So, I've been doing a lot of recording today, and I actually finished all the songs for Highway 61 Revisited, the 1965 album, which is considered the landmark album in Bob Dylan's career. And it has some of his most iconic songs on it. It's got that rock and roll vibe because he was working with Mike Bloomfield from the Paul Butterfield Band, and Al Kooper playing that famous keyboard riff on Like a Rolling Stone.
If you watch A Complete Unknown, you'll know what I'm talking about. They do a pretty faithful representation of the making of those songs. And it's got, of course, Like a Rolling Stone, which is one of the most iconic songs of the 60s, let alone in Bob Dylan's career, but kind of a song that defines the 60s.
And that's one of my go-to songs. I love playing that song. It's a great song.
It's got fantastic lyrics and imagery, but it's tight. It's kind of like all that stream of consciousness and the experimentation he had on his previous album, bringing it all back home, kind of gets tighter and locked in a groove because of the work that he's doing with his bandmates, the blues band. And it just feels more like a rock and roll song.
So Like a Rolling Stone. If we go through all these songs, again, maybe it's better if I grab this book, the lyrics, rather than this book, which is a chord song book. And it's great to play with, to play the songs with, but the lyrics are a little bit small in this one.
Much easier to read if you're going to go through a Bob Dylan album and look at the songs. This is a much better book to choose. Bob Dylan, The Lyrics.
And we're already on page... I forgot about Farewell Angelina. I was going to cover that one, but maybe later. We're already on page 165, Highway 61 Revisited.
And this is, of course, the iconic album cover, or at least part of it. It's a close-up of Bob Dylan, his face on the iconic album cover. And behind him, I'll just put this up on the video, but show you the cover.
But you see Bob Dylan looking very kind of, kind of emo. I mean, I guess Timothee Chalamet kind of captured that aspect of him pretty well in the movie, in this phase of his career. Looking pretty tough, like, “don't fuck with me.”
He's got he's got a motorcycle t-shirt on. He's already been riding a motorcycle with a leather jacket. It's kind of, I don't know, his James Dean phase, his Marlon Brando phase.
Who knows? But, you know, behind him in the cover photo, I actually looked this up today to prepare, but behind him is Bobby Neuwirth, who was another musician who became a good friend of his. And he's portrayed in the film as well, A Complete Unknown. So if you've seen the film, Bobby Neuwirth and Bob Dylan are hanging out a lot in the, I'd say, the last third of the film, and getting into trouble together and so on.
So you can't see all of Bobby Neuwirth. You can't see his face, but he's holding a camera, or at least he's got a camera. Yeah, I think he's holding a camera.
And he's got this striped kind of Sailor's t-shirt on in the background. So kind of a mysterious figure who you'd only know who it is if you look it up. But I don't think we need to, I don't have the album with me at the moment.
So I don't think we need to do a deep dive into the album cover or anything. That's all you need to know for now. And it starts out with Like a Rolling Stone.
So I don't know if it's worth going through all these lyrics in detail. I think Like a Rolling Stone is such a well-known song. Who is he addressing, I guess, is one of the questions.
Once upon a time he dressed so fine through the bums of dime. People said, hey, beware doll. So it's a woman.
He's often addressing a woman in his songs. Seems like it would, yeah, I mean, Miss Lonely, obviously it's a woman. It seems to be a woman who was from a kind of privileged background, but sort of maybe is down on her luck, has to live on the street, deal with the bums and the vagabonds and the mystery tramps.
And then the song just gets more and more surreal as it goes. You used to ride a chrome horse with the diplomat who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat. I mean, he's just, I don't know if you can really make sense of some of these lines.
I mean, some of them make sense. Some of them don't. I never quite got the reference to the diplomat on the chrome horse.
Pretty people drinking, thinking they got it made. It sounds almost like David Bowie. It reminds me of like David Bowie 10 years later, Changes and that kind of thing.
And David Bowie obviously was greatly influenced by Bob Dylan. So yeah, you better lift your diamond ring. You better pawn it, babe.
Used to be so amused at Napoleon in rags and the language that he used. Again, Napoleon. But he keeps dropping these sort of famous figures or characters from literature, characters from novels, characters from musicals, biblical characters, all sorts of characters get dropped into his songs.
So it's no surprise that Napoleon and rags. Who is that? We don't know. Another bum.
