1. Rainy Day Woman #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 Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine
10. Temporary Like Achilles
11. Absolutely Sweet Marie
12. 4th Time Around
13. Obviously 5 Believers
14. Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
A+
It's always hard to know how to deal with a double album from the LP era. Something like The Wall, for example, is obviously meant to be listened through from start to finish. But Blonde on Blonde is more the sort of thing where you just put on whichever side you're in the mood for, listen to that, and really just dip in as you like. It's something we've sort of lost in the era of CDs and downloadable singles, where albums can run for 75 minutes straight and you just sort of have to endure them.
Anyway, this album is a bit misleading. The title is quite cheeky, and the first song is an enjoyable goof playing on the multiple meanings of the word "stoned". But this is actually quite an intelligent and mature work. Dylan has managed to rein in his vocal and lyrical excesses (no cowboy angels here) and create a synthesis between his colloquial, straightforward songs and his grander lyrical ambitions. The result is an album with fewer highs than his earlier works that manages to be much more consistent throughout. There's really only one bad song here ("Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat"), and even that has some pretty cool guitars in it.
Stylistically, a lot of these songs are blues and the like, but there are also ventures into something that might be called pop music. "I Want You" and "Just Like a Woman" sound like something from the 1970s, and are brilliant songs, even if they did obviously lead to the invention of Billy Joel. In fact this album is an obvious touchstone for so many 1970s singers and songwriters.
There's a lot of material here, so I won't go through it all. If I want to manage this project I really need to be more concise and stop agonising over things, or I'll still be doing it in ten years. Instead I want to focus on one song in particular - "Visions of Johanna". This is easily the best song Bob Dylan ever wrote, and maybe one of the best songs anyone ever wrote. It follows the narrator as he spends a restless night working his way through his own mind, gradually peeling back layers of fears and regrets until language itself fails him, and he's left a broken man looking at the dawn. It's an extraordinary piece of work and I'm not really doing it justice. I'd quote lyrics but I'd just quote the whole thing. Although I do often wonder what the hell he meant by "Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule". I mean, really?
There are a lot of other great songs her. "Just Like a Woman" is very affecting, and not at all as misogynistic as the title makes it sound. "Stuck Inside of Memphis" has a wonderful 1950s flavour to the guitar rhythms, and is a rollicking and enjoyable song. "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" drones a little but is quite pretty. Really, all the songs on this album are pretty good.
Honestly, they go on about Dylan's lyrics but after listening to him quite a bit, at least on the three albums from 65-66, a lot of it is just wordplay and a search for interesting imagery. I wouldn't call him a charlatan - the guy wrote "Visions of Johanna" and "Like a Rolling Stone" - but I do think people are obsessing a bit more than they should.
I'd also like to give credit to the astonishing musicianship of the band on this album. Apparently Dylan went to Nashville and recorded with seasoned session musicians, and the leap in musicality is astonishing. This album is, musically, about ten years ahead of its time.
Anyway, that's it for Dylan for a while. It's been fun, but after such a vast album I'm glad to see the back of him. Next up is something completely different.
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