Positively 4th Street
Can You Please Crowl Out Your Window
DATE OF RELEASE
United States: August 30, 1965
on Columbia Records
(REFERENCE COLUMBIA CL 2389/CS 9189)
Highway 61 Revisited:
Back to the Future
The Album
Between the release of Bringing It All Back Home on March 22, 1965, and the first recording session of Highway 61 Revisited on June 15, Bob Dylan gave several concerts in England, including at the Royal Albert Hall in London on May 9 and 10. During this UK tour, he heard about the recent success of the Rolling Stones (“The Last Time”), the Beatles (“Ticket to Ride”), the Yardbirds (“For Your Love”), and the Who (“Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere”). He had long walks on Carnaby Street, discovering the extraordinary creative ferment of “Swingin’ London.” On June 21, Dylan returned to the United States with an “English influence.” It was fifteen days after the Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” reached number 1 on the Billboard chart.
Three major events punctuated the six weeks following Dylan’s return to the United States: the Newport Folk Festival scandal, when he came onstage accompanied by an electric-blues-rock band; an intense writing period in Woodstock; and the replacement of producer Tom Wilson by Bob Johnston. New identity (or almost), new music (or almost)? If rock ’n’ roll and the blues were Dylan’s first love, summer 1965 is more about a new beginning than a return to the origin. Elvis Presley and Little Richard have cleared the way—now it is Bob’s turn to explore with his sixth album. Dylan said at the time, “My words are pictures and the rock’s gonna help me flesh out the colors of the pictures.”2
An Electric Reading of the Folk and Blues
The title of the album refers to the highway following the Mississippi River from Minnesota, Dylan’s home state, to Louisiana, the land of the blues. It is also a long and passionate musical voyage, partly a return to the rock ’n’ roll of Dylan’s adolescence, partly an electric rereading of folk and blues. Dylan wrote in Chronicles, “Highway 61, the main thoroughfare of the country blues, begins about where I came from… Duluth to be exact.” He continues: “I always felt like I’d started on it, always had been on it and could go anywhere from it, even down into the deep Delta country. It was the same road, full of the same contradictions, the same one-horse towns, the same spiritual ancestors. The Mississippi River, the bloodstream of the blues, also starts up from my neck of the woods. I was never too far away from any of it. It was my place in the universe, always felt like it was in my blood.”1 Finally, the album is a glimpse into the work of Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road, and without a doubt also that of Arthur Rimbaud, the “man with soles of wind,” constantly in motion.
The Quintessential Art of Dylan
The nine songs collected on Highway 61 Revisited represent the essence of Dylan’s art. “In other words, I played all the folk songs with a rock ’n’ roll attitude,”45 he said to Robert Shelton. In his sixth album, the “attitude” comes in with additional instruments, starting with the explosive encounter between the electric guitar of Mike Bloomfield and the organ of Al Kooper. This musical cocktail is even more explosive—and successful—because the poet delivers some of his most beautiful lines, sometimes with a touch of cynicism or, more often, a surrealism marked by a breath of freedom inspired by the French symbolists and the Beat writers. Nonetheless, all things considered, the songwriter’s view of the world has not changed—there is still a lot of misunderstanding of and anger toward the troublemakers and Pharisees of the modern era. What is different is the way Dylan uses derision to express his view. Thus, in “Like a Rolling Stone,” it is the fall of an unnamed “Miss Lonely” that interests Dylan; in “Ballad of a Thin Man,” the conformism of “ordinary people” that earns his contempt; and in “Desolation Row,” it is a nightmarish journey into the heart of self-destruction and decadence—an almost Shakespearean drama—that inspires him.
The Cover
Daniel Kramer, who had photographed the cover for Bringing It All Back Home, provided the cover artwork before the first recording sessions. The photograph shows Bob Dylan wearing a blue silk jacket over a Triumph motorcycle T-shirt and holding his Ray-Ban sunglasses in his right hand. In the background, manager Bob Neuwirth is holding a camera.