You know, it's hard to say. A drug dealer. Who knows what these references are? Does Bob Dylan even know? Is there any definitive sort of understanding of these songs? I don't think so.
That's what makes them fun. They're kind of this poetry that is very hard to pin down, but that gives you certain feelings and the characters give you kind of certain associations. Then we got Tombstone Blues, which is a fun, upbeat blues song.
And you know, blues is the baseline of this whole album because it was a blues band that he was working with. It was kind of rock and roll sounding folk music rooted in the blues. So the lyrics sound very kind of it's his style of folk poetry going back to sort of his his influence with, you know, Woody Guthrie and all the great folk generation songwriters.
And then he's also deeply rooted in the blues. There's a lot of blues, both in structure and form and in the contents of the lyrics in this album. And then there's the rock and roll elements.
So it's really a combination of all those going into this album. Tombstone Blues. Paul Revere's Horse, the Ghost of Bell Star, Jezebel.
He's just throwing names at you. Jack the Ripper. So, you know, this is something that he's doing more and more.
You really see it in this album. He's just throwing one famous name or, you know, reference at you after another and letting you kind of digest them and figure out what he means by all this. And that's the one with the refrain, Mama's in the factory. She ain't got no shoes. Daddy's in the alley. He's looking for the fuse. I'm in the streets with the Tombstone Blues. So again, kind of reference to maybe working class people, people down on their luck. This is the song where he references John the Baptist.
John the Baptist, after torturing a thief, looks up at his hero, the commander in chief, saying, Tell me, great hero, but please make it brief. Is there a hole for me to get sick in? Again, you know, his weird and wacky touches of humor pepper these songs. And of course, that's the next verse.
It ends with the sun's not yellow, it's chicken, which is one of the most memorable lines from this song. So yeah, that's a fun one. Ma Rainey and Beethoven.
I mean, he's just throwing these cultural references at you one after another and letting you catch up. And then there's kind of a quaint song.
It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.
It's another very bluesy song. Riding on the mail train, baby, can't buy a thrill. A little bit cliche, not the most memorable song in this collection.
It almost feels like, along with the last album, Bringing It All Back Home, he kind of uses these more standard blues songs as kind of a little filler in between his more memorable songs. Anything particularly memorable or remarkable about this song other than the title, the wintertime is coming, the windows are filled with frost. I want to be your lover, baby, I don't want to be your boss.
I mean, it's not his best songwriting. So the album in that sense, maybe a little bit uneven. If you were to rate this album by every song, there are some songs that really stand out that are among his best songs ever written, in my opinion, the opinion of a lot of people.
And then there's others that are a little bit more forgettable. From a Buick Six, again, I mean, I've got a graveyard woman, you know, she keeps my kid, but my soulful mama, you know, she keeps me hid. So it's, again, kind of a ripping off various blues songs to kind of create this tune.
A steam shovel to keep away the dead, I need a dump truck mama to unload my head. You know, she's bound to put a blanket on my bed. So it's a very, like, standard blues song with a lot of references or a lot of homages to more traditional blues songs.
So he's, again, kind of paying homage to the blues tradition in America with these two songs. But they're not very remarkable. I, like, learned them for the first time today, at least learned the lyrics.
I never really paid much attention to them. Whereas the next song, Ballad of a Thin Man, is, again, one of his most famous songs. It's such an iconic song, you know, about Mr. Jones.
There's something happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? I mean, everything about this song, the music, it's got this very sort of creepy, loungy feel to the music. The Mr. Jones character, who kind of a stand-in for the everyman, you know, doesn't really get what's happening with, it could be the counterculture, with what's happening in politics, what's happening in, you know, in the world. But he just, again, peppers the song with all sorts of strange, bizarre characters that feel like they come out of a freak show or a carnival of sorts, like lumberjacks, professors.
You've been with the professors, they all liked your looks. With great lawyers, you've discussed lepers and crooks. You've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books.
There he is, just dumping another cultural reference on you. A sword swallower. Somewhere in here, there's a geek that eats chickens, live chickens.
A one-eyed midget. So it's a very kind of freak show, sort of carnival feel to it. I think they captured it quite well in that film, I'm Not There.
That was a great scene in the film, I'm Not There. And then there's Queen Jane, Approximately. Your mother sends back all your invitations.
Your father to his sister explains, you're tired of yourself. Won't you come see me, Queen Jane? Won't you come see me, Queen Jane? So it's got kind of a more traditional refrain. It feels a little bit more like a standard pop song.
