Is John Wesley Harding Dylan’s greatest album?

John Wesley Harding is one of my top favorite Dylan albums and it may even make more sense now. It may well be his greatest album.

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I always thought the album after John Wesley Harding would be something like what eventually turned out to be Slow Train Coming. However, Bob Dylan went in an entirely different direction with Nashville Skyline and there was a certain craftsmanship that went into the songs that became Nashville Skyline. A certain songwriting craftsmanship. The songs on that album aren’t even really country songs for the most part, not by Nashville standards at the time. There’s no double meanings, there’s no varying levels of thought, though you can read them in if you want to.

For Dylan, John Wesley Harding might have been just a simple exercise creatively speaking to see if he could write a plain song. Obviously, he didn’t stay with it very long, though a lot of, but not all of the songs on New Morning could be taken in the same light, though by that album some of the natural mystery inherent in his writing had crept back in. I’ve always looked on New Morning as his piano album but that may…