Blonde on Blonde turned 50 on Monday...
May 18, 2016 8:16 AM   Subscribe

...the ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Blonde on Blonde turned 50 on Monday...

As did Pet Sounds

And 50 years ago yesterday was the infamous and celebrated Manchester Free Trade Hall concert

As to the cover...

An epochal anniversary of quite an eventful week in music history -- I think I will go lie down now....
posted by y2karl (39 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
At some point in the 80s my Dylan loving friends clocked the fact that Blonde on Blonde spells BOB

Minds, blown.
posted by chavenet at 8:23 AM on May 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Dylan turns 75 next week (24th.)
posted by maggieb at 8:25 AM on May 18, 2016


Meaning he was 24 when he recorded it...
posted by y2karl at 8:40 AM on May 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


24 is a good age to peak creatively.
posted by Coda Tronca at 8:53 AM on May 18, 2016


Blonde on Blonde was a great album. There, I said it. Also, that "cover" link is terrific; I love that kind of obsessive investigation.
posted by languagehat at 8:54 AM on May 18, 2016 [5 favorites]


24 is a good age to peak creatively.

I gonna go cry now.
posted by rokusan at 8:59 AM on May 18, 2016 [5 favorites]


George Harrison was 24 when Sgt Pepper was released. I'll stop now.
posted by Coda Tronca at 9:03 AM on May 18, 2016


I really never need to hear Rainy Day Women again but I never go more than six months without replaying the rest of the album.
posted by octothorpe at 9:08 AM on May 18, 2016 [5 favorites]


". . . as did" Pet Sounds?!?

Way to bury the lede there! Pet Sounds 4 Lyfe yo.

Seconding the cover link, that was awesome. Plus I was always told Freak Out! was the first rock double album, but it's B.O.B.? What gives Mr. Record Man??

God Only Knows vocal only track. I accept your apology.
posted by petebest at 9:12 AM on May 18, 2016 [5 favorites]


Well, he has recorded many songs and albums of merit after and certainly John Wesley Harding, Blood on the Tracks and Love and Theft, to name but a very few, come to mind...

But he never wrote songs like those of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde ever again, songs that flowed out of him possessed, like he were the sybil of Delphi...
posted by y2karl at 9:13 AM on May 18, 2016 [6 favorites]


Long may he reign.

Hope he, Neil, and Aretha all went in for checkups after our purple overlord left us.

It's still raining
posted by sallybrown at 9:32 AM on May 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


George Harrison was 24 when Sgt Pepper was released. I'll stop now.

So your point is that all things must pass, yeah?
posted by howfar at 10:03 AM on May 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


For the longest time, I thought Visions of Johanna was Visions of Gehenna and Dylan was just mispronouncing Gehenna. It made me think it was a song about the mundane ways in which the speaker sees hell. That's my only real Blonde on Blonde story. Actually its not really even a story, I guess, but I thought I would share.
posted by branduno at 10:18 AM on May 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


Know what's shitty? Leopard‐Skin Pill‐Box Hat. Leopard‐Skin Pill‐Box Hat is shitty. I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. Almost wrecks the record.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:37 AM on May 18, 2016 [6 favorites]


Both 'Rainy Day Women' and 'Leopard Skin' are as annoying as the Beatles are when they decide to stage a highly elaborate joke in the studio, which after a few hearings, comes off as being cracked at the expense of the listener. I love B.O.B., but like the White Album, in parts of it you can hear the singer's forthcoming desire to abdicate and hide. Which of course he did shortly after.
posted by Coda Tronca at 10:45 AM on May 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Roughly paraphrasing Dylan to a teenaged Radio Unnameable caller who complained about his recent work: "Don't you want me and my friends to have fun?"
posted by Lorin at 10:49 AM on May 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


That cover article is impressive work.
posted by rhizome at 11:12 AM on May 18, 2016


Both 'Rainy Day Women' and 'Leopard Skin' are as annoying as the Beatles are when they decide to stage a highly elaborate joke in the studio, which after a few hearings, comes off as being cracked at the expense of the listener.

