#0058: Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited [**]

Okay strap in folks, this is the money shot.

This is the highest ranked of all Bob Dylan's 35 studio albums.  Critics seem to agree it is the most important of his works with one author even claiming the Sixties "started" with this album.

So I'm gonna set the counters to zero.  I'm gonna pretend I've never heard of him.  I'm gonna _try_ as hard as I can to see something positive in it.  The odds are not good, but I'm still willing to put my money down.

1. Like a Rolling Stone

I know this song well and I have always loved it.  It's the one song that completely suits his ill equipped vocal style and the harmonica is used sparsely, which is a blessing to us all.  Cuz even in short bursts, it's fucking horrible.  Still, it says in the Bible that even a fool when he keepeth his silence is considered to be wise and keeping the lid on that mouth organ was a very wise move indeed.  

It's a wonderful starting point for the album too.  It's a driving rhythm with rich layers of simple parts supporting his voice at its weakest points.  

It's always been unusual for a longer song to be a hit and at 6:13, this was the one of the first aberrations of running time for a US top ten hit.  The really surprising thing is that I looked up at the display when I was starting to lose interest to find that there was less than a minute left.  So I feel good after the first track and having cracked the 5 minute barrier, hopes are high in spite of the overriding concern that it will be short lived.

2. Tombstone Blues

2:08.  I managed two minutes and eight seconds before my heart sank.  It's a quick song, snare on the up beat, rockabilly style.  His words are for the most part indecipherable and his voice has returned to that persistent whine created by a child unable to form words so urgently making whatever noise it can to get its point across.  It gnaws at my nerve endings like a razor to the spine but I was hanging in there.  

After the second chorus loop, I thought the instrumental section would deliver the reprieve I needed but my hopes were dashed.  The guitar "solo" we are treated to is as monotonous as his caterwauling as he drives on like a drowning comedian who has gone over time but is flailing in the water, gasping for a big laugh that will never come so he can leave the stage with some dignity.

This is the pattern of my torture.  Three times round the keel is my body drawn, my skin reattached and flayed once more.  Until finally I hear the words of the chorus reprise and blessed rescue from my horror is promised as it must mean now that this corrosive cocksweat will cease.

3. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry

Now why can't he play harp like that all the time?  It's like every mistake he made in track 2 has now been addressed.  The progression has a nice turnaround.  The rhythm has a rolling, easy feel to it that carries you along.  When the third verse comes in after the harp break, he shortens the vocal before the next repeat.  Has he done a Bill and Ted and popped off in a time machine to do a course?  Even his voice is bearable.

It's totally surreal how he can swing between these stark extremes of the most utterly abhorrent noise and...quite acceptable.  

Okay, 2-1 to Bob and everything to play for.

4. From A Buick 6

Well at least now I know where Stephen King got the idea for his book From A Buick 8.  That and the layers are the only positive notes I have on this though.

I found myself reaching out to the organ sound that is used throughout this piece to satisfy my need for notes but was disappointed.  It was too high in the mix for the simple padding it provided.  If they'd dropped that down and got somebody else to sing it would've been passable but #4 on the Rolling Stone list?  

At 3:19 it's the shortest track so far though so...there's that, at least.

5. Ballad Of A Thin Man

Something is happening here and I don't know what it is.  I've got a pretty good idea though.  A perfectly decent descending minor progression, given character by a wild-west-saloon of a honky tonk piano and a squealing but properly placed organ line is being crucified with each nail his pitifully inadequate vocal drives into the pleading hands of what could've been a great song.  

It really could have been a great song as demonstrated by the Grateful Dead, Golden Earring and Kula Shaker to name but three of the twenty artists who have made a better job of this.

6. Queen Jane Approximately

Once upon a time, in an effort to placate the Dylan fans who attended the pub quiz I used to run, I used this song in a music round themed on "Queens" for QE2's diamond jubilee.  

Good words in this and while the title is pretentious beyond the pale, the wise decision to recapture the sound of track 1 for the beginning of side 2 means that faith is restored.  Until the vocals come in that is.  

In fairness, they're not as piercing on this track and it is also one of the shorter tracks meaning a minimum 20% reduction in harmonica and weasel strangulation.

7. Highway 61 Revisited 

Entrance Of The Gladiators, you may already be aware is the title of that piece of music inextricably associated with the clowns at a circus.  You have only to hear that chromatically disjointed melody and the image of 12 middle aged men piled into a very small car becomes so vivid in your mind you can smell the greasepaint and the shaving foam.  

A comedian, possibly Eddie Izzard pointed out the ludicrous incongruity of the title with its application but in the case of this track, the tables are turned.  Surely the siren whistle was associated with the circus long before it was used on this recording?  It does make a mockery of the song somewhat.  

Some background reading reveals that somebody brought the whistle into the studio for other purposes but that it was suggested Dylan use it instead of his harmonica.  I can only assume that was some kind of practical joke made at his expense.  In the absence of confirmation it remains a lamentable low point in what one might reasonably expect to be the flagship song. 

For those who haven't heard it, it begins with a siren whistle, which reappears throughout.  That's what I get for trying to cut the poor guy a break: a clown's sound effect.  There's nothing else of note.  The background music just seems to be a jam the band thought up to try to disguise the fact he was yet again shoehorning syllables hamfistedly into lines on the same repeated note.

He just never learned how to fit his poetry into tunes did he?  Not being able to sing you can understand why but surely he could not have been so arrogant as to not recognise his limitations?  

Art is art.  Somebody, somewhere will like it.  Whether I can understand that or not is immaterial.  I think the reason this baleful racket irritates me so much is because it is so highly praised so I am obligated to listen to it and expected to agree.  

Heat a rapier until it's white hot and then shove it up a goose's butthole and you don't even get close to the hideous claxon of his voice.  It defies the definition of singing in the most fundamental of ways.  And the worst thing is that people have been emulating it because it has been so lauded they think it's okay to make these noises themselves.  It's truly heartbreaking.

8. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

A pattern is emerging.  The slower songs have more chord changes and this seems to guide him to attempt different notes.  On quicker songs, the chord endures, supported by a riff of some kind but he is unable to negotiate the scale and produce a melody.

The harmonica is not atrocious on this one.

9. Desolation Row

He's pronouncing row the wrong way.

The longest track on the album by some 4 minutes begins with the vocal delicately disguised by a solo acoustic guitar line.  

Then 2, 3 maybe 48 verses later something interesting happens.  The song ends.  Eleven minutes.  Occasionally the acoustic just drops out, presumably because the soloist has fallen asleep and needs a poke.

At one point my girlfriend held a knife to her eye and begged me to turn it off.

If you're a fan of Bob Dylan I hope you feel equally tortured by the length of this review.  Fair exchange is no robbery.

Final score 6-3 in my favour and there was chalk dust on Queen Jane Approximately.  So I'm converting that to a percentage and rounding down to yield the star rating shown.

What a waste of my time.  I actually feel sick with bitterness.