Blonde on Blonde

I drove to Buffalo twice this week. On the way back yesterday I listened again to Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. And actually it was the reissued/remastered version that came out a few years back. I actually got it in 2006, which I believe was the 40th anniversary of the original release.

I get boggled every time I listen to that CD. How a person can come up with so much great material at one time is beyond me. It's got 14 songs and every single one of them knocks me out. There isn't single clunker on it. If you forced me to pick a least favorite it would probably be Rainy Day Women, and that went to No. 2 on the charts.

I don't want to get going on what was his best album, or best songs ever, or where his best lyrical work was. You can't do that with someone like Dylan - it's an exerecise in futility. But he was an absolute poetic machine on this album. The cover shot was out of focus but the words were sharp as a tack:

"The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face."

"The guilty undertaker sighs...the lonesome organ grinder cries"

"When I asked him why he dressed

with twenty pounds of headlines

stapled to his chest"

"Inside the museums,
Infinity goes up on trial...
Voices echo this is what
salvation must be like after a while"

Most of the musicians were session guys, but there is heavy presence by Al Kooper and Robbie Robertson. Joe South even played some guitar. Other members of The Band also contributed, but apparently those songs didn't make the cut.

I was 12 when it came out and I was listening to it then, in my 12-year-old way, because my brother had it. The lyrics meant nothing to me then - it was the sound. But forty three years later I'm still digging it, and even though the de facto meaning of some of the lyrics might still be elusive, they "glow like burning coal." (OK, different album, but you get the idea).