The 50(ish) Greatest Albums of All Time
Highway 61 Revisited, and a first trip down the A74.
Album #14 : Bob Dylan — Highway 61 Revisited
The year is 1965. It is the end of August. You are in New York, or Los Angeles, or somewhere in-between. It’s a hot day and the sun bears down on you as you walk down the street. You step into your favourite record store and the cool breeze of a fan chills the sweat underneath your t-shirt. It is dark in here, so you take of your sunglasses as you nod to the man behind the counter. You’ve never learnt his name, but you know him and he knows you.
“Hey,” he says, elbows leaning on the counter as he hand rolls what you think is a cigarette. “How’s it going? What are you after today?”
You think about this. You don’t know what you want, you never do, so you perform this dalliance every time you shop here.
“I dunno, man. What’ve you got for me?”
At this, you think you see Record Shop Guy smirk briefly.
“There’s a new Dylan record out” he says, laconically. “You like Dylan, right?”
“Yeah, I missed the last one but Another Side of Bob Dylan was alright….”
And so, you buy the latest Bob Dylan record. Highway 61 Revisited, it’s called. You carry it home, open a window to let some fresh air in, make a coffee (or perhaps something stronger). You take the LP out of its sleeve. As you do so, you take a look at the name of the first track — Like A Rolling Stone — ‘wasn’t that the single?’ you think, you never heard it though.
You place the record on the turntable and it starts to spin, you pick up the needle and gently position it onto the vinyl with a reassuring crackle… a pause as the stylus finds the groove of the opening track…
Then, there is the thunderous, biblical crack of a snare. And everything changes forever.
It is a Tuesday in March, 2021. Spring is in the air but today is one of those days where the weather threatens to crash back into winter. It is, after all, not a linear process. It is warm but the clouds are heavy, making everywhere feel like you’ve just opened the oven. You are currently on the motorway — it is the furthest you have been from home in months. The journey is not strictly within the current Covid restrictions, but it is essential. Your other half has sat an exam this morning, so she’s a little worn out but still excited. You are driving, to let her decompress.
You come off the motorway and stop as you pass through a small town for petrol and a toilet stop. Soon, your GPS tells you you have arrived — which house was it again? 70. What’s the one? 62? 60? Oh, these are going down. We’ve gone passed it.
You find the right door as the sun breaks through the clouds and the wind howls. A woman answers and checks your names, “I’ll just get the paperwork”, she says.
Then, another woman walks out the house and, without any ceremony at all, hands you an 8-week-old puppy. And everything changes forever.
Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like you to meet Otis.
I’ll not go too far into detail, because this guy is demanding so much of my attention but I’ll just say it is quite fitting that this week’s album is one that marked such a sea change in the world of music, because it is also the week which marks a shift in our family dynamic.
For those that don’t know, this week’s album is the one where Dylan went fully electric. It was such a seismic change in style that he was branded a Judas by the folk community. In a list of seminal albums, this one ranks pretty high in the terms of influence. Dylan’s new sound was hinted at slightly by Bringing it All Back Home but Highway 61 Revisited (and, soon after, Blonde on Blonde) changed the game completely. He went back to the drawing board and completely reinvented himself for the first of many times and, unsurprisingly with Dylan, came back even better.
The beauty of this album is that it never lets up — from that opening snare of Like a Rolling Stone all the way through to the honky-tonk piano of Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues it keeps coming at you with bizarre lyrics and scratchy, sharp-edged guitars. And then, after it all, there is the 11-minute-long Desolation Row, which at first feels like a return to Dylan’s acoustic folk but quickly descends into a dark, dark place. It is a very good album.
Otis’ arrival has been quite similar to the shock of Highway 61 Revisited, although I guess we had some time to prepare! Either way, we now have a puppy to look after, and he is a very good boy.