Gotta push back on this a little, emboldened by having watched a whole bunch of stuff on Melanie last night.

1966 was an incredible year for recorded music, and pretty much everything everybody put out had some duff tracks, and in that era there was a lot of duff to be had. The transformations borne of these early days of the self-contained musical artist were just beginning, and in fact it had been less than 5 years since the idea had emerged ([sic], stay with me here), so we can view the second half of the 1960s as a time when top artists were able to experiment without affecting their legacy too much. ALL of them had their Rocky Racoons.
posted by rhizome at 11:21 AM on May 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Visions of Johanna, Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, I Want You, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands -- they are like the greatest impressionist paintings. Dylan opened my young mind to lyrics the way the Beatles opened my young mind to music, & these all heavily informed my thinking of language & the way it works when I was a child. He painted those emotions in broad strokes of color - I still love them all beyond belief.

What an amazing record.
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:33 AM on May 18, 2016 [4 favorites]


I don't mind Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat. I think if it had been on BIABH or Highway 61 it would sound fine. The problem is that it doesn't really fit in with the rest of BOB, and is unsuited to the sonic palette that Dylan and Bob Johnson were using by that point. That thin wild mercury sound makes everything sound sad, and all of Dylan's playfulness, throughout the record, ends up sounding weirdly unsettling and reflective in a new way. But Leopard-Skin just sounds...bitter, I suppose. Bitter without the fire that makes Like a Rolling Stone vibrant, just a bitter joke.

Rainy Day Woman is just shit though.
posted by howfar at 11:37 AM on May 18, 2016 [5 favorites]


Also, I am married to a Louise who can't listen to Visions of Johanna because Louise was obviously the second choice over Johanna, & it makes her sad. I have no personal Johanna, but there is a dearth of happy Louise songs out there. Pearl of the Quarter is pretty much the only other one I've ever come across.

And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it...
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:42 AM on May 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


If you're a fan of "Visions.." go catch Robyn Hitchcock on tour. He does a fine version, and claims the song "wrote him."
posted by jetsetsc at 11:48 AM on May 18, 2016


"VOJ" just has that desperate feeling that there's nowhere else for the author to go musically afterwards, which adds to the overall power. There was an Ask Meta thread about what has been called the 'Dylan 4th' or 'Dylan Cadence' which is used to the point of parody in this song. The thread is not conclusive about the effect.
posted by Coda Tronca at 11:48 AM on May 18, 2016


See also the ghost voice, as some have called it. His singing in concert from the tours with the Band in 1966 is even more mannered, as in the ''Royal Albert Hall Concert'' bootleg, which was in fact the infamous Manchester Free trade Hall concert of Judas! fame.

What is amazing is to listen to how songs like Visions of Johanna develop on the recent ultra deluxe The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12 18 CD box set, which has every take of every song of the Big 3 albums of 65-66.

And then others don't -- I Want You was another one take wonder with a little guitar fill overdubbed between verses later by Charlie McCoy, if I recall correctly. And it was the last song recorded for the album and its title the working title of Blonde on Blonde when the album was being recorded.
posted by y2karl at 12:40 PM on May 18, 2016 [5 favorites]


Also occurring 50 years ago Monday: the May 16th Notification, which launched China's Cultural Revolution (and if you want to go back further, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which has now been causing misery in the Middle East for 100 years.)

In conclusion: May 16th is a land of contrasts.
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:42 PM on May 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


...And Love and Theft was released on September 11th, 2001.
posted by y2karl at 12:44 PM on May 18, 2016


My wife kind of ruined Stuck Inside Of Mobile for me by cracking up every time he sang "Ohhh...MAMA...". BOB is great, but these days if I'm being honest, my favourite Dylan album is Nashville Skyline.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:46 PM on May 18, 2016 [1 favorite]




Well, after reading all of the first link, I stand corrected -- I Want You ran to 5 takes. And I have yet to listen to the first four... It is taking me a long time to wade through that box.
posted by y2karl at 1:09 PM on May 18, 2016