It was not so easy to get to that result. Kramer reports that after working for hours all afternoon photographing Dylan in vain in front of O’Henry’s restaurant in Greenwich Village, he asked Bob to buy new clothes because the photographer was unhappy with what he was wearing. Afterward, they shot for another couple of hours without any success. Tired, they returned to Albert Grossman’s apartment at 4 Gramercy Park West. When they got there, Bob said to Kramer, “You know, I have a new T-shirt. A motorcycle T-shirt. I’d like to just have a picture of it. Of me in this motorcycle T-shirt.”46 Kramer complied, and, to save time, they decided to sit down on the steps of the apartment building. Kramer looked through the lens and found that the area behind Dylan appeared a little too bare, so he asked Neuwirth to stand there. But he felt that he still needed something else to balance the overall composition. He gave Neuwirth one of his cameras, a Nikon SP, to hold in his right hand. Kramer took two shots and finally got his picture. In this cover artwork, Dylan looks much closer to a rock ’n’ roll musician than to a guitarist out of a hootenanny…
Recording
The recording of Highway 61 Revisited at Columbia’s Studio A took place in two steps: the first recording sessions on June 15 and 16 and the second between July 29 and August 4. Tom Wilson produced the June sessions. Dylan was backed by the musicians who played on Bringing It All Back Home, with the exception of Bruce Langhorne, who, according to Al Kooper, played drums on the album. Langhorne was replaced on guitar by the talented Mike Bloomfield and by Al Kooper, a young musician—only twenty-one years old—who had made his debut with Bob as an organist. Dylan, after this first two-day recording session, returned to his new home in Woodstock, New York, to finalize the other pieces of the album. On July 25, he performed his controversial electric songs at the Newport Folk Festival, coming onstage with several members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band—a scandal in the eyes of the folk audience upset at Dylan’s new sound (see page 160). Dylan was consequently more determined than ever to break with his past as a folksinger when he returned to Studio A on July 29.
These new recording sessions were under the supervision of producer Bob Johnston because of a disagreement Dylan had in late June with Tom Wilson. The reason for the change is unclear. Perhaps it was Wilson’s inability to “capture the zeitgeist,” meaning to understand the new musical direction of the songwriter. Dylan apparently wanted a new approach in the studio. Years later Wilson recalled with bitterness Bob’s suggestion to give the production duties to Phil Spector. Neither Wilson nor Dylan clearly explained the reason for the rupture. When Jann Wenner asked Dylan in November 1969, “How did you make the change… or why did you make the change, of producers, from Tom Wilson to Bob Johnston?” he gave an evasive answer: “Well, I can’t remember, Jann. I can’t remember… all I know is that I was out recording one day, and Tom had always been there—I had no reason to think he wasn’t going to be there—and I looked up one day and Bob was there.”20 Dylan was, in fact, criticizing Wilson’s methods as too directive. His rigor probably came from a musical education too elitist for Dylan’s current taste. Johnston, however, knew how to create a relaxed atmosphere without imposing himself. Al Kooper testified to this approach and asserted that Johnston’s true skill as a producer was to encourage the musicians. “He [Johnston] says things like, ‘Can you believe these songs? This is the greatest record that I ever made in my life!’, whatever record he’s working on, and that pumps the artist up tremendously.”24 With his new producer, Dylan returned to Studio A from July 29 to August 4 for three sessions. He was accompanied by the same musicians with few exceptions. This new opus was cut in six sessions, with 140 recorded
takes of a dozen songs, an average of eleven takes per title. For Dylan, this was unheard of! Times had changed.
Highway 61 Revisited was available in US stores on August 30, 1965, three months before the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, nine months before the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, eleven months before the Stones’ Aftermath, and nineteen months before The Velvet Underground & Nico. Highway 61 Revisited reached number 3 on the US charts and number 4 in the United Kingdom. This visionary masterpiece is now platinum, with over one million albums sold, and number 4 on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” As author Michael Gray wrote, “The whole rock culture, the whole post-Beatle pop-rock world, and so in an important sense the 1960s, started here.”47
Technical Details
Out of the nine songs, only “Like a Rolling Stone” was produced by Tom Wilson. Aside from the arrival of Roy Halee (future producer of Simon & Garfunkel) as a new sound engineer, methods and recording equipment were nearly identical to those used for the album Bringing It All Back Home. However, a Neumann M49 mic appears in various photographs, though it is difficult to say which producer is responsible for this change—presumably Tom Wilson.
