Self Portrait

Bob Dylan

The first question: How can an artist who produced Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits put out this perfectly awful dreck a few years later? I thought the answer was that Columbia was in a dispute with Dylan about his earlier work that ultimately became the Basement Tapes. The record company put it out to embarrass Dylan and get some leverage. That might have been an urban legend at the time to shift the blame from Dylan. The explanation widely available these days on the innertubes is that Dylan was tired of being adored by his fans and put out crap—joke’s on you, record-buying public.

More questions: Why do I remember so little about it? I didn’t even remember it was a double-record set. Could I have left the second disk in the sleeve? Did I cut my losses and stop? It has my sister-in-law’s name on it. My guess is after she played it once, she gave it to her sister. My wife wouldn’t have wanted it either and made sure to mix it into my collection. It could be I never played it.