BOB DYLAN: HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED (1965)
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.
By this time in Dylan's career, it is already
best for everybody to refrain from asking questions (if only out of fear of
losing one's sanity), but I still find it hard to resist from at least this
short one — why «revisited»? The song
itself, duly mentioning a «highway 61» in each verse, makes no mention of
revisiting anything; and although the title does, perhaps, allude to Bob's
cover of the ʽHighway 51ʼ blues on his self-titled debut album, well, that was 51, not 61, so he is not exactly revisiting that old place. The word «revisited» is really out of place on this
album, considering how bent it is on breaking new ground rather than revisiting
old one — but maybe that's what we think,
after all, and in reality Bob was using this faint hint to let us know how little has changed ever since he entered
the recording business?..
On the other hand, who could really tell what
this guy wants and what he does not want to let us know when he keeps staring
at us like that from the album cover.
And it is not even the stare that produces the best impression: it is the
kingly pose that he adopts on that chair, as Bobby Neuwirth, the loyal
courtier, stands right behind the throne, ready to whop any potential
dissenters over the head with that camera at the slightest notice. (And now we
know that this impression wasn't that
far from the truth, what with the Dylan/Neuwirth couple practicing intellectual
assassination on the weak, meek, and humble with brutal social-darwinist
fervor throughout that entire period — be it Joan Baez or Donovan, no one was
safe from their verbal wrath).
It worked both ways: on one hand, Dylan's
definitive breakup with the folksie movement earned him plenty of scorn, flack,
and derision — but on the other hand, most of it only went further to fuel the
well-lit fire, and pushed him to new creative heights, most of them mean, lean,
and vicious in nature. Highway 61
Revisited, heralded by ʽLike A Rolling Stoneʼ and the non-LP single
ʽPositively 4th Streetʼ, showed the world what it really meant to be pissed off when you're Bob Dylan: next to these
two songs — as well as about half of the other ones on the LP — ʽMaggie's Farmʼ
is Sesame Street-level material.
Fortunately for us, Dylan's vitriolics can
always be pushed aside from the listener, or, even better, empathized with — in
need, one can always side with the protagonist, and then you can giddily rail
at all the mistreated disillusioned young girls of ʽRolling Stoneʼ and all the
dazed and confused Mr. Joneses of ʽThin Manʼ, borrowing the appropriate
machine gun from the Zimmerman Industries, Hibbing, Minnesota. And just as
fortunately, the unbeatable, incomparable sneer of Highway 61 Revisited is only one
of its major attractions — had it been its only attraction, the album probably
would never come to be regarded as one of the finest products of Western civilization
in the 1960s by so many people (myself included, to make things clear right
away).
The other attraction, of course, is the overall
sound of the album, which is where
the gist of Bob's genius truly lies. The assembled musicians were neither renowned
professionals (although many of them did have plenty of session experience
behind them, like Paul Griffin on piano or Bobby Gregg on drums) nor immediate unmistakable
geniuses (even though Mike Bloomfield did, on occasion, earn the «guitar genius»
tag) — nor did Bob spend any serious
amount of time training and disciplining them. Instead, what usually happened
during the sessions was that everybody just hammered away, in various styles,
moods, and combinations, and every once in a while Dylan would signal — keep
it right there. Every single time,
that is, when his bloodhound instinct picked up a hint that there was finally
something happening out there. It is
this instinct, and this instinct only,
that explains why Bob, when he was in a proper hunting spirit, was able to get
so much out of almost any musician, no matter how well-trained, experienced, or
innately talented. And he was never in a more proper hunting spirit than during
these summer sessions of 1965.
Even if we take a relative «lowlight» from the
album — say, ʽFrom A Buick 6ʼ, a fast blues piece that is probably the least
well-known track on here — it still got that sound. The guitar does not seem to
be playing anything other than a standard ʽMilk Cow Bluesʼ-type pattern, but it
does play it with an arrogant brutality and decisiveness that, for some reason,
many a blues-rocker at the time was unable to achieve — and when you overlay it
with Al Kooper's flashy, incessant organ swirls, the result is a thick, heavy sonic
tempest. Most likely, the song title, which has nothing whatsoever to do with
its lyrics (a beat-era-update of the traditional "praise for me
woman" type of blues ode), could have been inspired by this drive — it is the sonic equivalent of landscape
flashing past the windows of a speeding vehicle.
And that is just the lowlight, of course. In
general, Dylan continues with the «proto-punk» aesthetics here: once the band
or a particular band member happens to fall upon a crude, simple, but working
chord sequence, Bob locks it in place and makes him / them stick with it for
three, four, six minutes — as long as it takes him to empty his lyrical
inspiration pot. So is the deal with ʽTombstone Bluesʼ, for instance, which
gallops at a crazy pace on the power of about three guitar notes and about as
many organ ones — hello, Motörhead? (I could actually see Lemmy doing
ʽTombstone Bluesʼ in a flash — as a matter of fact, ʽAce Of Spadesʼ does sound
surprisingly similar) — and has Bob unfurling his acid dreams one by one until
it all comes together in this hilariously sound conclusion: "I wish I
could write you a melody so plain / That could hold you dear lady from going
insane / That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain / Of your useless
and pointless knowledge". Off-top piece of advice: always try to pay the
most attention to the last verse of Dylan's songs, it is that one that usually
— but, of course, not always — holds the key to the whole story.
