jmjiloveyou

<h1>John Wesley Harding</h1><p><br></p><p>February 24, 1968</p><p><img src="https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/rs-145866-c47c9d4d86a266bec04e9ce1133546a10caa1b28.jpg?w=379&amp;h=340&amp;crop=1" alt="John Wesley Harding"></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">S</span>o, there is this semi-recognizable cat on the front of the album out there in the woods, looking like some friend of Baudelaire, way back in 1844 in “Le Vieux Quartier” of Paris with a few friends from inside the walls. You might well ask, “What’s it all about?”</p><p>The music is again a brilliant electronic adaptation of rural blues and country and western sounds. A swaying harp picks out the title track, “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/t/john-wesley-harding/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">John Wesley Harding</a>.” A statement is made about the concept of everyday Good and Evil. Harding is <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/artist/johnny-cash" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Johnny Cash</a>‘s outlaw figure, “he was never known to hurt an honest man” — folk-hero of a different kind, John Wesley Harding — “a friend to the poor.” Call him Robin Hood if it means more to you. He was offering you “a helping” hand, and was this a man really to be hunted and punished?</p><p>With all the spiced crispness of the Elizabethan verse of some Samuel Daniel, Dylan expresses in this early morning incident, “As I Went Out One Morning,” all the beauty of a different concept of Love: in his knowing, he can only refuse the hand of this “fairest damsel,” as he must. This Sad-eyed Lady, reaching out for another answer, finds only a rejection. In her asking she condemns herself: “I will secretly accept you, and together we’ll fly South.” Dylan lets her go her own way, also so “sorry for what she’s done.”</p>