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Home  >  Bob Dylan  >  Blonde On Blonde

Bob Dylan

Blonde On Blonde

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Review

Rated Member Rating by HomicidalCarrot on 11/21/2007

Rock Music's first double album represents the best and worst of 60's music: Blonde on Blonde is at once an endlessy creative, rewarding listen and the epitome of druggy weirdness and filler. However, even the filler, such as the basic blues number "Pledging My Time", "Absolutely Sweet Marie" "Obviously 5 Believers" etc. would be considered fine additions to most other albums. But Blonde On Blonde has some songs so great as to be heroic. It contains two songs that are among Dylan's best known, the opening "Rainy Day #12 and #35 (perhaps better known as "Everybody Must Get Stoned") and "Just Like a Woman". Anyone who argues that Rainy Day Women are not actually about being stoned in the drug sense (and many have), I say that's highly unlikely. It sounds like Dylan and his band are extremely blazed while recording the song. It has two 7 minute-ish epics that are among the most poetic, yet seemingly nonsensical songs he ever recorded. "Visions of Johanna" is packed with mysterious imagery, the best being "the heat pipes just cough, the country music station plays soft, but there's nothing, really nothing to turn off" and the opening "Ain't it just like the night to play tricks on you when you're trying to be so quiet." The other similarly surreal epic is "Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again." However, while "Visions" lyrics mostly make some sense, "Stuck Inside" is simply jam packed with imagery which don't probably mean anything but still are memorable. The best example of this is the immortal line "Mona tried to tell me, To stay away from the train line, She said that all the railroad men, Just drink up your blood like wine.
An' I said, "Oh, I didn't know that, But then again, there's only one I've met, An' he just smoked my eyelids An' punched my cigarette." Blonde on Blonde also has two break up songs and two love songs. The first ex-lover put down "One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later), is in the vein of his bile filled ex-lover top ten hit "Positively Fourth Street", and while not quite as good as that classic, it is still a rather good song. The other, "Most Likely You'll Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) is a fine enough song, but it's not much more than a rewrite of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." His two love songs are his most direct he had written up to that time. "I Want You" has an obvious chorus but still contains random lyrics about lonesome organ grinders and undertakers and it is a fabulous song. The closing, side long masterpiece "Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands" is about his first wife, former playboy playmate Sara Lownds. It's a beautiful, touching 11 minute ode to her. 10 years later, he references it in his classic "Sara", about their crumbling marriage. After this album, Dylan would re-invent him so many times it's not even funny. This is his last album before his mysterious motorcycle accident and the last of Dylan's first era.
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Album Details

  • Year: 1966
  • Label: Columbia
  • Producer: Bob Johnston
  • Musicians: Bob Dylan, Bill Aikins, Wayne Butler, Kenneth A. Buttrey, Rick Danko, Paul Griffin, Garth Hudson, Jerry Kennedy, Sanford Konikoff, Al Kooper, Richard Manuel, Charlie McCoy, Wayne Moss, Hargus "Pig" Robbins, Jaime Robertson, Robbie Robertson, Joe South, Henry Strzelecki

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