Or take the case of ʽIt Takes A Lot To Laughʼ. Is
it the slow, almost lethargic tempo that makes the song? Is it the harmonica
soloing? Is it the completely generic, thoroughly uncreative blues shuffle
melody? Is it the lyrics? Well, I don't know about you, but the first thing I
remember and cherish about the song is that ridiculously loud, «primitive»,
archaic-feel barrelhouse piano part from Paul Griffin. Most likely, had he been
recording this stuff with a different artist, he would have played it
differently: less flash, more technique, less power, more notes. Under Dylan,
he is guided to «deconstruct» that part, dropping the complexity and
emphasizing only the «key» moments, and goddammit if it doesn't work, even if,
after all these years, I am still not able to verbally express how exactly it
makes the song so unique. Leave it to me deathbed.
Or take ʽQueen Jane Approximatelyʼ, which I
remember as the very last song on Highway
61 that I learned to love, but now I probably love it more than anything
else on the album — perhaps because it is the only genuinely friendly and
compassionate song on here, created in a rare fit of sympathy, I believe, for
those few people whom Bob did not overtly dismiss as phonies upon first sight
and who have been merged together in this single collective «Queen Jane» image.
The lyrics are great, the invitation to "come see me, Queen Jane" is
delivered in a great tone that is fifty percent irony and fifty percent
empathy, but none of that would work if it weren't for that four-note
descending bass line and Bloomfield's conclusive arpeggiated chord before the final
lines of the chorus — marking the transition from the critical "you're in
one hell of a mess, girl" stage to the consoling "but hey, no prob,
I got the cure!" one. Like everywhere else, the non-stop crushing waves of
the lyrical onslaught may initially prevent one from seeing this — but ʽQueen
Jane Approximatelyʼ could have worked almost
as well in completely instrumental mode.
And, of course, there is always ʽBallad Of A
Thin Manʼ to prove my point better than anything else. That somber four-note piano
bit — it was not invented by Dylan, it was taken directly from Ray Charles' ʽI Believe
To My Soulʼ, but it's almost as if Bob listened to the song and said,
"hey, that's a great four-note
piano bit! How come there's so much more
piano playing on here — doesn't it only detract attention away from that great
sequence? Why don't we just zoom in on that?" So they did — and somehow it
acquired this additional meaning, one of a musical sword of doom hanging over
the head of poor Mr. Jones, walking around and minding his business while the
naked people, the geeks and the freaks, arming themselves with creepy horror
movie organ parts and this relentless «piano bell toll», make fun of him. It
must have took some balls to record something like that — of everyone I know,
only Procol Harum tried that trick with similar success two years later on ʽA
Christmas Camelʼ (funny enough, this here song does have the word ʽcamelʼ in
its lyrics, too), although it was already nowhere near as effective.
Considering how much of a «garage» spirit there
is here on Highway 61, it is not
surprising that the chosen guitar player was Mike Bloomfield, probably the
«dirtiest» blues guitar player on the American scene at the time, the one who
might have had the best balance between blues-rock guitar technique and the overall «nastiness» of effect:
his frantic leads on ʽTombstone Bluesʼ here must have inspired everyone from
Lou Reed to Marc Bolan. What actually is
surprising is that most of the time, this garage spirit is being enforced
through decidedly unorthodox means for a garage album — usually, the electric
guitar is actually subdued by the keyboards, providing a thick supportive sonic
mat for their pounding and swirling. This kind of wall of sound, technically
speaking, was not at all typical for the far more minimalistic garage-rock
bands of the day — and yet, at the same time, Highway 61 Revisited sounds much more raw, crude, visceral,
in-yer-face, slam-dunk than almost any randomly picked garage single from 1965.
I guess, like George Harrison said, «it's all
in the mind» — perhaps you could make garage rock with an unplugged mandolin if
you really put your spirit to it. And Dylan, by getting additional musical help
from his friends and gaining the right to direct and channel that help, was
more than qualified in terms of spirit. If anything, though, Highway 61 Revisited transcends «garage
rock» — «hangar rock» would be more like it, adding vast, sprawling musical
space to the raw power, leanness and meanness of the message. The title track
alone is like a bunch of warheads blasting into a thousand directions, each one
guided by its personal Al Kooper whistle.
