Album Reviews

How to follow up Highway 61 Revisited released in the summer of 1965? Dylan had an impending nine-month world tour to deal with and a band to assemble. He hooked up with an outfit called Levon and the Hawks and after a few weeks of rehearsing and well-received live performances in Texas, he took the group to Columbia Studios in New York.

Between October and January Dylan recorded with the Hawks, over time swapping out a few musicians and taking time in December to tour, but after yet more time spent recording with various group iterations, he called it quits having produced but one acceptable song, “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)”, which was issued as a single and included in the double album that finally emerged after producer Bob Johnston suggested a move to Nashville.

There, an unlikely brew of Jews, blues and Nashville cats took Dylan from despair to exultation.

In a total of seven days—four in February of 1966 and three that March (Al Kooper swears it was all cut in one block, not two)—Dylan and the assembled band recorded all but one of the album’s songs. So productive were the sessions (and was Dylan) that a double LP set was required to contain it all—arguably the first double rock album.

The Dylan industry that has grown up around his recordings constructs historical timelines of his touring schedules and recording sessions and interprets and parses his every belch. If you wish to get into the weeds of what Dylan has accomplished since moving to New York in 1961, you can spend the rest of your life there.

You can read the minutiae chronicling every one of the Nashville sessions that produced this album if you wish and trace the time from the sessions to the album’s release though even that is subject to debate and depending upon whom you ask it’s either May or July.

Forget all of that. What’s most interesting is considering the album from a fan’s perspective in 1966 when none of this backdrop was known and there was no internet or 24 hour publicity machine. Come to think of it, despite the rise of all of that Dylan remains remarkably hidden from view and self-contained. What does he do in his spare time? Play tennis? We never see him in "real life" though just last week in a New York Times story we found out he's big into welding metal sculptures. He remains as enigmatic and mysterious today as he was back then. He's one celeb not suffering from over exposure.

For most listeners, all they knew was that the last they heard from Dylan was the haunting “Desolation Row”, the final tune on the hard blues/rock album Highway 61 Revisited. Or maybe they heard the unlikely single “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)”, a sadder more mournful single you’re not likely to hear.

So while examining the gatefold jacket just to make sure that the guy in the out of focus shot really was Bob Dylan (since nothing on the jacket said it was) it was time to put the record on the turntable and listen. For starters, this guy didn’t look all that much like the punk motorcycle guy on the last album’s cover and the out of focus picture made you wonder if maybe this was the Pickwick International budget album by Bog Dilon or something.

So the stylus drops and you hear this marching band “thunka-thunka” and then a foghorn blast that has some listeners thinking for a half a phrase “Mickey Katz freilach???? until Dylan enters singing in a new voice for him —and for singing in general. He’s swapped a lot of monotone road gravel for a peaky “surprised” sounding voice that has more bass end resonance and less rasp. Listen to how he phrases “Jeez I can’t find my knees!” There’s not a hint of that kind of bemused, sometimes playful vocalizing on the previous album but it’s all over this one.

The opening tune’s double-entendre victimized riff, the raucous not entirely convincing party atmosphere, the horn section all added up to a major head scratcher. It kind of sounded forced at first, especially in context of the last album.

“Pledging My Time” plunges the album into dark territory and then comes one of Dylan’s most perfectly realized songs, “Visions of Johanna”. You can feel the chill, the pocket of heat, the late night lonliness, the voyeurism and the stark contrast between the sex and the vision of Johanna. “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)” ends the side and the first listen was enough for fans to realize Dylan has moved well beyond the third person, sometimes wise-ass commentary on Highway 61 Revisited into a new far more personal realm. Dylan has hit the reset button and re-invented himself physically, vocally and lyrically.

No point in doing a “play by play” other than to note that some songs like “Just Like a Woman” produced some truly ridiculous analyses, like the ones that claimed the song was about Dylan’s tryste with a transvestite or transsexual. That is ridiculous and indicative of the “Dylanworld industrial complex”'s excesses.