The flower ladies, the smell of their roses. It feels, this song feels a little bit more tangible in terms of his imagery and the refrain. It's like there's some meaning here.
Your advisors, the clowns that you have commissioned, your bandits. I mean, it seems that Queen Jane is this powerful woman who has all these people at her beck and call, and they're giving her, supporting her and giving her advice. But maybe they're not doing a great job with it.
The clowns have died in battle or in vain. The advisors heave their plastic at your feet to convince you of their pain. The bandits that you turn your other cheek to lay down their bandanas and complain.
So there, it's interesting. There's a, there's a rhyme throughout, through each verse. The, you know, explains, remain, in vain, your pain, complain.
And that's the only, and obviously that rhymes with Queen Jane. And, and that's the only rhyme you really get in the whole, oh no, that's not true. You have invitations, creations, lent you, resent you.
So, so this, sorry, I take it back. The rhyme form is A, B, A, B, B for each verse. So invitations, explains, creations, Queen Jane, Queen Jane.
Because the refrain or the chorus, whatever you want to call it, is repeated. So it does have a very kind of conventional structure, a pop sound. It's a really tight, good, and, and I'd say memorable song, Queen Jane, Approximately.
It's definitely one of the better songs. But it's, it's not up there with, you know, his most famous ones from this album. Like Highway 61 Revisited, the eponymous song on the album, just starts with such a, a powerful verse.
God said to Abraham, kill me a son. Abe says, man, you must be putting me on. God says, no. Abe says, what? God say, you can do what you want, Abe, but next time you see me coming, you better run. Abe says, where do you want this killing done? God says, out on Highway 61. So obviously that's the biblical reference to the story of Abraham and his son Isaac.
Abraham going up the mountain to sacrifice his son Isaac because God commanded it. And, and at last the, the angel intervenes. He was just showing, he was just forcing, or not forcing, compelling, what's the word, Abraham to show his faith in God by agreeing to sacrifice his son.
So it's one of those very powerful stories from the Old Testament. Why does he start with that, that story? And then he goes into other little stories about criminals and, I don't know, people kind of down and out, all converging on Highway 61. And I'm not sure what the fifth daughter on the twelfth night is all about exactly, the roving gambler.
So a lot of sort of nefarious characters all kind of converging on Highway 61, which of course was the highway going all the way from Minnesota, where Bob Dylan grew up, all the way down south to Mississippi. So it's the famous highway of, that kind of bisects America. And, and you could say it was a, it was a highway for the blues to, a conduit for the blues to, to come up north from the American south and so forth.
So it's a very legendary highway. It's a very, obviously it's deeply connected to the story of the blues, which is the baseline, as I said, for this album. And then we have, but then, you know, how does that relate to Abraham and Isaac? Again, that's up for speculation, right? Why does, why does Bob Dylan use this kind of biblical story? And it's interesting that Leonard Cohen also wrote a song about that story, the Story of Isaacfrom the perspective of the son.
So both of them, both Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan were deeply steeped in and, and, and certainly used Biblical stories throughout their, their songwriting careers. And then we have Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, which seems to be another kind of down and out song. It's, it's not quite a blues form, and it's a little bit more melodic than a typical blues, but it really, it does tell a story.
You're lost in the rain in Juarez and it's Easter time too. And it seems to be about a man who's down in Mexico and visiting brothels. Rue Morgue Avenue, if you see St. Annie, tell her thanks a lot.
Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the goddess of gloom. She takes you to her room and takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon. That's a great line.
Up on housing project hill, it's fortune or fame. Cops don't need you. Man, they expect the same.
So there's authorities, there's sergeant at arms. There's a lot of characters also appear in this, in this song. And then finally it turns into the first person.
I started out on burgundy, but soon hit the harder stuff. Everybody said they stand behind me when the game got rough, but the joke was on me. There was nobody even there to call my bluff.
I'm going back to New York city. I do believe I've had enough. Interesting that the song, all the verses are, you know, more second person talking about you, you this, you that.
And then finally it ends on the first person.
Desolation Row, definitely one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs. And I did at one point memorize this entire song, all 10 verses.
Probably could, could get it back with a little practice. There was so many great lines in this song, so many memorable characters. And it just feels like a song as you, especially if you, if you try to memorize it, you can, your brain starts putting together a story, starts kind of creating a story out of it.