All the more interesting, then, how the album
quietly settles down towards the end, gradually cooling its rockets instead of trying
to pick up even more steam. First, ʽJust Like Tom Thumb's Bluesʼ, though still
thick on sonic stuffing, gives us a sort of «post-acid» Dylan, in a somewhat
stupefied and a little «transcendental» state — the only number on here that
has quite an explicitly druggy atmosphere, particularly when it comes to Bob's
vocal delivery: his "I cannot move, my fingers are all in a knot / I don't
have the strength to get up and take another shot / And my best friend, my
doctor, won't even say what it is I've got" sounds so totally authentic, I
have this constant urge to get up and take his temperature every time I hear
it. Where the first seven songs, with the partial exception of ʽTrainʼ, all
show us a «Dylan on speed», this one is definitely «coming down», and it ain't
too pretty, but it sure as hell is quite mesmerizing.
Then, of course, there is always ʽDesolation
Rowʼ. Now my opinion on that song hasn't changed through the years: I still
tend to think of it as a «preview», an early, not-100%-successful attempt at
tapping into the visionary-transcendental style of Blonde On Blonde. Its lyrics drop just a tad too many name
references to not come across as «show-off» stuff; its arrangement, despite the
brilliant folky acoustic flourishes from Charlie McCoy, is a little too
minimalistic to warrant 11 minutes of repetitiveness; and its overall atmosphere
does not gel full well with the word ʽDesolationʼ in the title — plenty of
surrealist stuff is happening out there, but very little of it has anything to
do with «desolation». But an epic, towering album did need an epic, towering
conclusion, and ʽDesolation Rowʼ suits that function perfectly — here is Dylan
as Unbiased Neutral Observer rather than the «character-assassin» on the bulk
of the album, just to prevent any potential outcry of «so, all that guy is
able to do nowadays is sneer and jeer and criticize and complain» from the
verbose critics. All that I really hold against this song is that it has always
worked much better for me in its specific «Highway
61-closer» function, rather than on its own merits, Charlie McCoy be
blessed and all.
And as much as I seem to be gushing here, no, I
go with the minority that does not regard Highway
61 Revisited as the highest peak of the curve. For me, above all, Dylan is
the world's greatest master of subtlety and understatement, for both of which Highway 61, in its raging garage
fervor, has only limited space. Likewise, I certainly do not consider Dylan a
«rock'n'roll artist», and this also helps to get detached from the majority
that might simply prefer Highway 61
to Blonde On Blonde because the
first one «kicks ass all the way through» where the second one can be «kinda
boring, at least in some spots» — this may be true, but I genuinely do not need
«my Dylan» to kick ass in order to achieve unparalleled greatness.
Nevertheless, there is no question whatsoever
in my mind that an album like Highway 61
could only have been done by this one person at this particular time; that it
captures and personifies the incomparable «Zeitgeist»
of 1965 more intelligently and with more complexity than any other album; that
all of its moods and sentiments are as vital and relevant today as they were
half a century ago; and that quibbling over pizza toppings is a great way to
take some pressure off one's brain, but hardly deserves even a single permanent
byte of Internet space. Consequently, let's just top this one off with an enthusiastic thumbs up-de luxe — and move on up.
P.S. Curiously enough, already after signing
off, I found out that I forgot to say even a single thing about the album's top
song. But on second thought, let's keep it this way — it is sort of tempting to
ensure the uniqueness of this here review through a thing it fails to mention, rather than the
opposite. Besides, what else new can there be said about that opening snare
shot that hasn't already been said by that eloquent preacher of post-industrial
existentialism, Mr. Spruce Bringsteen? "He showed us that just because the
music was innately physical, did not mean it was anti-intellect" — well,
leave it to Mr. Bringsteen to once again dangerously toy with the balance in favor
of extra «physicality» as his own time would arrive a decade from then on, but
at least there is no questioning his judgement on this one.
Check "Highway 61 Revisited" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Highway 61 Revisited" (MP3) on Amazon
The significance of U.S. Highway 61? Well, let me give it a shot. It's the Highway that runs parallel to the Mississippi River from New Orleans, up through Minneapolis and Duluth (relatively close to Hibbing -- not a coincedence) to the Canadian border.
ReplyDeleteA lot of African-Americans used it to get to Chicago from the South in order to find work. Supposedly, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the "Crossroads" of US 61 and US 49 in Clarksdale, MS.
SO, there's quite a mythology about the road in blues circles. But I think you are misinterpreting what Bob means by "revisited". Not a nostalgic return, but a revision or reconsideration.
Which is an understatement. Dylan's "revisit", at this point, was like entering an alternate universe..
The absolute peak of his career (along with parts of BIABH and BOB) as far as I'm concerned. He would never again shine with this much brilliance. The motorcycle accident definitely took something out of him that he never quite recaptured.
ReplyDeleteThe motorcycle accident was a fluke, I'd instead go with the Benzedrine burnout.
DeleteI think you're onto something there, lol.
DeleteNB In some quarters the severity of the motorcycle accident is thought to be greatly exaggerated.
DeleteI actually prefer Al Kooper's version of It Takes a Lot...
ReplyDeleteI think my attention span must be shot, I can barely watch movies without fast forwarding through them these days, but I like that they do the song twice as fast. It's a catchy song with lots of potential.
"..like George Harrison said, «it's all in the mind» "
ReplyDeleteNB George Harrison by way of Spike Milligan.