If one is talking about comeback or post-hiatus albums, three albums for me would be absolute favourites. While Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline (1969) came after an almost-fatal motorcycle accident, Eric Clapton’s 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974) was his first studio album after he quit heroin and George Harrison’s Cloud Nine (1987) after a five year break from songwriting.
All three are peculiar for a sea change in the kind of music each of these artists made prior to these albums. Although Clapton continues the same blues-rock style that he followed in his previous Layla... venture, 461... offers more variety in the form of an unlikely cover of Bob Marley’s reggae “I Shot The Sheriff” and his pleading self-composition “Let It Grow”.
Dylan collaborated with Johnny Cash to come up with a sparkling country rock album in Nashville Skyline. He sounds refreshingly different in the album, much softer and less smoky. The sound of the album is relaxed and the length just over 25 minutes; it’s almost as though he’s not trying to make a serious record at all. But it brings everything together beautifully with the power still there in his lyric, and there being various emotions written about at the same time. The emphasis though is still on romance with tracks like “Lay Lady Lay” and “Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You”.
Harrison’s Cloud 9 is probably Harrison’s rebirth after albums like Somewhere in England and Gone Troppo. The album sound is remarkable and markedly different from his earlier albums with Jeff Lynne’s (Electric Light Orchestra) great contribution in production. The tracks have a light pop-rock feel, are pepped up, but there is still no compromise on the guitar work. There is nostalgia (“When We Was Fab” takes you back to those Beatles years) and love (“Cloud 9”, “Got My Mind Set on You”). And there’s lyrical genius in “Wreck of the Hesperus”.
