Knocked Out Loaded

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Knocked Out Loaded
A painting of a woman in a yellow dress holding a water jug over her head to use as a weapon against a bandit who is throttling a man
Studio album by
Bob Dylan
ReleasedJuly 14, 1986 (1986-07-14)
Recorded1984–1986
Studio
GenreRock
Length35:18
LabelColumbia
ProducerBob Dylan
Bob Dylan chronology
Biograph
(1985) 		Knocked Out Loaded
(1986) 		Down in the Groove
(1988)
Singles from Knocked Out Loaded
  1. "Got My Mind Made Up / Brownsville Girl[1]"
    Released: July 1986

Knocked Out Loaded is the twenty-fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on July 14, 1986 by Columbia Records.

The album was received poorly upon release, and is still considered by some critics to be one of Dylan's least-engaging efforts. However, the 11-minute epic "Brownsville Girl", co-written by Sam Shepard, has been cited as one of his best songs by some critics.[2] Sales for Knocked Out Loaded were weak, as it peaked at No. 53 on U.S. charts and No. 35 in the UK. The album's highest chart position was in Norway, where it peaked at No. 9.

Composition

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The album includes three cover songs, three collaborations with other songwriters and two solo compositions by Dylan. Most of the album was recorded in the spring of 1986, although recording or mixing work on one track, "Got My Mind Made Up", reportedly occurred in June. Several tracks from the album used overdubbing to build on instrumental tracks from 1984 and 1985 sessions.

One song, "Maybe Someday", paraphrases a line from T. S. Eliot's poem Journey of the Magi: Eliot's "And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly" becomes in Dylan "Through hostile cities and unfriendly towns".

Packaging

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Artist Rick Griffin, primarily known for the Grateful Dead's logos and poster art, was commissioned to design the cover of the record jacket. Griffin's work featured Marlon Brando's character from The Wild One and a different title for the album, All Jacked Up.[3] Griffin's artwork sold at auction in 2008 for $7,350.[4]

Dylan ultimately rejected Griffin's design in favor of a reworking of the January 1939 cover of the pulp magazine Spicy Adventure Stories.[5] [6] The album's inner sleeve includes a long list of special thanks, acknowledging musicians who performed on the album (such as Tom Petty), musicians who did not (Stevie Wonder), surreal characters ("Gal Shaped Just Like A Frog"), and Dylan's new daughter, who was born the year of the album's release.[7]

Reception and legacy

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Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic [8]
Robert ChristgauB[9]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music[10]
Entertainment WeeklyB−[11]
MusicHound1.5/5[12]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[13]
Rolling Stone[14]

Knocked Out Loaded received mixed to negative reviews from contemporary music critics, who found the album uneven and lacking cohesion. "Knocked Out Loaded is ultimately a depressing affair," wrote Anthony DeCurtis in his review for Rolling Stone magazine, "because its slipshod, patchwork nature suggests that Dylan released this LP not because he had anything in particular to say, but to cash in on his 1986 tour. Even worse, it suggests Dylan's utter lack of artistic direction."[14]

In a more positive review for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau wrote Knocked Out Loaded "sounds like something Dylan threw together in a week and away forever. But throwing it away is how he gets that off-the-cuff feel, and side two is great fun." Christgau singled out "Brownsville Girl" for praise, hailing it as "one of the greatest and most ridiculous of [Dylan's] great ridiculous epics."[9]

The album's reputation has not improved with time. Writing in 1991 for Entertainment Weekly magazine, Bill Flanagan characterized Knocked Out Loaded as "haphazard", despite enjoying Dylan's collaborations with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Sam Shepard.[11] The 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide dismissed the album as "the absolute bottom of the Dylan barrel".[13] In 2012, The A.V. Club grouped Knocked Out Loaded with Empire Burlesque and Down in the Groove to form "a trilogy of weak-to-awful albums that found Dylan struggling to find inspiration and chasing trendy production techniques that played against his strengths."[15] In 2024, Matt Mitchell of Paste magazine ranked Knocked Out Loaded the fourth worst of Dylan's studio albums, with only the song "Brownsville Girl" saving it from being "the undoubted, undisputed pick for 'worst album made by a great musician'."[16]

Michael Gray offered a mixed assessment in his book Song and Dance Man: The Art Of Bob Dylan. "[A]fter the overblown robotic coldness of Empire Burlesque", he wrote, "this third-rate assemblage of studio scrapings ... has a warmth and human frailty that at least lets you in. Tired r&b ('You Wanna Ramble') and rockism ('Got My Mind Made Up'); immaculately sung but shifty pop ('Under Your Spell'); a cover of Kris Kristofferson's wretched 'They Killed Him'; and Dylan's fine 'Maybe Someday' so badly produced that it is incomprehensible and could be sung by one of the Chipmunks. There's a tender rendition, well-produced and refreshingly arranged, of the gospel standard 'Precious Memories', a robust cut of a good minor Dylan song 'Drifting [sic] Too Far From Shore' (with mad drumming), and, hidden among the dross, 'Brownsville Girl', co-written with Sam Shepard: a wonderful and innovative major work, intelligent and subtle, from a Bob Dylan out from behind his 1980s wall of self-contempt and wholly in command of his incomparable vocal resources."[17]

Dylan has played few songs from Knocked Out Loaded in concert; "Driftin' Too Far from Shore", with 14 performances (all but one in 1988), is the most frequently performed.[18] Four songs remain unplayed, while the other three have together been aired only five times.[19] [20] [21]

The album was remastered and re-issued in 2013 as a part of The Complete Albums Collection, Vol. One box set.

