Blonde on Blonde

After seeing I'm Not There a while back, it was easy for me to fall into a period of listening to a lot of Bob Dylan's music, and it made me wonder what his best album is. Initially I thought Highway 61 Revisited, which contains his most famous song, Like a Rolling Stone, which though it is always playing on some oldies or classic rock station, has never lost its ability to enchant me. Other great songs on that record are Desolation Row, Tombstone Blues, and The Ballad of a Thin Man, as well as the whimsical title track, which introduces a slide whistle to the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Other possibilities are Bringing It All Back Home and Blood on the Tracks, and some might even say one of his most recent trilogy, Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, or Modern Times. But I think the consensus on Dylan's most ambitious record is Blonde and Blonde, which was the first double rock-album ever released and was his apogee as a pop idol. I have a vinyl copy of it (for every music fan of 40 or over there is probably a monument to obsolescence somewhere in their house--a large collection of 33 RPM records that go completely unheard) so I picked up a used copy of the CD, and gave it another listen last night.

There are many well-known songs on the record, including the first, Rainy Day Women #12 and 35, which uses a brass band and includes the memorable refrain, "Everybody must get stoned!" Another big hit was Just Like a Woman, which has been mocked by Woody Allen and decried by some feminist groups. The song does walk a perilous line between insufferable paternalism and endearment, but I think the tenderness with which Dylan sings it makes it fall more in the latter arena.

The album expanded on Dylan's use of surreal lyrics, and includes two examples of some of his most gymnastic writing. Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again is a jaunty anthem about--what? I don't know. I do know that a few of the lines cause me endless glee, such as "Shakespeare's in the alley, with his pointy shoes and his bells, speaking to some French girl, who says she knows me well." And one of Dylan's greatest songs, Visions of Johanna, which could be about Joan Baez or about Hell, has one of his most evocative lines--"Ghosts of electricity howl in the bones of her face."

The overall tone of the record is in the blues, with songs like Pledging My Time and Leopard-skin Pillbox Hat (said to be about Edie Sedgwick). There are some forgettable songs on the album, and the closing, eleven-minute-plus Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands is a bit of a drag, though musically complex, in 6/8 time.

I think individual songs on this album are among Dylan's best, but if I had to choose, I'd say Highway 61 Revisited is still my favorite from beginning to end.