The album “Highway 61 Revisited” Bob Dylan turns 50 today. A classic rock and American popular music.
1- From the food to the handset
In his memories, the pianist Al Kooper, who actively participated in recording of « Highway 61 Revisited », tells a crispy anecdote: while the singer and his musicians are in tour to promote the album, Bob Dylan accepts a phone call during lunch. He asks therefore the correspondent to remind of it, unsuccessfully slightly later. . In front of this emphasis, it takes eggs, salad, some smoked back bacon and sticks them in the microphone of the handset, while explaining that it is the lunchtime. He punctuates while adding it to it a glass of milk, thanks politely the person at the end of the thread for having eaten with them, then hangs up.
2- Like A Rolling Stone
The album of Bob Dylan opens with a mythical title. “Like A Rolling Stone”, timeless and considered to be his ultimate song. Verses succeed one another between different rises in intensity there, where the singer calls out to us as for the picture which they return from ourselves. A strong text. However, to write it, Bob Dylan scrawled fifty verses slapdash. When it will recall this technique later, he will say that he threw them on paper « as a long packet of vomit ». As what vomit, this can be many times.
3- A reference to Robert Johnson
“Highway 61 Revisited” is the title of a song from the album of the same name. Dylan said he was inspired by the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson (1911 to 1938). Legend has it that one day the latter has made a pact with the devil: in exchange for selling his soul, he would have been given the phenomenal talents of guitarists. This pact, it would have happened at the intersection of Highway 61 and Highway 49. So does the Highway 61 the road from Bob Dylan’s native Minnesota to get to New Orleans. The singer said he had the impression of being able to go absolutely anywhere with this road.
4-Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters (1913-1983) is one of the biggest names in blues and the spearhead of the Chicago Blues. It has inspired many rock musicians, starting with the Rolling Stones. Bob Dylan also is an admirer. But when guitarist Mike Bloomfield arrives in Woodstock (the town where the studio is located, and where is the famous festival four years later) for recording the disc, Dylan said, “And above all, do not make me this kind of crap to Muddy Waters! “Just because of his previous album,” Bringing It All Back Home, “the singer had appealed to the great guitarist John Mayall, but the outcome had not packed. He had actually incorporated in the disk a few blues guitar elements quite inspired Waters. A surprising sentence in the middle of a generation of musicians steeped in legacy.
5- Isolated musicians
In 1965, Bob Dylan is already a huge star. But it also has a totally unmanageable side. Drugs have because of his emotional stability, marijuana causes her paranoid attacks. Pretty lonely at the time, he used to communicate with other rock stars than through an intermediary. Usually, this is Al Kooper, her pianist, who will tell for example Eric Clapton (the great guitarist nicknamed The God) from Dylan: “You play too many blues, man! “. When recording is Mike Bloomfield takes this role of messenger. But Dylan pushes the principle further, since it will address that very rarely in person he recruited musicians to record the album. So Mike Bloomfield who will give directions and instructions to the singer studio musicians, who were all sizes.
6- A journalist in the crosshairs
One of the flagship songs entitled “Ballad Of A Thin Man.” Heavy, slow, it detonates the rest of the securities. The text refers to a Mr. Jones. But who really is Mr Jones? In reality, this is Max Jones, a journalist from the famous Melody Maker US music magazine with whom he had relations of reciprocal provocations and pikes. This relationship is particularly strong in the movie “I’m Not There,” Todd Haynes, biopic about the life and the different facets of Bob Dylan, released in 2007.
7- Improvisation for strength
During recording of the famous title “Like A Rolling Stone”, so the musicians had very little guidance on the way forward and the song structure. Al Kooper, pianist: “Bob had not given us the words, it was not known when the song would end, so every verse, we increase the pressure. “As a result, the song rises in intensity to the end of each chorus, creating a sort of suspension and resuming more beautiful then. This is also the battery of the song that gives this impression. Each end of chorus contains a similar break to end a title.
8- A tribute to Joan Baez
Bob Dylan has had a romance with folk singer Joan Baez in the 1960s She is already well known, that reveals to the public in 1963. The title “Queen Jane Approximately” is sent to him implicitly. The song comes out, while the two former lovers are cold. In addition, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez had been the two main icons of American folk music of the early 1960s, the first stands out more of this movement from the year 1965. What reinforce antagonisms.
9- The policy, for once
Bob Dylan has never really taken part in political debates. Any references in this field in its texts are rare. But in “Tombstone Blues” second track of the album, he cites, for once, Lyndon Johnson, the US president at the time. In fact, there is no reference by name, but calls it “The King Of Philistines,” saying it flowers the graves of soldiers he sent to fight with bones. Dylan is of course referring to the Vietnam War which then raging.
10- From Kafka in texts
The voice of Bob Dylan, the orchestrations of “Highway 61 Revisited”, the colorful character (rather shades of gray at the time by the way) … All of these have of course made the success of the singer. But what would Bob Dylan without his texts? One of the most symbolic of this album is that of “Ballad Of A Thin Man.” It is also inspired by Kafka the writer to paper, just like “Desolation Row” and “Tombstone Blues”
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