Happy 55th Anniversary to Bob Dylan’s sixth studio album Highway 61 Revisited, originally released August 30, 1965.
Fifty-five years ago, Bob Dylan changed American music out of boredom.
In mid May 1965, Dylan returned home from a brief tour in England, a trip that was chronicled in the documentary film Don’t Look Back. He later said he was tired of “playing songs that I didn’t want to play,” no matter how much the audience wanted to hear him. He’d been bristling at his “folk hero with a guitar” image since at least Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), repeatedly expressing continued dissatisfaction with what people wanted him to be. He decided that a complete stylistic change of course was in order.
So, Dylan recorded his sixth album Highway 61 Revisited, which, in no order of importance is 1) one of the best albums he ever made, 2) one of the best rock albums ever made, 3) one of the greatest albums of any genre, 4) an album that helped define the 1960s and the seismic cultural shift that went along with it, and 5) an album that altered songwriting and recording forever. That’s pretty impressive.
Let’s bear in mind that this was the second time in less than a year that Dylan had changed American music. Truthfully, it was the second time in less than six months that he’d change American music. In late March 1965, he’d released Bringing It All Back Home, which gave birth to the genre of folk rock and featured some of the deepest and most resonant songs of Dylan’s career. Bringing also signaled a change in Dylan’s musical approach, as half the album was electric, rather than acoustic, with him recording with a full band accompaniment of session musicians.
Given Highway 61’s hallowed status over a half a century later, it gets lost what a legitimate artistic risk it was for Dylan at the time. Dylan made the conscious choice to take actions to potentially piss off his core audience by going full electric. And he didn’t even wait for Highway 61 Revisited to be released to drop this bomb; in the midst of recording the album, he gave his infamous performance at the Newport Folk Festival. He took to the stage, Fender Stratocaster in hand, dressed like a rock star, only to meet a cascade of boos.
Now, it’s never been clear whether the audience booed him during this performance because they thought he was a “sell-out” or because of the overall quality of the sound (either too loud or too soft, depending who you ask). But the legend endures the crowd rejected Dylan’s rock star aspirations. But Dylan was undeterred, soon returning to the studio to record the rest of the in-progress album. Still, it added an urgency to the sessions. If you’re going to give your fans the proverbial middle finger, the gamble had better pay off.
And, well, here we are, over a half century later, and Highway 61 remains one of Dylan’s most beloved releases. And it’s remembered for both its musical and lyrical innovation.
Besides being nearly fully electric, none of the songs on Highway 61 Revisited featured just Dylan and his guitar. Eight of the album’s nine tracks feature full electric band, some of whom were session musicians that he worked with before, while others were new faces like Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield, who would go on to join the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
Together, Dylan and the session musicians created a vibrant sound that built on honoring Dylan’s blues influences. The 1,400 mile stretch of road known as Highway 61 begins in Minnesota, following the Mississippi River throughout its length. It winds past Duluth, the place of Dylan’s birth, and runs south through St. Louis, Memphis, before ending in New Orleans, all cities intrinsic to Dylan’s personal and musical identity.
In terms of lyrical subject matter and approach, Highway 61 Revisited strikes a pair of distinctive notes. On one hand, it’s a bitter and at times outright mean album. Dylan is an artist, so he’s sensitive about his shit, and held his critics in complete contempt. Through swaths of the album, he questions their intelligence, sincerity, and overall value to society.
On the other hand, Highway 61 Revisited is singularly weird and funny. Dylan’s done funny in his earlier work, but it’s usually been in a topical and self-deprecating manner. Here, Dylan takes his cues from songs like “Maggie’s Farm” and “Gates of Eden,” putting together abstract, fantastical imagery and nearly impenetrable narratives. It’s Leadbelly by way of Salvador Dali. The most prominent theme throughout Highway 61 is people out of their depth, struggling to gain a footing. Sometimes Dylan comments on these situations with the aforementioned scorn. At other times, he himself takes the role of the victim, lost and dismayed, unable to extricate himself.
Highway 61 Revisited was also the last album that Dylan worked on with producer Tom Wilson. Wilson had been working with Dylan starting with The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964) and helped transition him to the folk rock sound that he’d become best known for. Wilson produced the first of the album’s recording sessions, which took place in mid-June. When the band reconvened in late July, Wilson was absent, replaced by Bob Johnston. It’s never been clear what led to Wilson’s departure, but Dylan didn’t work with him again, even though he produced what really may be Dylan’s career defining song.
I’m speaking, of course, about “Like a Rolling Stone,” which is still considered one of the best pieces of music ever recorded. Books have literally been written about this song, and it’s recognized that “Like a Rolling Stone” changed how music was made.
It was apparently an arduous process to get to the revolutionary final result. Dylan, Wilson, and the studio musicians toiled away on the song for a couple of days, recording at least 15 takes before deciding to go with the electric, full-band arrangement. By all accounts, this is how many of the Highway 61 sessions unfolded: Dylan would workshop songs on the spot in the studio, taking many takes to experiment with many different styles until they happened upon something that worked, and then they’d roll tape. The version of “Like a Rolling Stone” that opens Highway 61 famously features an improvised organ riff by Al Kooper, a guitarist who didn’t really know how to play the organ.
