Tag Archives: Bob Dylan

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Song of the Day #602: ‘Absolutely Sweet Marie’ – Bob Dylan

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.’

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Song of the Day #601: ‘Temporary Like Achilles’ – Bob Dylan

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.

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Song of the Day #595: ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ – Bob Dylan

I deliberately avoided mentioning ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ in my write-up of Highway 61 Revisited yesterday because I didn’t want to steal the thunder from today’s post. That’s a bit like writing about Michaelangelo works displayed in Florence without mentioning the David.

For all of the many genres and musical styles Dylan has explored, all of the topics he’s covered, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ remains in many ways the quintessential Dylan song. It was voted as the #1 song of all-time in a Rolling Stone survey of musicians and critics published in 2004. And whether or not you share that opinion, it’s impossible to deny that it’s one of the few songs that unquestionably deserves to be in the running.

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Song of the Day #594: ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’ – Bob Dylan

In late August of 1965, five months after the release of Bringing It All Back Home, Bob Dylan unleashed Highway 61 Revisited upon the world. Let me repeat that… five months after Bringing It All Back Home. Two of the finest albums not just in this man’s discography but in all of recorded musical history were released within a half year of each other.

That’s like if Steven Spielberg has released Jaws in July and Raiders of the Lost Ark in December. It almost doesn’t seem fair (and it gets even crazier, as I’ll point out next week).

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Song of the Day #588: ‘Love Minus Zero/No Limit’ – Bob Dylan

Bringing It All Back Home is, of course, another of those six albums I consider Bob Dylan’s absolute finest. Not only did it signal a groundbreaking, eye-opening new direction for Dylan, folk music, rock music, music in general… it’s also chock full of some of the most amazing songs ever committed to tape.

Yesterday’s track, ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues,’ kicks everything off in classic style but look at some of what follows: ‘She Belongs To Me,’ ‘Maggie’s Farm,’ ‘Tambourine Man,’ ‘Gates of Eden,’ ‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),’ and ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,’ to name just a few. I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again… Bob Dylan could have ended his career five years after it started and he’d still go down as one of the greatest musical artists in history.

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