It does seem rather nonsensical at first, but it kind of makes sense. It's one of those things, it's like a dream. It's a lot of these songs from this phase in Dylan's career.
It's like a dream. It kind of makes sense and yet it kind of doesn't, right? So it's sort of on walking a tightrope between something that's meaningful and something that's nonsensical. In the first verse, one of the characters is a tightrope walker.
The blind commissioner, one hand is tied to the tightrope walker, the other's in his pants, whatever that means. So, so many characters, so many, again, just dropping name after name. Cinderella is one of the characters in the second verse.
She puts her hands in her pockets, Betty Davis style, and then Romeo comes in. So we have Cinderella, we have Romeo. They all seem to be connected to this mysterious place, Desolation Row, which again connects to Highway 61.
It connects to all the imagery of the blues and all the legends, selling your soul to the devil like Robert Johnson on the crossroads. There are just so many characters that seem to be on the fringes in this whole album that are down on their luck or they've hit the skids. Skid Row, that kind of, you know, is Desolation Row, similar to Skid Row.
Maybe it's the American West, the mythology. Again, he's definitely exploring and excavating American mythology, but it's also, you know, he's making so many references to modern literature. It's just such a rich pastiche of imagery and characters.
This song alone, not to mention the whole album. Fortune-telling ladies, that seems to be another trope of his that comes up very often in his songs, a fortune-telling lady, a gypsy reading your palm. Cain and Abel, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Good Samaritan, Ophelia, Einstein, Dr. Filth, who knows what that's about.
Phantom of the Opera, Casanova. I'm just looking for specific names of characters that people would recognize here. Nero, Nero's Neptune, the Titanic, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, the two great modernist poets of the early 20th century.
You could, again, like if somebody could write a whole book just about this song, I feel probably somebody has done that. I'm sure there are many YouTube videos where people try to dissect this song. It's just there's so many possibilities of how to interpret it, how to read the meaning in each verse and each character and so on.
Very, very rich song. A lot of these songs are kind of deceivingly simple, at least in terms of in terms of the music, you know, maybe just three chords. It's usually just a one, four and a five chord.
So again, going back to the blues roots, you know, a one, four and a five chord. You can tell infinite stories just with those three chords. Nine, yeah, nine songs.
There are nine songs on the album. So we covered all the songs that are on the album. So, yeah, I mean, I think that these three albums, right, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited.
And then the next album that I'm going to cover might take a little while, but we'll see, is Blonde on Blonde. I think those three are the triumvirate. They are, you know, mark kind of the high point in his career as a young songwriter.
It doesn't get any better than those three albums. I mean, yes, he gets more mature. He continues to explore.
He continues to take lyrical and musical journeys. I still think Blood on the Tracks is in many ways his best album, but it doesn't really get any better than these three albums. I think in a way he kind of reaches his pinnacle as a songwriter with these three albums.
Everything else that he does is, yeah, some of it can match up to those albums, but doesn't really get better. I think everybody who is a fan of Bob Dylan acknowledges that these three albums are the high point of his career. And after that, he's, you know, he's created this incredible legacy of songs and characters.
And then I think for the rest of his career, he's going off on tangents, but he's also kind of defending his legacy as the great songwriter. The Muhammad Ali of songwriting, right? He's the like the world champion songwriter at that point. And he's just keeps, you know, it's interesting that to note that some of these songs on Highway 61 Revisited, he would continue to play for the rest of his career in concerts.
And I think Like a Rolling Stone is one of the most played songs in his career live. Also Ballad of a Thin Man, Highway 61 Revisited. Those are all songs that he plays very frequently.
So it's kind of like, you know, if we're to make an analogy with the Beatles, it's like Paul McCartney with Yesterday, Hey Jude, Blackbird. You know, he reached the pinnacle of his songwriting with those songs. And for the rest of his career, he's going to play those songs to audiences, whether he likes it or not, because that's what they demand.
That's what they want to hear. It's been a great experience recording these songs. Once we get through Blonde on Blonde, we're getting into, for me, some kind of foreign territory.
I don't know his music after Blonde on Blonde as well until we get to Blood on the Tracks, of course. And I know that album quite well. So it's going to be a real journey, a real adventure.
I hope you stay along for the ride. And I'm pretty exhausted. It's been a long day of filming and recording songs.
And so I'm going to say goodnight.