Jerry Schatzberg, who shot the cover, also directed the movies Scarecrow, and Puzzle of a Downfall Child.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 2:06 PM on May 18, 2016


The Cutting Edge, take 5 version of Visions of Johanna is on Bob's utube channel. I think it's a fantastic motoring around tune.
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:53 PM on May 18, 2016




The guy that did the cover analysis is scaring me.
posted by bongo_x at 5:41 PM on May 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


For the longest time I could carry on an entire conversation in Bob Dylan quotes. His music has kept me company all my adult life, starting about in 1966. But....I have never heard Visions of Johanna. All the rest of Blonde on Blonde, but not that one. Gates of Eden, and Where Have You Been My Blue Eyed Son, stand as some of my favorite poetry.

Freak Out, oh that is with me, some sort of grain under the carpet of my existence. Help I'm A Rock!
posted by Oyéah at 8:23 PM on May 18, 2016


Seriously, Blonde on Blonde is the pinnacle of western civilization, Rainy Day Women included. If you have another opinion, you're just delusional. It is the crest of the wave.

(also, some of my favorite music still hasn't been recorded yet, so don't judge me too harshly.)
posted by talking leaf at 3:27 AM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]



What will you do when the label comes off . . . ?
 
posted by Herodios at 7:45 AM on May 19, 2016


I must note here that the picture sleeve cover of the 45 rpm single of I Want You, in the second photograph here was one of my favorite Dylan portraits, ever since I got the single prior to getting Blonde on Blonde itself. Which single was a wonder to me both at the time and always thereafter, given that the 1966 Live at Liverpool version of Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues on the B side was about the rockinest things he or anyone else ever recorded, and sung in such a voice daimonic, too. Talk about your Visions of Gehenna -- there is the definition. That single was a revelation then and has yet to lose its power to move me yet.

And I, too, was impressed with Bob Egan's exploration of the location of Nighthawks at the Diner, as Joey Bagels previously noted.
posted by y2karl at 9:02 AM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh, my, I did not realize until now that the Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues just above was from the so-called Royal Albert Hall concert and not the Live at Liverpool version on the B-Side of the I Want You 45. The Live at Liverpool one is on fire. The one above is on meh. Which makes me want to get a bootleg Live at Liverpool CD from under the counter at a certain record store hereabouts...
Or buy more copies of the single, which would be a solid investment, too.
posted by y2karl at 9:24 AM on May 20, 2016


Heard this weekend:
Last week, we looked at Dylan's folkie roots up to the moment he plugged in. In Part II, Jim and Greg dive in to the album they reckon could be Dylan's masterpiece – Blonde on Blonde. The influential double-album was released almost exactly 50 years ago on May 16, 1966. We continue our 2009 conversation with rock legend Al Kooper, who shares memories from the album's recording sessions in Nashville. Al recalls being truly impressed with the local musicians, and describes the vibe as much more refined than during the chaotic sessions of Highway 61 Revisited. Even as he was making history with Blonde on Blonde, Dylan was having fun – messing around with his backup players, improvising bogus song titles for executives, and laughing at Charlie McCoy's attempts to play bass and trumpet simultaneously.

Jim and Greg wrap up the miniseries by focusing on Dylan's unprecedented late career renaissance. Glossing over the ‘70s and ’80s was no easy decision, but with limited time, they feel it's important to showcase the remarkable music Dylan is still making well into his seventies. During his "Modern Times" – to borrow the title of his 2006 record – Dylan returned to amazing form as a live act and released a string of impressive comeback albums. He collaborated with producer Daniel Lanois on Oh Mercy in 1989 and Time Out of Mind in 1997. The engineer on both records was Mark Howard, who spoke to Jim and Greg in 2009 about Dylan's taste for vintage production techniques, motorcycles, and eccentric studio antics.
Bob Dylan at 75 – Blonde on Blonde to Modern Times

See also:

And here are two of his photgraphers from those times:

Bob Dylan - Jerry Schatzberg

Bob Dylan unseen: Daniel Kramer discusses rare images from the 1960s
posted by y2karl at 8:04 AM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


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