18. Bob Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited"
What if you decided to stop playing only acoustic music and suddenly started playing with a full, electric band, when that was widely regarded as an Earth-shaking, life-altering decision? And then recorded an entire album backed by that full band? And then made the first song "Like a Rolling Stone," a song that would later be named the Best Song of All Time? (At least in Rolling Stone's 2004 and 2010 lists; it was bumped to number 4 in the 2021 list. Hey, Bob, number 4 is still very good!)
That would be cool.
This album, Dylan's sixth, was released in 1965, and recorded in blocks before and after the famous electric set at the Newport Folk Festival. It's hard to conceptualize now what Dylan going electric meant at the time, but imagine that Billie Eilish suddenly started performing speed metal or Adele announced she was a rapper now. It was very shocking to our Boomer predecessors, who were not used to this sort of thing! To our more modern ears, it just sounds like the old Dylan with a full backing band, but the songs are definitely edgier.
I'm going full disclsoure here: this is my favorite Dylan album. Every song on here is a complete banger, starting with that first song, driven along by Al Kooper's Hammond organ and of course that chorus ("How does it feel/To be on your own/With no direction home/A complete unknown/Like a rolling stone?"). Like many of the songs on this album, it's long - a shade over 6 minutes - but never feels overly long. Widely interpreted to be about Edie Sedgwick, who keeps popping up, this might be the first diss track ever recorded. I remember being obsessed with this song when I was in my early teens, taken by the descending melody on the pre-chorus and then the "How does it feel?" accusation. Even if it's not the best song, it's one of the best.
Since all of these songs are great and you and I both have limited time, let's just hit a few highlights. "Ballad of a Thin Man" is a foreboding, dark piano-driven observation of a bougie dude who's stepping into a world he doesn't understand.
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel to
Be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible"
As he hands you a bone
But ya' don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
"Tombstone Blues" is a straight-up rocker; it actually reminds me of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" but with more edge. It's interesting listening to this after yesterday's album because the verses actually aren't that far away from the kind of densely knotted rhymes Kendrick uses. The verses are all great, but the fifth is my favorite:
Causes Galileo’s math book to get thrown
At Delilah who's sitting worthlessly alone
But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter
Now I wish I could give Brother Bill his great thrill
I would set him in chains at the top of the hill
Then send out for some pillars and Cecil B. DeMille
He could die happily ever after
"Desolation Row," the album's closer, is an 11-minute plus epic, 10 verses and no chorus, just the title phrase used at the end of every verse. In it, Dylan spins out a surreal, Fellini-esque series of vignettes that call to mind a trip through a demented carnival or the circles of Dante's hell. But the verse melody is delicate and beautiful, lending a sort of melancholy tenderness to the proceedings. It's thought of as one of Dylan's best, and rightfully so.
Besides "Rolling Stone," my favorite song on this record is probably "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues." Again, it doesn't have a chorus as such, but the last two lines of each verse have a lilt and a lift that just strikes me as gorgeous and sad. Its meaning is obscure, but each verse suggests a meaning. Like this one, which just feels perfect if you think you've been wronged by a woman, like I felt:
The peasants call her the Goddess of Gloom
She speaks good English
And she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind
And careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice
And leaves you howling at the moon
So yeah, I've spent a lot of time with these songs, since my early teens maybe, and they feel comfortable and familiar now and listening back to the whole thing for the first time in a while hasn't really changed my opinion but really has pulled me back to much younger (and often darker) days. I don't think I'll ever shake this album.
Is this album in my personal Top 100? Yes.
funeraltofinish has had an effect on me. It has made me rethink my Dylan take. I am a fan, don't get me wrong. I LOVE Blood on the Tracks, and like a lot of other stuff. But I've always attached to Dylan the idea that he's an overrated lyricist, engaged (as you've noted in a prior post) in pointless rhyming dictionary-ing. But the more of his stuff I see, as you present it and as I revisit it, the more I think, "there's a lot of great stuff in here." It turns out, the dimestore rhyming may be the exception, in songs like "Subterranean Homesick Blues." That's a fun song, but My life would be better without nonsense like: "You better duck down the alley way/ Lookin’ for a new friend/ The man in the coon-skin cap/ By the big pen/ Wants eleven dollar bills/ You only got ten." Ultimately, while I have focused on the trite stuff, it really isn't the bulk of the work. Dylan's stature in my pantheon has improved because of this blog.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of great stuff! Dylan is hard to grapple with because of his unique status in modern American music, but he really is hit-or-miss. This album, I think, is a solid hit, whereas something like Blonde on Blonde is a lot patchier. I actually like the zany, sing-song lyrics to "Subterranean," but that's just me.
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