3 Vital Tracks From Bob Dylan’s ‘Blonde on Blonde’

When Bob Dylan released Blonde on Blonde, he delivered rock music’s first double album.

But something else happened, too. The album—and his ongoing tour with The Hawks—had helped transform rock and roll into a commercial behemoth. By the mid-1960s, Dylan was changing at a rapid pace—from unplugged New York folkie to electrified heretic.

There was much more than electric guitars marking Dylan’s reinvention. The lyrics on Blonde on Blonde expanded his poetry beyond Woody Guthrie’s protest folk and the beat literature of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.

This is an artist curious about his place in the world, shedding the expectations of a parochial audience and broadening his vision. Blonde on Blonde remains an extraordinarily complex record. Consider this an introduction to three vital tracks from Dylan’s groundbreaking double album.

“Visions of Johanna”

The first attempt at “Visions of Johanna,” under the title “Seems Like a Freeze-Out,” was unsuccessful. Eventually, producer Bob Johnston suggested leaving New York to record in Nashville. So, Dylan, with guitarist Robbie Robertson and organist Al Kooper, headed south to finish the album with hired session players. Recorded between takes of “Fourth Time Around” and “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,” Dylan finished “Visions of Johanna” on the first day of sessions. These three songs—from delicate folk to raucous blues—showcase the range of Nashville’s studio musicians.

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
Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place

“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”

For the opening track, Dylan suggested recording with a Salvation Army band in the parking lot. However, drummer Kenny Buttrey thought the Salvation Army band might be too accomplished for the unsteady vibe Dylan was chasing. Instead, Buttrey took apart his drum set and changed his snare drum to make it sound like one used in a marching band. He said the Nashville studio musicians could “play pretty dumb if we put our minds to it.” And that’s how they achieved the performance of a rickety band.

Well, they’ll stone you when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll stone you just like they said they would
They’ll stone you when you’re trying to go home
And they’ll stone you when you’re there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

“Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”

At just over 11 minutes, the album-closer takes up the entire fourth side of the LP. Dylan admitted much later the song was written for his then-wife Sara Lownds, whom he had married in 1965. He acknowledged this in “Sara,” on Desire (1976): Stayin’ up for days in the Chelsea Hotel / Writin’ “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” for you. But music critic Lester Bangs disputed the song was written for Lownds. He wrote in Creem, “I have it on pretty good authority that Dylan wrote ‘Sad Eyed Lady,’ as well as about half of the rest of Blonde on Blonde, wired out of his skull in the studio, just before the songs were recorded, while the session men sat around drinking beer.”

The band recorded the song at 4 a.m., and Dylan had given the musicians only a rough outline of the arrangement. They didn’t know how or when the tune would end as one verse bled into the next. Still, they cut it in one take.

The kings of Tyrus with their convict list
Are waiting in line for their geranium kiss
And you wouldn’t know it would happen like this
But who among them really wants just to kiss you?
With your childhood flames on your midnight rug
And your Spanish manners and your mother’s drugs
And your cowboy mouth and your curfew plugs
Who among them do you think could resist you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I leave them by your gate
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

Photo by Charlie Steiner – Highway 67/Getty Images