Don’t Ask Me Nothin’ ‘Bout Nothin’, I Just Might Tell You the Truth: Bringing It All Back Home (1965)
Produced by Tom Wilson
Bringing It All Back Home is an album written and sung by an individual so in touch with whatever higher power grants to us meager humans connection to the muse that words are as meaningless as they are meaningful, and they just flow like water from a dam. The first half of Bringing It All Back Home is a miraculous explosion of pure energy, jammed into this container that sounds like proto-punk, psychedelic, bar band stardust. The second half meanwhile, may be the single most excellent collection of words ever written on paper and translated into song. It’s hard not to grin ear to ear through the absolute chaos of ‘Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,’ and it’s equally difficult to keep your jaw closed when you descend into the labyrinth of rhyme that is ‘It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).’ Being (only) eight minutes long, you could pick any line from that song and it could be something you could literally spend the rest of your life thinking about. I mean in one song, he goes from ‘he not busy being born is busy dying’ to ‘even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.’ Beat that, everyone on earth. (You can’t). There’s a reason why Bob Dylan is as revered as he is, and why nearly every songwriter is influenced by him in one way or another and Bringing It All Back Home is perhaps the finest display of why that is. It’s part bone clanking blues rock, part chaotic psychedelia, part heart-stopping poetry, and all my jaw will be locked open over ‘It’s Alright, Ma’ until the day I die.
Tracklist:
1. Subterranean Homesick Blues *
2. She Belongs to Me
3. Maggie’s Farm *
4. Love Minus Zero/No Limit
5. Outlaw Blues
6. On the Road Again
7. Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream *
8. Mr. Tambourine Man *
9. Gates of Eden
10. It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) *
11. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue *
Something Is Happening Here and You Don’t Know What It Is: Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
Produced by Bob Johnston and Tom Wilson
There are two seconds of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ that elevate it to probably the greatest song of our time. At about the 55 second mark, right at the end of the first verse, guitarist Michael Bloomfield plays this lick that transitions into the earth-shattering chorus, and whenever I hear it, I feel as though I’m about to either go up in flames or just drop dead on the spot from pure elation. Then, suddenly, Dylan screams out the first ‘how does it feel’ of the chorus, wailing like a madman to the sky as if Atlas himself might hear him and just drop the whole damn thing… and suddenly everything makes sense. This is but two seconds of Highway 61 Revisited, which happens to be an album chock full of these musical moments and details that take the previously described ‘bone-clanking’ of Bringing It All Back Home and shoot it into the stratosphere. Of course, it’s Dylan, so the songwriting is off the charts; this time around being more chaotic, psychedelic and cryptic than ever, trading the truth bombs which Dylan so powerfully dealt in before for keener observations, such as ‘The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken!’ If you don’t get it, you better figure it out. And you can’t talk about Highway 61 without at least mentioning ‘Desolation Row.’ Clocking in at nearly 12 minutes, it’s a journey through either an apocalypse or an enlightenment—or both—through the eyes of various classic literary figures such as Cinderella and T.S Elliot. Yes, Dylan just tied Cinderella and T.S Elliot together coherently in a song. Dylan did his goddamn homework and took influence from all corners of American music, and subsequently influenced basically everything that came afterwards, from Velvet Underground to the Beatles to Townes Van Zandt. It’s rock and roll in it’s purest, most angry, most violent form, heavier than all metal combined and more devastating and thoughtful than any folk music could ever be. All this to say: if you have not heard Highway 61 Revisited, you have not been truly alive.
Tracklist:
1. Like a Rolling Stone *
2. Tombstone Blues *
3. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry
4. From a Buick 6
5. Ballad of a Thin Man *
6. Queen Jane Approximately
7. Highway 61 Revisited *
8. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
9. Desolation Row *
Matchbox Songs and Gypsy Hymns: Blonde on Blonde (1966)
Produced by Bob Johnston
After the proto-punk, bone clanking psychedelia of his previous two efforts, Dylan switched gears and went to Nashville, where he hired a group of studio cats (including Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko, who would go on to form The Band) to go for a warmer, more melodically driven sound. Blonde on Blonde is the culmination of Dylan’s electric period: his writing is more expansive than ever, the arrangements are much tighter than those on the previous two, and the melodies are far more defined and unique. This is the album where his infamous wail comes into play the most on the vocal performances, and while some may see it as a bad thing, I think if that’s what you think it means you just don’t get it, buster. These songs range from blues (‘Pledging My Time,’ ‘Leopard-Skin Pill Box Hat') to Celtic inspired (‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,’ ‘Fourth Time Around’) to full on art pop with ‘One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)’ and ‘Just Like a Woman.’ It’s truly a bang for your buck, complete package of an album if ever there was one. Pretty much everything you could ever need from music is somewhere on Blonde on Blonde, waiting for you to pick up on it and appreciate it. This, by proxy, makes it endlessly re-listenable, littered with striking detail and brimming with emotion. By the end, during the 11 choked up minutes of ‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,’ I always come to comprehend something: the mysteries of life and love are not meant to be understood or solved… some sights are meant to be seen but not remembered, some people are meant to be met but not loved, and most things are meant to be felt but not known.
Tracklist:
1. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
2. Pledging My Time
3. Visions of Johanna *
4. One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) *
5. I Want You *
6. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again
7. Leopard-Skin Pill Box Hat *
8. Just Like a Woman *
9. Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)
10. Temporary Like Achilles
11. Absolutely Sweet Marie
12. Fourth Time Around *
13. Obviously Five Believers
14. Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands *
Great commentary, Lachlan! The only thing I would add is to point out the back cover of highway 61: the incredible stream of consciousness beat writing few paragraphs { on the slow train...} that were a complete mind blowing experience for me at the time. I copied it out, grade 10 I think, took it to school and tried to tell my classmates how brilliantly out of this world it was, they looked at me like I had just been possessed by a demon from the underworld , had lost my mind, but that's what you got in an all boys Catholic high school. Took me in a new direction that's for sure along with the whole album. Cheers!