Title: Blonde on Blonde (1966)

Length: 1hr 12 min and 37sec

Number of songs: 14

Best tracks: Visions of Johanna, One of Us Must Know, Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, I Want You, Mostly You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine, Absolutely Sweet Marie, Temporary Like Achilles, 4th Time Around, Obviously 5 Believers, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

If I could choose just one track: Visions of Johanna

Freshlyworded rating: 9/10

By the sheer number of songs I have chosen as my “Best tracks”, it must be fairly obvious that I think Blonde on Blonde is another great album by the maestro. It’s also Dylan’s longest to date running for nearly 73 min with 14 tracks.

Blonde on Blonde was his seventh studio album, and it’s incredible to think that he was still just 25 years old when he recorded it. Saying that, when you listen to a lot of his songs, including my favourite track on the album, the haunting and beautiful “Visions of Johanna” it’s hard to believe you are listing to such a young man. I seem to always picture Dylan more as he looks now (he turned 85 last month). He sings from a place of wisdom and experience decades beyond his years.

The album begins with a raucous-sounding, honky-tonk track that bears absolutely no resemblance to its title “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” It’s a song I would expect to hear walking into a noisy saloon. There is hooting and laughter in the background with the lyrics returning to the theme of “getting stoned” perhaps an allusion to smoking pot and the emerging hippie movement. Dylan seems to have fun singing this song and it’s certainly a lot of fun to listen to as well.

There’s a lot of blues on this album, and Dylan really kicks into Blues-mode with the slow and soulful “Pledging My Time”. There’s some fantastic harmonica playing on this song as there is throughout the album. He is one of the best on the harmonica.

Then comes one of his masterpiece tracks, ‘Visions of Johanna”. I just love this song and have listened to it multiple times including out of sequence and on its own. It kicks off with Dylan on the harmonica and is filled with stunning and complex poetry, with verses like

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane

I also love the lines: But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues/ You can tell by the way she smiles

This is constant feature of Dylan’s songs, especially the long poetic ones, him drawing in elements from art, fiction, popular culture, current affairs. He has this ability to absorb and process so much going on around him and then translate it into song.

I can’t claim to know exactly what is going on in this song, it just works on so many levels, the words and the music are paired perfectly.

I also really loved “One of Us must Know which looks back at a relationship, and has an uplifting feel courtesy of the melody and backing band as well as being very moving with lines like:

When I saw you say “goodbye” to your friend and smile
I thought that it was well understood
That you’d be comin’ back in a little while
I didn’t know that you were sayin’ “goodbye” for good

‘I Want You” is a pretty famous Dylan track. It has a lighter, almost pop-like sound and some absolutely terrific lyrics. As with all Dylan songs, there’s a lot of dense imagery and deeper meaning buried behind the lustful lyrics.

I love the way the song starts, the writing has an effortless, flowing quality

The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn, but it’s
Not that way, I wasn’t born to lose you

The undiscovered gem for me on this album is “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”. It’s a long track, running over nine verses, but is sung at a rollicking pace before slowing down with the plaintiff refrain:

Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Whilst trapped in Mobile (a town in Alabama in the American South), Dylan recounts strange and disturbing encounters with a cast of eclectic characters including a ragman who won’t talk, a senator showing off his guns, a preacher “with twenty pounds of headlines stapled to his chest” and Shakespeare “in the alley with his pointed shoes and his bells”

The one song I have a slight problem with on the album is “Just Like a Woman”. It’s a pretty famous track, but lines like:

She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl

are difficult to listen to and no doubt drew allegations of sexism and misogyny. Funnily enough, despite finding this song somewhat unpleasant and distasteful, I found myself humming it on a few occasions. It does have an underlying beauty to it, just a pity about the words (or am I reading too much into it?)

The album then switches direction entirely with “Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine”, a real stomping bluesy track despite it being another tale of the end of a relationship. He certainly does mine his romantic relationships for musical and poetic inspiration. At the same time, he never resorts to cheesy line or is overly sentimental.

“Temporary Like Achilles” is a really great, slow-moving blues track about love spurned by a hard woman who Dylan questions may have a heart “made out of stone, or is it lime, or is it just solid rock?”

Dylan picks up the tempo with the almost pop-like “Absolutely Sweet Marie” which has some rather obvious sexual connotations with the singer “beating on his trumpet” and having “the fever down in his pockets”

My God, “4th Time Around” is a beautiful song that brings Dylan back to his folksy roots. The song is about the narrator’s twisted, sparring relationship with a tough, no-nonsense woman who tells him, “Don’t get cute” “, The song follows the duelling nature of their relationship The harmonic playing towards the end is sensational.

The penultimate song, “Obviously Five Believers” is a fast-paced roadhouse blues track about a lonely guy yearning for his lover to return, whilst trying to make it on his own.

Then the album slows way down “for Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”, another undiscovered gem. Dylan’s voice takes on a more gravely tone and the song is fill of highly poetic imagery relaying how he feels about the subject of the song, understood to be Dylan’s wife of the time, Sara Lownds. Running to over 11 minutes, it’s one of those Dylan tracks that just sucks you right in – in an almost hypnotic way.

With your holy medallion which your fingertips fold
And your saintlike face and your ghostlike soul
Oh, who among them do you think could destroy you?

It’s a great end to a fantastic album, that really shows the depth of Dylan’s musical range (blues, pop, folk, honky tonk, fast and slow paced) and his songwriting abilities