Blonde On Blonde

Were you aware that 1965-7 is responsible for 6 out of the top 10 Rolling Stone Magazine’s top 500 albums of all time? Lets, for the sake of fluidity, ignore any potentially disparaging comments or views with regard to the legitimacy of this supplement, and contemplate the possibility that this was a truly special time of cultural rejuvenation, and that The Sixties might well be epitomized by the music it produced. The year 1966 saw the release of a few significant albums in musical history, not least The Beatles Revolver, Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence, along with The Jimi Hendrix Experience releasing Hey Joe as their first single in the UK. The world was under Beatles fever - John Lennon infamously proclaiming the band more popular than Jesus, sparking an uproarious protest and record burning in America’s Bible Belt, but nowhere near enough dissention to prevent their album later on that year reaching Number 1 in the UK and the US for over six weeks. Amidst Beatle-mania and the swinging Sixties, another musical figurehead from across the pond ignited his own colossal upset among fans. Having shocked America’s folk community with his electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, a controversy which is impressively represented in a memorable scene from Todd Haynes’ 2007 film I’m Not There, Bob Dylan went on a world tour the following year with his band The Hawks (later The Band), after writing and recording the album Blonde On Blonde.

Dylan’s decision to ‘go electric’ was met by many with disappointment and upset at the time, a conviction forever immortalised by the boos and heckles of Manchester’s Free Trade Hall audience. “Judas” shouts an audience member  - he’s sold out to electric pop music, he’s betrayed the folk-acoustic symbol he had became known to represent so magnificently the previous year! “I don’t believe you… you’re a liar!” Dylan retorts before blasting Manchester away with a thunderous rendition of Like A Rolling Stone. “I had a perspective on the booing… you gotta realise you can kill someone with kindness too” he said years later. I have digressed, but for a reason – mainly because although Blonde On Blonde is my favorite album, absolutely nothing on earth can take away from the glorious build up of albums which came before (Another Side Of Bob Dylan, Bring It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited,) many songs from which made up the rest of that spectacular 1966 set-list – Ballad Of A Thin Man, It Ain’t Me Babe, and Mr Tambourine Man to name a few. But in contrast to the raw electric boom of songs like Maggie’s Farm, the other half of the set list, with it’s acoustic vibe, reminiscent of Dylan’s earlier days of folk, in particular (granted it was from his latest album) the live version of Visions of Johanna used by Martin Scorsese in No Direction Home – which rings most true, relevant and deepest for me personally - it was watching this performance that started my love affair with Blonde On Blonde.   

Let me start, if I haven’t already, by saying that that Blonde On Blonde’s closest competitor is Blood On The Tracks. Let me say secondly that Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35 is one of my least favorite Dylan songs. Just as Maggie’s Farm is obnoxious, overdriven and unprocessed, Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35 is for me it’s acoustic-ensemble counterpart; more a statement in themselves than something of musical merit. That being said I’m currently tapping my foot to Maggie’s Farm!. Nonetheless, Blonde On Blonde’s inaugural song is the only thing wrong with what is otherwise quite simply pure euphonic poetry in motion. I see the album’s essence as a dialectic compromise between what it was Dylan had to separate on stage in ’66 - acoustic and electric. But the electricity coursing through his veins that year seeps into this album, not through high-spirited guitar and rolling Hammond organ, but a Nashville guitar sound, unusually complementing Dylan’s sometimes melancholic, sometimes eerily piercing harmonica, and his strained, almost off-key vocals, synthesized by hauntingly intense and deeply arresting, intoxicating and cryptic lyrics. Instead of a rasping, blunt and folky acoustic sound, the album subtly uses a sparse and bluesy rhythm section functioning in the background with simple bass lines, accentuating Dylan’s enigmatic words like pearls on a murky seabed.

            This aura gives the album a melancholic, somewhat depressing, even mournful persona, to which I’m very much attracted. That’s not to say that it’s not in part upbeat. Temporary Like Achilles’ whimsical piano does much to balance the musical till of sorrowfulness; Stuck Inside of Memphis With The Memphis Blues Again has it’s enticing drum beat and swift rhythm guitar, while Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine and Absolutely Sweet Marie incorporate an almost military-style drum beat (think floral marching band meets heartbroken nitrous oxide Huggy Monster.) But it does on the whole remain a piece of art oozing sadness, with the beautifully imagistic Visions Of Johanna - the album’s absolute centerpiece, the painfully unfeigned and sensitive Just Like A Woman, culminating in Sad Eyed Lady Of The Low Lands which paradoxically transpired to be a song to his then wife of three months. 

I can’t help but feel that this is a tightly woven album exuding an earnestness and earthiness, but in a sophisticated way – glued together, I think, by Dylan’s tone of voice – a dry, imploring zeal marking his vocal timbre seems to fit his agenda. One could write a thesis on the lyrical contents of Visions Of Johanna alone, I never grow tired of listening to it, constantly find new meanings to it, and can always rely on it to sum up the thoughts or feelings I’ve experienced in ways I cannot. Interestingly, Dylan remarked that Blonde On Blonde was "the closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind... that thin, that wild-mercury sound." I’m so glad he said that because, although it’s hardly the zenith of his career (indeed, who could pin point that?), there’s a contentedness in the music itself, which reflects Dylan’s comment, as well as my suggestion that it’s a strange sort of hybrid, or at least some sort of offshoot of the genres and styles he was considering at the time, resulting, if only for me, in a timeless, boundless, genre-less sound into which I’m always able to escape.

May I finish by suggesting that the next time you’re doing the washing up you just put this on at volume and contemplate the simple points I’ve just made – especially Visions Of Johanna – get back to me on whether you can relate, if only to a singular line of universal truth, authored by the genius that is Bob Dylan. 

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JW.