“Absolutely Sweet Marie” is the album’s most “bouncy” tracks and it contains one of Dylan’s most oft quoted and quotable lines often adopted by drug dealers: “But to live outside the law you must be honest”. And of course “but then, now again not too many can be like you, fortunately” stings pleasingly.

That’s followed by Dylan’s “Rubber Soul” “answer song” and if by then back in 1966 you weren’t floored, you just weren’t really listening. The album ends with the "Good Mornin' Little School Girl"-like “Obviously 5 Believers” containing Robbie Robertson’s stinging guitar, which could have been on Highway 61 Revisited while “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowland”—said to be about his wife Sarah— provides the long, long somber denouement. Quite a contrast with the opening hilarity.

The album was the third in the unprecedented and probably unequaled trilogy that was preceded by Bringing it All Back Home andHighway 61 Revisited.

According to Dylan reissue producer Steve Berkowitz, who oversaw this Mo-Fi reissue and who visited here a few days before this reissue arrived, Bob Johnston told him that in Los Angeles (not Nashville) he and Dylan spent three or four days on the mono mix. Dylan split and Johnston then spent about four hours doing the stereo mix. Yes, despite the fact that the mono mix was a short lived release and actually fairly rare, it, not the stereo mix was the document of record for both Dylan and Johnston.

Apparently a 1A stereo pressing does not exist. I’ve never seen one. I bought my copy soon after the album was released and it’s a 3A. I’ve heard stories about remixes and alternative mixes and takes being on certain originals but I’ve not been able to confirm any of that.

At some point the original stereo mix disappeared. A remix produced for the “long box” Columbia gold CD was poorly received and not particularly well-executed. Berkowitz and Michael Braeuer later went back to the multi-track tape and mixed down to two-track analog for the Columbia SACD, obviously taking more than a few hours to accomplish what sounds like a meticulous recreation of the original stereo mix. That mix tape was also used for this Mobile Fidelity 45 rpm reissue.

The reissue is packaged in a box set similar to the label’s Patricia Barber reissues. The records and full-sized booklet are held tight by a piece of black foam. All of the graphics are carefully reproduced and well-presented and there are bonus photographs from cover photo photographer Jerry Schatzberg including one of a cross-legged Dylan holding what looks like a giant Zippo lighter. Another shot from that session was used as a UK-only “Greatest Hits” package. The original gatefold center spread contained an unauthorized shot of the actress Claudia Cardinale, removed shortly after the original release, has not been restored for this reissue. Perhaps the Cardinale estate is still holding out for a payoff?

So how did Mobile Fidelity do here? The sound and overall presentation are simply astonishing. I don’t care how many time you’ve heard this album in stereo, you will hear musically significant details in every track. The instrumental separation and subsequent release of inner detail boggles the mind and ear. The release of information and textures on, for example, the late Kenny Buttrey’s kick drum alone (he died in 2004 at age 59, which means he was but 21 when he drummed on this record) will have you shaking your head. Same for the rhythm guitar fills and the keyboard parts.

Instrumental separation, dynamics, rhythmic drive, textural complexity, bass clarity, placement in space, every aspect of what makes a recording compelling are ramped way up compared to the 3 3A pressings I have, two of which include the Claudia Cardinale photo so I assume them to be early pressings. Dylan’s voice remains somewhat caustic and harsh as intended.

The originals sound soft and mushy by comparison even though I used to think the 3A pressing sounded more than fine.

This 3 45rpm LPs reissue is simply better than the original in every way without showing any kind of revisionist disrespect to the original and that goes for the remix from the multi-track.

Yes, the box is costly, but this is the best stereo version I’ve heard of this absolutely classic and essential Dylan record. I’ve been playing it since 1966. It’s in my DNA. It’s been shaken and stirred by this reissue. It’s better than my most optimistic expectations.

Also recommended: the Sony/Legacy mono box set or the individual monos from Sundazed (though the Sony box’s sound is superior), neither of which sound as good as an original mono pressing but both get you most of the way there.