Besides the distinctive music, “Like a Rolling Stone” is beloved for Dylan’s performance as a singer and as a lyricist. As he mocks a socialite who once was the proverbial Belle of the ball, but now finds herself down on her luck (widely believed to be based on Edie Sedgwick, who was once part of Andy Warhol’s inner-circle), the tone of his voice indicates the sneer on his face. The song’s hook is one of the best and most memorable of all time. The song has stayed in Dylan’s live repertoire for decades, as he frequently performs it as his encore. He’s even acknowledged once that it’s the best song that he ever wrote.
“Like a Rolling Stone” ran over six minutes in length, then almost unheard of for a pop single. Most successful singles to that point ran two-and-a-half minutes in length; three minutes at the most. “Like a Rolling Stone” became a grand exception, a six-minute and twelve-second whirlwind of chaos and derision. Columbia originally split the song into two parts to fit onto each side of a 45 RPM. Eventually, audience demand led to the song being released in full.
Dylan goes big for the majority of Highway 61. “Tombstone Blues” is a high-powered romp, with Dylan weaving increasingly absurdist language and imagery across a potent country blues jam. As I write in many of these Dylan tributes, Mr. Zimmerman has never been keen on revealing the meanings of his songs, so maybe “Tombstone Blues” is about the futility of the Vietnam War and the government’s increasingly hostile reaction to the protests against it. Or maybe he just likes talking about trysts between Beethoven and Ma Rainey. Regardless, “The sun isn’t yellow, it’s chicken” is one of the most hilariously incongruous lyrics that Dylan has ever delivered.
The album’s title track is similarly oft-kilter, an uptempo Blues number that celebrates the nominal highway and all the bizarre characters that Dylan runs across. The song’s chorus is punctuated by a siren whistle, blown by Dylan with great gusto. As another staple of Dylan’s live performances, it has an undeniable and enduring energy.
“Ballad of a Thin Man” may sound mourning and sorrowful, but it’s the angriest on Highway 61. The song radiates bile as Dylan chronicles the misbegotten adventures of Mr. Jones, a dullard who fancies himself as an educated and sophisticated individual of great influence, oblivious to the fact he’s in way over his head. On some level, the song seems to be about Dylan’s increasingly difficult relationship with the music press. Or the song could reflect Dylan’s disdain towards outsiders who attempted to glom onto ’60s counterculture without an understanding of the circumstances that spawned it. Numerous journalists with the surname of Jones have claimed to be the source of inspiration for the “Mr. Jones” character. Aside from a glib answer he gave Nora Ephron and Susan Adminson in an interview back in 1965, Dylan has remained mum about Mr. Jones’ true identity (if there even is one).
One of my favorite stories about “Ballad of a Thin Man” (and Highway 61 Revisited in general) is that it became a source of inspiration for the Black Panther Party. According to Black Panthers co-founder Bobby Seale in his book Seize the Time, both he and Huey Newton were obsessed with the song, believing that Dylan was speaking to the plight of Blacks in the United States through the lyrics, as he speaks of “tourists” being attracted to the “freak shows” of the ghettos across the country.
On “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” Dylan assumes the perspective of a hapless schlub stuck in the mire of a hopeless situation. As a New York kid visiting what appears to be a tropical locale, he finds himself the victim of ruthless women and crooked cops. Here, rather than contempt, Dylan channels hopelessness and despair, as he’s forced to scurry home with his tail tucked in-between his legs.
Highway 61 ends appropriately with “Desolation Row,” the first truly epic undertaking of Dylan’s career: a nearly eleven-minute, ten-verse acoustic composition. It was originally conceived as another electric number where Dylan played along with a full band in some of the album’s earliest recording sessions. Instead, it became the only acoustic composition on the album, with Russ Savakus playing bass and Country session player Charlie McCoy improvising a winding, Latin-flavored guitar riff. Lyrically, it’s dense and bizarre, filled with hallucinogenic visions of Dr. Filth and his leather cup and the Superhuman Crew rounding up “everyone who knows more than they do.” The dusty eclectic-ness of the lyrics help make it the most surreal and apocalyptic cowboy song ever released.
Highway 61 Revisited is still considered Dylan’s most towering achievement, and a complete and unabashed success. It set the tone for rock album moving forward in the 1960s, influencing countless musicians, writers, and poets. Of course, Dylan continued to evolve over the 50-plus years since its arrival, so much so that his legacy as both a folk hero and rocker can co-exist.
The success of Highway 61 goes to the core of whether it’s better to stick with providing your loyal fans with what they want, or to take the high risk/high reward plunge. Highway 61 doesn’t definitively answer that question. Instead, the lesson seems to be that quality music trumps everything else. But it’s still a bit astonishing that a sense of restlessness is what helped secure Dylan’s immortality.
Enjoyed this article? Read more about Bob Dylan here:
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) | Blonde On Blonde (1966) | Blood On The Tracks (1975)
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