The Dutch don't dance

Juliusz Lewandowski aka Juliusz Martwy

31-year-old Bob Dylan’s 10th studio album was released on 8 June 1970.

A double album of covers, instrumentals, and a handful of originals, Self Portrait confused critics and record buyers at the time (and still does). “What is this shit?” Greil Marcus famously asked in his review for Rolling Stone.

Dylan has not helped with the confusion, alternating over the years between defending the album as a serious recording and dismissing it as a joke, as well as a calculated attempt to shed his popular audience (”I wish these people would just forget about me,” Dylan explained in 1984 interview. “I wanna do something they can’t possibly like, they can’t relate to. They’ll see it, and they’ll listen, and they’ll say, ‘Well, let’s get on to the next person. He ain’t sayin’ it no more. He ain’t given’ us what we want,’ you know? They’ll go on to somebody else. But the whole idea backfired”).

The album was a commercial hit anyway, peaking at #4 in the US and #1 in the UK.