Tag Archives: Bob Dylan

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Song of the Day #608: ‘I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine’ – Bob Dylan

It’s easy to break Bob Dylan’s career into segments: we’ve already noted the shift from the political to the personal and the shift from acoustic to electric, both of which were examples of Dylan changing his musical direction. Now we come to a shift that was caused by an unplanned event changing him.

In July of 1966, just two months after the release of Blonde on Blonde, Dylan was in a serious motorcycle accident. Though the extent of his injuries remains unclear, the more lasting impact was emotional. Dylan ceased touring, withdrew from the limelight and concentrated on his life as a family man.

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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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