Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited

Amazing mastering, my copy has a bit of crackle but that could be from spending about 20 years in shrink wrap in a crappy paper sleeve

I HAVE A COPY IN 180 GR VINYL . LABEL ON FRONT COVER "180 GRAM" GOLD TEXT ON BLACK BACKGROUND

Sure doesn't sound mono to me, mines gotta be a stereo and it's the same Sundazed version. Also it's pressed at United if anyone's curious.

My favorite Dylan record.

Get outt'a Dodge. What can I possible say about one of the best bodies of work ever laid down. He taught everyone what they needed to know, then went on to teach them something new.

OK, I’ll say something. Bob had a head full of ideas here and found himself a group of guys to fit the bill, including Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, who were Bob’s paints for this new canvas. Most of the recordings for ‘Highway 61’ were done in four or five sessions, and it was at this point that Bob Johnston replaced Tom Wilson, who produced the song ‘Like A Rolling Stone.’ Bob Johnston would go on to work with Bob for the next five or six years, producing Bob’s most important bodies of work.

The sessions were more then askew, nothing seemed to make sense until it all came together for the final playback. Bob had it all in his head, he just needed to get everyone together to do their parts, trust in him and it would work perfectly. Bob’s voice was never larger then on this record, balancing the thundering drums and outrageous guitars [all so new for the day]. This wasn’t a pop album [though ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ charted on Billboard at number two for two weeks], it was rough and powerful yet with a soulful quality of rhythm and blues. The lyrics were as surreal as any that would be found on the coming of ‘Blonde On Blonde.’ But here, on this album, some of those lyrics were down right funny.

These guys were working hard, Bob Johnston had removed all of the clocks from the studio and taken everyone’s watch, no one had any sense of time or space, which seemed to suit Dylan just fine. ‘From A Buick 6 and It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry,’ are heavily laden with Blues under and overtones. Al Kooper wore this policemen’s whistle around his neck and if anyone slipped off to some dark corner to do drugs, he’d just blow that whistle for all it was worth. When Bob fixed the whistle to his harmonica rack, we get the siren sound that opens the song ‘Highway 61 Revisited.’

This record was incredibly thought out and constructed, even though it has an off the cuff feel. Making it feel so simple was probably one of its strongest points. I haven’t seen a lot of other people being able to pull the technique off anywhere near as well. The session men came from a variety of backgrounds and work, but Bob saw what they could bring to his endeavor and brought out the best they had to offer. History was being made here, don’t ever forget that ... history was being made here.

An who was the mysterious Mr. Jones? We may never know, but Joan Baez said that the lyrics to this song were like Dada Art. Actually Mr. Jones was a group of people ... you’ve meet them, they live next door, you them on the way to work, Mr. Jones is everywhere.

This was Bob’s first real experience working with a group of other musicians in this manner and there would be a tour to follow in of this amazing record. Finding the proper musicians is another story ... let’s just say that Bob learned to work and play well with others.

*** So who is Mr. Jones?

Mr. Jones, specifically, is a fellow by the name of Jeff Jones. He wrote an article for Rolling Stone sometime in the 70's about him and Thin Man. I met the guy once in the mid 80's [sorry, but this may dispell the Thin Man / Gay Thread], and he told me his story in even greater detail.

In the summer of 1965, Jeff Jones was an intern at Newsweek. Somehow, he presuaded the powers that be to let him do a piece on the revival of the harmonica in popular music, and then was able to secure a Dylan interview, arranged to happen at the Newport Folk Festival after Bob played his set.

We all know what happened there. [If you don't have a tape of it, get it! Three songs that changed the world. Mike Bloomfield just KILLS on electric guitar. Somebody should have strangled the compere who kept calling Dylan "Bobby," and after the electric set, kept prattling on in his obsequious, folk Nazi manner, "Bobby's gonna come back up with his acoustic guitar and do a few more numbers." What a jerk!]

So after all that madness, Dylan comes offstage and is hustled into a van where sits young Jeff Jones. Outside, the clamoring fans start rocking the van and pounding on it. Inside, Jeff is asking Dylan what he recalled as rather dumb, mundane questions, getting perfunctory answers from Bob. After maybe five or ten minutes of this uneasy interview while the people are outside beating on the van and rocking it back and forth, Dylan is hustled out.

Jeff is staying at the same hotel as the performers, and for the rest of the weekend, whenever her runs into Dylan and his entourage [why do I keep envisioning Neuwirth in this scene? is this something I picked up from a Dylan biog? Or is it just that I think Neuwirth is one of the neatest people I've ever met?] anyway ... whenever Dylan sees Jeff, he needles him: "Oh, Mister Jooones! Have any more questions, Mister Jooones? Do you want to know what's going on, Mr. Jooones?!"

Not too many months later, a new Dylan song comes on the radio, "You walk in a room ..." By the time Jeff hears the refrain, he knows who Mr. Jones is. When he told me about this twenty years later, he was working for CBS TV at the time, don't know where he is now, he was quite sheepish, even embarassed to it that he was Mr. Jones. I told him that, all embarassment about youthful silliness aside, it was a major honor to be the inspiration for a Dylan song.

But I have said this here before and probably will again: every great songwriter filters the specific through the muse, and what comes out is its own distinct entity. The best songs have multiple interpretations and meanings, some of them surely unintended. As fascinating as it is to try and tie the life of the writer to the song and also plumb the depths of their psyches, what's most important is what a song means to you, the listener. Especially Dylan songs. Truly great songs are most often those that have a malleability that allows us to include them in our own lives.

*** OH! And hearing this gem in the original MONO, when folks needed to understand how to set up a room for recording, is the only way to go. The sound is centered and big.

Jenell Kesler