#18 Bob Dylan, 'Highway 61 Revisited' (1965)
Previously #4
“Crack!” The sound of the snare that opens the record. The first thing we hear. Bruce Springsteen said it best, “that snare shot that sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind ... The way that Elvis freed your body, Dylan freed your mind, and showed us that because the music was physical did not mean it was anti-intellect.” On 25 July 1965, Bob Dylan played the infamously controversial set at Newport Folk Festival, where he played electric guitar live for the first time. He booed off stage and shunned by the Folk community. A month later he released this album, the sound of an artist reinvented. On the opening track, Dylan questions “How does it feel, how does it feel?/To be on your own, with no direction home.”
The collected songs within were revolutionary. The lyrics were poetic and cemented Dylan as arguably the greatest lyricist of all time. On ‘Tombstone Blues,’ Dylan weaves stories together of historical and biblical characters, with lyrics like “Where Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped their bed roll” and “I wish I could write you a melody so plain/That could hold you, dear lady, from going insane/That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain/Of your useless and pointless knowledge.” ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man,’ a mainstay of Dylan’s live set, is a response to people that would ask Dylan questions all the time, aka journalists, led by a haunting, almost ghostly sounding piano. Although not written about any one person, it’s alleged that it’s about Jeffrey Jones, a journalist that had confronted Dylan after the Newport gig. The song was referenced by John Lennon in the Beatles song, ‘Yer Blues.’ ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ is reminiscent of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and is speculated to be about Joan Baez and the Folk movement that Dylan had left behind. The record concludes with the sole acoustic track, ‘Desolation Row,’ opening the 11-minute song with the poignant lyrics, “They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown/The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town.” Once again, it’s littered with character from history such as Einstein, Noah, Cain & Abel, T.S. Eliot and others. Those opening lyrics are a reference to three Black men that were lynched in Duluth, Dylan’s town of birth. The men, that worked for a traveling circus, were accused of raping a White woman. Images of the lynching were printed on postcards and sold. Songs like ‘From A Buick 6,’ ‘Tombstone Blues’ and ‘Highway 61 Revisited,’ as well as ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ were the biggest departure in sound at the time for Dylan. Swathed in electric guitar and organ, Dylan had truly gone electric and there was no turning back. The door to the collective minds of American youth had been kicked open.
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