Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited

Released - August 1965

Genre - Folk Rock

Producer - Bob Johnston & Tom Wilson

Selected Personnel - Bob Dylan (Vocals/Guitar/Piano/Harmonica); Mike Bloomfield (Guitar); Charlie McCoy (Guitar); Paul Griffin (Piano/Organ); Al Kooper (Piano/Organ); Frank Owens (Piano); Harvey Brooks (Bass); Russ Savakus (Bass); Bobby Gregg (Drums); Sam Lay (Drums)

Standout Track - Ballad Of A Thin Man

As I think I briefly outlined in my review of Bob Dylan's 1963 breakthrough album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, he remains something of an anomalous blind spot in my musical interests. I'm well aware of most of his best-known songs, of course, and of what he represents and who he is, but I've never taken the time to actually try and digest much of his discography. This is partly down to the inherent reluctance that comes whenever considering tackling somebody with as extensive an output as Dylan's - is it really worth the amount of time it'll eat up? But it's also down to the fact that the few albums of his I have listened to haven't done much for me. His early folk stuff, for me, feels a little too self-indulgent - even the admittedly very good Freewheelin' Bob Dylan has plenty of fairly tedious filler to go along with such obvious highlights as "Blowin' In The Wind" or "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright." His slightly later folk-rock material, meanwhile, was only known to me in the form of 1966's Blonde On Blonde, an album I really struggle to enjoy - if anything, it's considerably more self-indulgent than his folk epics, with vastly over-long songs that struggle to deliver enough musical inspiration to justify their running times. I'm well aware that's an opinion that flies in the face of a lot of received wisdom, mind you.

So I was surprised that I enjoyed Highway 61 Revisited as much as I did, and perhaps it's a sign that if I ever do find the time to listen to more of Dylan's stuff, I'd find more gems to enjoy than I might otherwise assume. Of course, one doesn't receive such iconic status without good cause, but I just can't shake the feeling that Dylan's importance as an activist and musical revolutionary overshadow the actual quality of a lot of his stuff. My theory is that perhaps Dylan's tendency towards self-indulgence and to prioritise lyrical intensity and poetic imagery over and above musical innovation or real listenability, is where he falls down for me, and there's a feeling with Highway 61 Revisited that those tendencies have abandoned him briefly (albeit to return in full force on Blonde On Blonde the following year). Possibly it's Dylan's conversion to a full-band electric sound rather than the stripped-back acoustic style of his earlier stuff that briefly shifted his focus elsewhere and delivered something restrained and genuinely great. That's not even to say that Dylan's strengths as a lyricist and poet aren't strongly in evidence here, in fact it's possible that the clarity and focus this album provides offer a greater insight into his lyrical genius than ever before, merely that the songs this time really do work as songs in their own right rather than being vaguely diverting musical accompaniments to his words, where what was being said was considered far more important than the way it was said, an attitude that never really sits right with me in music - obviously the lyrics of a song are vitally important, but for it to function properly as song rather than just being a poem or a spoken word piece, the music needs to be an equally integral part of telling the story, and I often get the feeling with early Dylan that that balance hasn't really been struck.

Highway 61 Revisited is of course infamous due to its status as the man's first electric album. After spending a few years being relatively obscure and relying on the championing of the likes of Joan Baez in order to achieve any recognition, he exploded to the status of the "King of Folk" in the sensational response to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (Baez's assertion on Diamonds & Rust that Dylan "burst on the scene already a legend," therefore, is a slight exaggeration, and modestly overlooks her own part to play in his success). This resulted in several international tours which left him exhausted and disillusioned by mid-1965. Perhaps the gruelling slog of having to sing the same songs night after night for months on end had robbed him of his sense of conveying a message of true importance, had diluted his own sense of any significance in his music. He was on the point of giving up singing altogether, frustrated by how little his sense of his ability or importance matched up with the rave receptions he received worldwide, and went away to pour himself into his writing, ultimately churning out a vast, pages-long early version of what would eventually become "Like A Rolling Stone." The song was pared down a little from its epic initial draft, but didn't really come alive in the recording studio until Dylan and producer Tom Wilson tried recording it with electric backing, most notably Al Kooper's contributions on organ. Kooper included a sprightly organ riff which breathed new life into the song, and must have got Dylan excited about a potential new direction - no longer was he limited to his own acoustic strumming in order to paint around his words, but he had been afforded a bigger, fuller sound.

Dylan's new full-band electric sound was debuted live at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965, where he was booed and branded "Judas" by the audience, who for now couldn't see any virtue in Dylan giving into the commercial sounds of rock and pop, believing it would only cheapen the purity and sincerity of his words. Columbia Records were resultantly reluctant to put out "Like A Rolling Stone" as a single, but eventually did so and were surprised by its enormous chart success, particularly considering its six-minute runtime. It seemed that, in the context of a proper recording where the full impact of the instrumentation and sound can be heard properly, his audience were willing to go with him far more than in the volatile live setting of the festival. Accordingly, the remaining sessions for Highway 61 Revisited (now helmed by the album's second producer, Bob Johnston) pursued the same sound and arrangements.

