Blonde On Blonde is without question one of the towering achievements of Bob Dylan’s career, a two-disc masterpiece chock full of lyrically resonant and sonically fascinating songs.
The album might be best known for the monster ballads ‘Vision of Johanna,’ ‘Just Like a Woman’ and ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ (which, at over 11 minutes, made up the entirety of Disc Two/Side B of the album’s vinyl release). But it contains just as many looser, faster-paced gems.
A couple of days ago I was expressing my shock that Bringing it all Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Help! and Rubber Soul were all released in 1965.
Well, in 1966, add Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and The Beatles’ Revolver to the mix (not to mention Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence and The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.
I grew up in the wrong decade, man!
Best Songwriters – #2 – Bob Dylan
Once again, no surprise to see today’s artist on this list — I did, after all, dedicate nearly a year to Bob Dylan Weekends. In fact, I’m guessing most of you assumed Dylan would land at the very top. So I guess that leaves a little suspense leading up to tomorrow.
I’m not going to attempt to sum up Dylan’s greatness in a single blog post. Countless blogs, magazines, books and movies have tackled that task over the 50 years he’s been recording and I don’t know if any of them have quite done the trick.
Put simply, he changed the face of popular music, and did it more than once. Dylan was one of the first singer-songwriters of the modern era and you’d have a hard time finding artists working today who don’t credit him as an inspiration of one sort of another. He brought poetry to rock-and-roll and proved that it could be not just critically but commercially successful.
Blonde on Blonde was the first double album of the rock era, but it doesn’t have all that many songs. Fourteen tracks is pretty normal on a single album these days. But these were some long songs. Three clocked in at more than 7 minutes, and the nearly 12-minute ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ took up one whole side of disc two.
And these are among Dylan’s most celebrated and successful songs. Blonde on Blonde features such classics as ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,’ ‘Just Like a Woman,’ ‘Visions of Johanna,’ ‘I Want You’ and ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.’
In May of 1966, Bob Dylan completed the most extraordinary trilogy in modern music history by releasing Blonde on Blonde just 14 months after Bringing it All Back Home, with Highway 61 Revisited sandwiched in between. Where did he get the nerve?!
Blonde on Blonde is certainly one of Dylan’s finest albums and it sits in the top ten of virtually every list of the “greatest albums ever recorded.” It’s the fourth member of my Dylan Six and a strong candidate for my favorite of his records. This is the album I’d likely recommend if somebody new to Bob Dylan wanted a sense of what he’s all about.
Meet Me In Montauk 