38. Bob Dylan, "Blonde on Blonde"

 

Remember when we played covers-better-than-the-originals the other day?  I've got another one for you, Nashville country-punk progenitors Jason and the Scorchers completely DESTROYING "Absolutely Sweet Marie," from this Dylan album:

Sorry about the wretched video quality, but at least the audio is good.  Now compare that to the Dylan original, which, admittedly, is a rocker by the standards of the album but pales in comparison to the Scorchers' version.

We're up in the stratosphere now at number 38, and everyone of these albums from now on will be revered by lots of people, even if they're overrated like this album.  (Don't worry, we're gonna see more hugely overrated albums before we're done.)  Like the Scorchers version, this album was recorded largely in Nashville, not quite 20 years earlier.  Dylan used Nashville session musicians, widely recognized as some of the best musicians in the world at the time, along with some of his regular band, and it's an interesting mashup between Dylan's shaggy style and the virtuosity of the band behind him.

There are a lot of famous songs on this record, which is probably why it's thought of as "an album of enormous depth, providing endless lyrical and musical revelations on each play."  There's "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again," with that famous title hook, a great song that, I'm sorry, is like 2 verses too long.  In fact, you could say that about a lot of the songs on this album.  Dylan was always an artist in awe of his own prodigious output, and it really shows here.  On the other hand, "I Want You," which sounds like it was made specifically to later appear in Wes Anderson films, is an uptempo jam with the usual inscrutable lyrics:

The drunken politician leaps
Upon the streets where mothers weep
And the saviors who are fast asleep
They wait for you
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin' from my broken cup
And ask me to open up the gate for you
I want you, I want you
Yes, I want you so bad
Honey, I want you

There are books and books trying to puzzle out the deep meanings of Dylan's lyrics, but having written lyrics myself, they seem to me like a guy who's probably fairly stoned thinking of words that rhyme and then backfilling the rest of each line.  Or maybe they're profound Jungian insights into the world-mind, who the fuck knows.

The song I like the best is the one true Dylanheads hate the most, "Rainy Day Women ♯12 & 35," with what sounds like a marching band backing Dylan's insistence that "everybody must get stoned."  It's a novelty song, sure, but what appeals to me isn't the music itself or the lyrics, but Dylan's audible laughter on the track.  He sounds like he's having a blast, and I've always found that so humanizing for a guy who usually sounds so serious to the point of being dour.  It really made Bob Dylan into a real person for me.

I like "Just Like a Woman" okay too.  Allegedly about Edie Sedgwick, it's got that heartbreaking line "she breaks just like a little girl."  That is super-evocative and conveys so much sadness and pain in one line, just a great lyric.  And I can take "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat," basically a straight-ahead blues jam with some great Robbie Robertson guitar playing. 

I know "Visions of Johanna" and "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" are regarded as masterpieces but I'm pretty meh on both of them.  (Email angry comments to 40goingon28@gmail.com.)  They both drag for me and I'm impatient and want things to happen in songs.

If you want to know how overseriously people take Bob Dylan, read the part of the Wiki about the title of this album.  There are like competing theories and it has hilarious phrases like "Kazimir Malevich's constructivist painting White Square on White" and "A brand new interpretation appeared in a French essay published in 2021."  Jesus Christ people, he probably just thought it sounded cool.  No constructivism involved.

Same thing with the cover: people speculated it's blurry because it's supposed to simulate tripping on LSD or something, but it was cold out and the photographer was shivering.  Occam's razor strikes again.

But that's the problem with Dylan!  He really was a groundbreaking and brilliant artist and so people have imbued him with so much meaning that it's hard to just listen to his songs as songs any more.  They all have to mean something ultra deep and be part of the fabric of the universe instead of stuff a stoned 24-year-old recorded in 1966.

Is this album in my personal Top 100? Nope!