"Like A Rolling Stone" is one of Dylan's finest songs, and perhaps the first to prove him capable of being more than just a love-lorn, overly sincere, hopeful activist. Even poetic masterpieces like "Blowin' In The Wind" or "The Times They Are A-Changin'" were characterised by a sort of naive optimism, a typical early-60s faith in things getting better. "Like A Rolling Stone" is cynical, angry, snide, even sarcastic, and Dylan snarls the tune more than ever before. Its subject is "Miss Lonely," supposedly based on Edie Sedgwick, one of the mainstays of Andy Warhol's Factory scene, someone who had a privileged and untroubled upbringing and, now they face troubles and hardship later in life, find they have no meaningful experiences by which to define themselves. Given the song's emergence from Dylan's own submersion into self-doubt and worry, it's possible to also perhaps see Miss Lonely as an allegory for himself - "How does it feel, how does it feel? To be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?"

The remainder of the album's first half consists largely of more by-the-numbers, up-tempo blues numbers - "Tombstone Blues" rocks out more than any other track on the album, complete with a fiery guitar solo from Mike Bloomfield, but these songs do little to really excite the listener after "Like A Rolling Stone" until the incredible "Ballad Of A Thin Man." Driven by the chilling, aloof pounding of Dylan at the piano, it's even angrier and more resentful than the title track and positions itself as an attack against all the conservative figures who stood in the way of the development of 60s counter-culture, characterising "Mr Jones" as a sort of by-the-numbers, backwards, officious type unable to understand the significance of an emerging movement that goes against what they understand - "Something is happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?" It's easily my favourite Dylan song, conjuring up a far more vivid and engaging portrait of a collection of characters than many of his more overtly poetic offerings, and its anger and passion is really tangible.

The album's second half features another couple of more standard folk rock numbers and struggles to match either of the high points of the first, but does have a lot of fun with the title track, a fast-paced rock number that's punctuated by the clanging of guitars and by Dylan's cartoonish siren whistle. Thematically, it explores Dylan's own roots in context of the wider history of American blues music - Highway 61 was the road that linked his birthplace of Duluth to some of the homes of the earliest blues music, all the way down to New Orleans, passing by the birthplaces of such iconic figures as Muddy Waters, Son House and Elvis Presley. Dylan characterises himself as the "son" who God orders killed ("God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son," Abe said "Man, you must be puttin' me on,"" with Abraham being Dylan's own father's name), and by using the highway itself as a lyrical image, ties himself to the various other legends of the American blues tradition.

The album's epic closer, "Desolation Row," is its only concession to those early Dylan fans still angry at his transition into a rock musician, and reunites him with his typical arrangement of acoustic guitar and harmonica. Its length (over eleven minutes) might in other circumstances tie it in with other Dylan epics that have frustrated me in the past by failing to musically justify their run-time, but here, perhaps as a result of the renewed focus provided by the full-band sound elsewhere on the album, he remembers to keep things musically interesting. Rather than just being a vaguely tuneless recitation of poetic images against a sparse acoustic background (I feel like I should provide examples so it doesn't just look like I'm being difficult - I've always felt "Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands" from Blonde On Blonde makes this mistake), he remembers to set them to a real gift of a melody, with the arrangement occasionally lent some colour by the odd, crystal-clear flourish of classical guitar, and Dylan puts a bit more effort into really selling the tune than on some of his other epics. It imagines the titular Desolation Row as a kind of vast, imagined frontier against which all of history unfolds, be it imaginary or real - Cinderella, Cain and Abel, Einstein, Nero and the Hunchback of Notre Dame all have cameos, all drawn together into this vast landscape. It's a really lovely and visionary song, and never once outstays its eleven minutes, a real progression from earlier songs like "Talking World War III Blues" on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which felt horribly long and were only just over half the length of "Desolation Row."

I ought to feel spurred onto listening to more of Dylan's stuff having finally heard an album of his I really, genuinely enjoy, but I'm made wary by the knowledge that it was followed up by Blonde On Blonde, the album I have the most problems with of the ones I've heard. He's definitely a musician I'll find time to listen to more of at some point, but he's obviously one who I only really enjoy in a particular context, so I may have to be careful exactly which of his albums I take the time to get into. For now, though, Highway 61 Revisited is a really fun, focused, intelligent and impactful folk-rock album that for the first time gave me a glimpse at why he's as revered as he is.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Bob Dylan.

1. Like A Rolling Stone

2. Tombstone Blues

3. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry

4. From A Buick 6

5. Ballad Of A Thin Man

6. Queen Jane Approximately

7. Highway 61 Revisited

8. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

9. Desolation Row