Commercial performance

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Knocked Out Loaded debuted on the US Billboard 200 at No. 80 and peaked three weeks later at No. 53,[22] becoming Dylan's lowest charting studio album since his debut in 1962.[7] Sales were similarly weak on the UK Albums Chart, where it debuted at No. 35 before falling off the charts five weeks later.[23] Knocked Out Loaded's highest chart position was in Norway, where peaked at No. 9.[24]

Track listing

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Side one
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."You Wanna Ramble"Little Junior Parker3:14
2."They Killed Him"Kris Kristofferson4:00
3."Driftin' Too Far from Shore"Dylan3:39
4."Precious Memories"Traditional; arranged by Dylan3:13
5."Maybe Someday"Dylan3:17
Total length:17:23
Side two
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Brownsville Girl"Dylan, Sam Shepard11:00
2."Got My Mind Made Up"Dylan, Tom Petty2:53
3."Under Your Spell"Dylan, Carole Bayer Sager3:58
Total length:17:51

Personnel

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Production

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  • Britt Bacon – engineering
  • Judy Feltus – engineering
  • Don Smith – engineering
  • George Tutko – engineering

Charts

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Chart performance for Knocked Out Loaded
Chart (1986) Peak
position
Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)[25] 24
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[26] 50
Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[27] 37
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[28] 23
Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)[29] 9
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)[30] 20
Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)[31] 18
UK Albums (OCC)[32] 35
US Billboard 200[33] 53

Notes

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  1. ^ "Bob Dylan - Mainstream Rock Airplay". Billboard. Retrieved June 1, 2025.
  2. ^ Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, 95-100
  3. ^ Gleadow, Ewan (May 10, 2025). "Bob Dylan's Knocked Out Loaded had another name, and a different cover art, shortly before release". Cult Following. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  4. ^ "The Peter Golding Collection of Rock & Roll Art". Bohnams. New York: Bohnams. 2008. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  5. ^ Margotin, Philippe; Guesdon, Jean-Michel (2017). Bob Dylan — All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers. p. 540. ISBN 978-0316353533.
  6. ^ Atwood, Tony (April 2, 2020). "The art work to Dylan's Knocked Out Loaded". Untold Dylan. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  7. ^ a b Sounes, Howard (2021). Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan. New York: Grove Press. p. 375. ISBN 978-0-8021-5864-2.
  8. ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. Knocked Out Loaded at AllMusic
  9. ^ a b Christgau, Robert. "Robert Christgau: CG: Artist 169". robertchristgau.com. Retrieved June 1, 2025.
  10. ^ Larkin, Colin (2007). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195313734.
  11. ^ a b "Bob Dylan's discography". Ew.com. Retrieved August 8, 2024.
  12. ^ Graff, Gary; Durchholz, Daniel, eds. (1999). MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide (2nd ed.). Farmington Hills, MI: Visible Ink Press. p. 371. ISBN 1-57859-061-2.
  13. ^ a b Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian, eds. (2004). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. New York, NY: Fireside. p. 262. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
  14. ^ a b DeCurtis, Anthony (September 11, 1986). "Bob Dylan: Knocked Out Loaded : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on October 2, 2007. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
  15. ^ Hyden, Steven; Phipps, Keith (May 31, 2012). "A guide to Bob Dylan, from the '60s to now". The A.V. Club. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  16. ^ Mitchell, Matt (January 27, 2024). "Every Bob Dylan Album Ranked From Worst to Best". Paste. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  17. ^ Gray, Michael (2023) [2000]. Song and Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan. Vol. 1: Language and Tradition. The FM Press. p. 12. ISBN 979-8-9882887-1-8.
  18. ^ "Setlists that contain Driftin' Too Far from Shore". Bob Dylan. Sony Music Entertainment. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  19. ^ "Setlists that contain Precious Memories". Bob Dylan. Sony Music Entertainment. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  20. ^ "Setlists that contain Brownsville Girl". Bob Dylan. Sony Music Entertainment. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  21. ^ "Setlists that contain Got My Mind Made Up". Bob Dylan. Sony Music Entertainment. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  22. ^ "Bob Dylan Chart History". Billboard. New York: Penske Media Corporation. Retrieved June 8, 2025.
  23. ^ "Knocked Out Loaded". Official Charts. Official Charts Company. Retrieved June 8, 2025.
  24. ^ "BOB DYLAN - KNOCKED OUT LOADED (ALBUM)". norwegiancharts.com. Hung Medien. Retrieved June 8, 2025.
  25. ^ "Austriancharts.at – Bob Dylan – Knocked Out Loaded" (in German). Hung Medien. Retrieved 1 June 2025.
  26. ^ "Offiziellecharts.de – Bob Dylan – Knocked Out Loaded" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved 1 June 2025.
  27. ^ "Dutchcharts.nl – Bob Dylan – Knocked Out Loaded" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 1 June 2025.
  28. ^ "Charts.nz – Bob Dylan – Knocked Out Loaded". Hung Medien. Retrieved 1 June 2025.
  29. ^ "Norwegiancharts.com – Bob Dylan – Knocked Out Loaded". Hung Medien. Retrieved 1 June 2025.
  30. ^ "Swedishcharts.com – Bob Dylan – Knocked Out Loaded". Hung Medien. Retrieved 1 June 2025.
  31. ^ "Swisscharts.com – Bob Dylan – Knocked Out Loaded". Hung Medien. Retrieved 1 June 2025.
  32. ^ "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 1 June 2025.
  33. ^ "Bob Dylan Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved 1 June 2025.
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