When Bob Johnston took command of the production, his methods reflected a different approach to the artists. He intervened as little as possible while intelligently stimulating their individual potential. In 2003, Johnston recalled, “I always used three microphones on Dylan, ’cause his head spun around so much. I used a big [Neumann] U47 on him, same as I used on Johnny Cash later. I would put a baffle over the top of his guitar because he played while he sang lead vocals. I didn’t use any EQ on the band, just set the mics up right to make each instrument sound the best it could. I used some EQ on Dylan’s voice.”48
Instruments
There isn’t any accurate information on the instruments used by Dylan on this album. However, you can hear him playing acoustic guitar on at least three titles, no doubt his Gibson Nick Lucas Special as evidenced by the photo sessions. Aside from “Ballad of a Thin Man,” where he sat at the piano (presumably a Steinway & Sons), he played all the other songs on an electric guitar, most likely his Fender Stratocaster Sunburst, although some photographs show him holding a 1962 Fender Jaguar or a Fender XII. He is also seen playing a Fender Jazz Bass plugged into a Fender Bandmaster amplifier. It is, in fact, the one Harvey Brooks borrowed just in time for a memorable photo. He used harmonicas in C, D-flat, E, and F. Mike Bloomfield played a white Fender Telecaster and used either a Fender Super Reverb or a Fender Showman amplifier.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Suze Rotolo, invited by Sally Grossman, unexpectedly participated in the recording. To the young woman’s surprise, Al Kooper asked her to join him in the studio. “At some point Al called me over to the organ and told me to hold down two notes while he played something else… I don’t remember the song, and Al doesn’t, either. It couldn’t have been ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ because on that cut Al Kooper made his leap from the guitar to the organ.”14
Bob Johnston:
A Generous Producer
Donald William “Bob” Johnston was born on May 14, 1932, in Hillsboro, Texas. He grew up in a professional musical family. His grandmother, Mamie Jo Adams, as well as his mother Diane Johnston were both country-and-western songwriters. He recorded several singles under the name of Don Johnston. In the early sixties, he worked as an arranger and producer for the labels Kapp Records and Dot Records in New York. He married Joy Byers, author and composer of several songs in Elvis Presley’s films. He later claimed that these songs, credited to his wife, were actually cowritten or written by him alone.
He joined Columbia Records in 1965 and produced Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte by Patti Page for that label. When he heard that Tom Wilson had been evicted, Johnston tried to convince John Hammond—who was his boss and for whom he had profound admiration—to let him produce Bob Dylan. Johnston recalls, “[Columbia Records employee Bob] Mercy asked me, ‘Why do you want to work with him? He’s got dirty fingernails, and he breaks all the strings on his guitar.’ But I wanted to. I was afraid they’d give him to [Byrds producer] Terry Melcher, so I had a meeting with John Hammond, Mercy and [Columbia Records president Bill] Gallagher, and they said, ‘Okay, you do him.’”48
He inaugurated his collaboration with Bob Dylan with the sessions for Highway 61 Revisited. “It was in the Columbia Studios on West 52nd Street. I just walked up to him and said, ‘Hi, I’m Bob Johnston,’ and he just smiled and said, ‘Hi, I’m Bob, too.’”45 Both men agreed that Johnston had a power to give greater freedom to musicians. In an interview with Dan Daley of Mix magazine, Johnston said that producers should always be musicians themselves so that they knew to stay out of the way at the right time and to let the artist speak. “As for producing, I always say I’m someone who just lets the tapes roll, but anyone who can’t write songs, can’t sing, can’t produce, can’t perform really shouldn’t be working with an artist. You need to relate on their level, if for no other reason than you can stay out of their way when you need to. All of the other staff producers at Columbia were tapping their feet out of time and whistling out of tune and picking songs based on what their boss liked last week so they could keep their jobs three more months. But I figured Dylan knew something none of us knew, and I wanted to let him get it out. Also, I should tell you that though ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ was on Highway 61, it was produced by Tom Wilson. I produced all the rest of the songs on it.”48
After two years in New York, Johnston became head of Columbia Records in Nashville. He produced Dylan’s albums until New Morning in 1970. In addition, he produced significant successes such as Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence (1966) and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966), Johnny Cash’s At San Quentin (1969), Leonard Cohen’s Songs from a Room (1969), and the Byrds’ Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde (1969).
Like A Rolling Stone
Bob Dylan / 6:13
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Mike Bloomfield: guitar
Al Gorgoni: guitar
Paul Griffin: piano
Al Kooper: organ
Joseph Macho Jr.: bass (?)
Russ Savakus: bass (?)
Bobby Gregg: drums
Bruce Langhorne: tambourine
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: June 16, 1965
Technical Team
Producer: Tom Wilson
Sound Engineers: Roy Halee and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
Bob Dylan’s UK tour from April 26 to May 12, 1965, was very hard. Every night, despite an acoustic set, he had to face a public hostile to his conversion to rock music. