concerts at the International Hotel commenced on July 31, 1969). The meeting described in the song may have been purely imaginary, however, as Dylan clarified in a 2009 interview with Rolling Stones Douglas Brinkley: "I never met Elvis, because I didn't want to meet Elvis... I know The Beatles went to see him, and he just played with their heads."Brinkley, Douglas (5-14-2009) Rolling Stone issue #1078, pp. 48 In the same interview, Dylan expanded upon his imagined mythical image of the singer: "Elvis was truly some sort of American king. Two or three times we were up in Hollywood, and he had sent some of the Memphis Mafia down to where we were to bring us up to see Elvis. But none of us went... I don't know if I would have wanted to see Elvis like that. I wanted to see the powerful mystical Elvis that had crash-landed from a burning star onto American soil." In the final lines of the song, Dylan makes mention of a "little Minnesota town", a rare reference to his own childhood in Hibbing.
"Winterlude"