ESSENTIAL DYLAN

In the mid-1960s folk music was a serious business. American folk singers were considered spokespeople for their generation, an audience who passionately believed music—and in particular socially relevant folk music—could change the world. When, at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, young Bob Dylan performed with an electric guitar at his side and a rock band at his back the reaction was intense. 

Dylan was the pre-eminent singer-songwriter of the day. His albums were greeted rapturously, his lyrics studied fervently, his interview utterances pondered assiduously. He was the man on the scene. But, like a rolling stone, Dylan was determined not to gather moss. He was restless, toured incessantly, used 'many medicines' to keep going and simultaneously alter his consciousness, and danced to a muse both spiritual and carnal. He was the leader of the pack, and the pack owned him. Or so they thought.

The loud and very mixed reception to his worldwide electric concerts (including Australia) both inspired and exhausted Dylan. There were ideas bouncing around his head, and a particular sound, elusive as quicksilver. Dylan booked session time at the Columbia Records studio in Nashville Tennessee. He took the Hawks (not yet The Band) guitarist Robbie Robertson and organist Al Kooper, and hired local musicians to work up the new songs to recording level. It became clear that there was going to be a surfeit of material, enough for a double album. 

Blonde On Blonde, one of the greatest albums in the history of rock music, was born.

The local pros may have been unfamiliar with Dylan or his unusually loose style, but they worked with energy. With Dylan pushing the duration of his new songs to unprecedented lengths and sessions that tended to start around six in the afternoon and go all night, the feel was both creative and chaotic. The March 1966 Nashville sessions produced some classic songs, amongst them the rollicking album opener "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35", a gently swaying "Just Like A Woman", and intense "I Want You". All brilliant, all very different. "Rainy Day Women" has, in Dylan’s own words, "a Salvation Army sound", "Just Like A Woman" is a timeless folk song, "I Want You" hints at the emotional turmoil wracking the singer. 

And that is the glory of Blonde On Blonde; it leaps from the slurred blues of "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again", via the acidic humour of "Leopard-skin Pill-box Hat" and the rattling freight train that is "Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine", to the epic mystery of "Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands". This last—the final song on the album, occupying the whole of the fourth side—is considered by many to be one of Dylan’s crowning achievements. Written for (and to) Sara Lownds and unfolding with stately intensity, it is an evocative and deeply personal song that somehow manages to invite the listener into its own moonlit world to let the themes of longing, regret and beauty percolate through the airwaves and into our hearts. It is a grand, poetic climax to a rich and wonderful album. 

The last word goes (deservedly) to Jack Black’s character in High Fidelity. He is helping a Saturday morning record store customer rehabilitate his vinyl collection in his own unique "an offer you can’t refuse" style.

BARRY: You don’t have it? That is perverse. Don’t tell anybody you don’t own fucking Blonde On Blonde. [Pushes LP into customer’s arms] It’s going to be OK. [Hugs him]

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© Bruce Jenkins—September 2024

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Quotes from Behind The Shades, Clinton Heylin’s biography of Bob Dylan (20th Anniversary edition, 2011)

Dialogue from the 2000 Stephen Frears film of the Nick Hornby novel "High Fidelity" (1995).

Other essential Bob Dylan albums would include:

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)

Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

Blood On the Tracks (1974)

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