Record: Blonde on Blonde
Release: June 1966
Songs / length: 14 / 72:57
Blonde on Blonde was the first Dylan record I ever listened to, and for many it's still the main album introduction to his work (though nowadays "best of" compilations and playlists are no doubt the most common entry route). The album's sequencing is so engrained in my brain, that it has a jarring effect whenever I hear the songs in any other order than that of the original album. Visions of Johanna should follow Pledging My Time in the same way that night follows day.
Released in the summer of 1966, BoB was Dylan's seventh album and his first double LP. It was recorded first in New York in January 1966, followed by much more productive sessions in Nashville (4 days in February and 3 days in March 1966), which Dylan managed to slot in between live dates as part of his North American tour. Dylan was reluctant to go to Nashville at first for the album sessions and it was Columbia producer Bob Johnston that persuaded him to do it (Johnston was the same creative thinker that persuaded Columbia to allow Johnny Cash to record his landmark album in Folsom prison). All three of them (Dylan, Johnston and Cash) would end up working together in 1969 on Nashville Skyline.
Another explanation for Dylan ending up in the warm embrace of Nashville during this politically charged time was that he was running away from a lot of things, especially expectations placed on him by fans and the media. In his Chronicles autobiography, Dylan talks about wanting to escape the big city and the “rat race” in search of a simpler life, and no doubt this feeling grew stronger after his motorcycle accident and his father Abe's heart attack later in 1966, which drew him to places like Big Pink. In Greil Marcus' Invisible Republic, there's also a quote from folk singer Phil Ochs about how Dylan had become such a "phenomenon", and a part of "so many people's psyches", that the concern was that one of the "many screwed up people in America" at that time might try and assassinate him.
All this explains why Dylan's notorious world tour, which preceded the release of this album (Feb-May 1966), would be among his last live performances for almost a decade. The April-May European leg of this tour (17 shows in under a month) included the famous "Judas" moment at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, the sort of event – similar to Sam Cooke's apparent "betrayal" of the gospel community – that says more about the accuser and their narrow-minded view of things than the accused. Nonetheless, the hostility that Dylan faced and the amount of drugs he was taking to keep up with the relentless pace of his 1966 tour was inevitably wearing hm down, and you can hear some of that weariness on the bootlegs of those live performances, such as the official 36-CD box set released in late 2016. I could only afford the 2-CD version of the "real" Royal Albert Hall concert!
All the stress inevitably took its toll, and for me BoB is not as focused as Highway 61 in two respects: there are some filler tracks on BoB (the most obvious being Obviously 5 Believers), plus Dylan also sounds less clear-sighted in his songwriting, notably on Rainy Day Women #12 and 35. The blurred, out of focus picture of Dylan on the album's front cover is representative to me of the more hazy nature of his songwriting on this record. All that said, BoB is still one of the great Dylan records, containing some of the best musicianship and some of his best songs.
Certain musicians from the Highway 61 sessions, like Al Kooper, came down with Bob to Nashville, but most were new recruits, including keyboard player Bill Aikins – who recalls Dylan spending a lot of time at the piano with his Bible on the day they recorded Visions of Johanna – and drummer Kenny Buttrey, whose playing on BoB tracks like Just Like A Woman, Pledging My Time and I Want You is superb and up there with some of the great Dylan-supporting rhythm sections like The Band and Muscle Shoals.
Release: June 1966
Songs / length: 14 / 72:57
Blonde on Blonde was the first Dylan record I ever listened to, and for many it's still the main album introduction to his work (though nowadays "best of" compilations and playlists are no doubt the most common entry route). The album's sequencing is so engrained in my brain, that it has a jarring effect whenever I hear the songs in any other order than that of the original album. Visions of Johanna should follow Pledging My Time in the same way that night follows day.
Released in the summer of 1966, BoB was Dylan's seventh album and his first double LP. It was recorded first in New York in January 1966, followed by much more productive sessions in Nashville (4 days in February and 3 days in March 1966), which Dylan managed to slot in between live dates as part of his North American tour. Dylan was reluctant to go to Nashville at first for the album sessions and it was Columbia producer Bob Johnston that persuaded him to do it (Johnston was the same creative thinker that persuaded Columbia to allow Johnny Cash to record his landmark album in Folsom prison). All three of them (Dylan, Johnston and Cash) would end up working together in 1969 on Nashville Skyline.
