After going halfway on Bringing It All Back Home, Bob Dylan went close to all-in with electric instrumentation on the album Highway 61 Revisited in 1965. The album, with its raucous music and wild lyrics, left genteel folk-rock far behind.
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Most of the ten songs on the record are now considered classics. But you might not know some stories behind their creation.
“Mr. Tambourine Man” Pops Up Again
The recording session for “Like A Rolling Stone” has earned a special place in music history. Most people know that Al Kooper made one of his first big splashes on the music scene by sneaking in to play organ on a take. But another important musician in Dylan song history also played on the song. Bruce Langhorne handled the tambourine on the track. Langhorne had partially inspired “Mr. Tambourine Man”. At the same time Highway 61 Revisited was being recorded, that song was climbing to the top of the charts via a version by The Byrds.
Lennon Was Listening
One of Dylan’s most searing takedowns, “Ballad Of A Thin Man” served as his shot across the bow of polite society. Nobody can say for sure if there was a specific individual who raised the songwriter’s ire to such a degree he would write this song. But we do know that people were listening. John Lennon, for one. On the White Album in 1968, The Beatles included the song “Yer Blues”. When Lennon sings about “Dylan’s Mr. Jones” on that track, he’s referring to the protagonist of “Ballad Of A Thin Man”.
Whistle While You Work
When it comes to Dylan’s most anarchic creations, “Highway 61 Revisited” has to rank way up there. He grabs characters from history and famous fiction, adds some of his own creation, and puts them all on a collision course filled with treachery and violence. Yet it’s also one of the funniest songs in his catalog. Part of the humor comes from the siren whistle that blows throughout the song. Dylan was originally going to fill in the gaps with his harmonica. But instead, the whistle turned out to be the perfect accompaniment to the chaos.\
The Name Game
Dylan has always played fast and loose with the titles of his songs. He was at perhaps the height of his confusing song title era on Highway 61 Revisited. Only three of the album’s nine titles actually appear word for word in the songs they adorn. “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” might be the most baffling of them all. Why Dylan thought that the nursery rhyme character who’s famously beaten or, in some versions, shot for stealing fit this track about a down-on-their-luck character in Juarez, Mexico, we’ll never know.
A Tragic Tidbit Amidst the Chaos
One of the all-time great closing tracks in music history, “Desolation Row” takes us out of Highway 61 Revisited on a surreal note. Unlike the title track, which also throws together a motley crew of characters taken from history and literature, the pervading feelings running through this song are disappointment and sorrow, not menace. The mysterious opening line (“They’re selling postcards of the hanging”) references the fact that Dylan actually knew, from his younger years, of such a memento of a local lynching on sale in his native Minnesota.
Photo by Dezo Hoffman/Shutterstock
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