Another explanation for Dylan ending up in the warm embrace of Nashville during this politically charged time was that he was running away from a lot of things, especially expectations placed on him by fans and the media. In his Chronicles autobiography, Dylan talks about wanting to escape the big city and the “rat race” in search of a simpler life, and no doubt this feeling grew stronger after his motorcycle accident and his father Abe's heart attack later in 1966, which drew him to places like Big Pink. In Greil Marcus' Invisible Republic, there's also a quote from folk singer Phil Ochs about how Dylan had become such a "phenomenon", and a part of "so many people's psyches", that the concern was that one of the "many screwed up people in America" at that time might try and assassinate him.
All this explains why Dylan's notorious world tour, which preceded the release of this album (Feb-May 1966), would be among his last live performances for almost a decade. The April-May European leg of this tour (17 shows in under a month) included the famous "Judas" moment at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, the sort of event – similar to Sam Cooke's apparent "betrayal" of the gospel community – that says more about the accuser and their narrow-minded view of things than the accused. Nonetheless, the hostility that Dylan faced and the amount of drugs he was taking to keep up with the relentless pace of his 1966 tour was inevitably wearing hm down, and you can hear some of that weariness on the bootlegs of those live performances, such as the official 36-CD box set released in late 2016. I could only afford the 2-CD version of the "real" Royal Albert Hall concert!
All the stress inevitably took its toll, and for me BoB is not as focused as Highway 61 in two respects: there are some filler tracks on BoB (the most obvious being Obviously 5 Believers), plus Dylan also sounds less clear-sighted in his songwriting, notably on Rainy Day Women #12 and 35. The blurred, out of focus picture of Dylan on the album's front cover is representative to me of the more hazy nature of his songwriting on this record. All that said, BoB is still one of the great Dylan records, containing some of the best musicianship and some of his best songs.
Certain musicians from the Highway 61 sessions, like Al Kooper, came down with Bob to Nashville, but most were new recruits, including keyboard player Bill Aikins – who recalls Dylan spending a lot of time at the piano with his Bible on the day they recorded Visions of Johanna – and drummer Kenny Buttrey, whose playing on BoB tracks like Just Like A Woman, Pledging My Time and I Want You is superb and up there with some of the great Dylan-supporting rhythm sections like The Band and Muscle Shoals.
Just Like A Woman is a song that I feel ambivalent about. As with Like A Rolling Stone, there's an apparent pleasure that the song takes in seeing a woman brought to her knees, when "she breaks just like a little girl", but closer examination of the lyrics does reveal the narrator expressing sadness (the "pain in here") that he could never be part of this woman's world, that he "just can't fit". This has led many people, including Patti Smith in her poems, to see this woman as Edie Sedgwick and this world as Andy Warhol's Factory. Other people have claimed that Edie was the woman wearing the Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat and the "debutante" stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again. Who's to know? Whatever the case, the song Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat is a wonderfully noisy, vulgar and sneering Chicago blues ("I saw you making love with him, you forgot to close the garage door").
As ever, playing detective in an attempt to find out who the targets were of Dylan songs is often a fool's errand. For example, Joan Baez has suggested that she was the subject of Visions of Johanna, but all I know is that the song is without doubt the album's crowning achievement. Other highlights for me are Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later) and Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands – all those with the long titles, it seems. To my mind, BoB could have been Dylan's greatest album with a fair bit of trimming, and with the addition of some of the songs that were omitted from the record (notably Can I Please Crawl Out Your Window and the magnificent She's Your Lover Now – any Dylan collection requires the complete version, or Take 16, from the Cutting Edge bootleg).
Just like Dylan, who on BoB sounds frazzled by the modern world, I too have also found solace in a mysterious and wonderful woman, who's in tune with the natural world: "When Ruthie says come see her, in her honky tonk lagoon". This urban vs nature theme is persistent throughout the LP, and the lowlands of the final song seem to represent the Mississippi delta, on a record that's steeped in the sound of the blues, and it's this part of Dylan's musical past that will soon get flooded as he turns away from his "electric" mid-60s rock & roll sound towards a rootsier direction.
Album rating: A+
Just like Dylan, who on BoB sounds frazzled by the modern world, I too have also found solace in a mysterious and wonderful woman, who's in tune with the natural world: "When Ruthie says come see her, in her honky tonk lagoon". This urban vs nature theme is persistent throughout the LP, and the lowlands of the final song seem to represent the Mississippi delta, on a record that's steeped in the sound of the blues, and it's this part of Dylan's musical past that will soon get flooded as he turns away from his "electric" mid-60s rock & roll sound towards a rootsier direction.
Album rating: A+
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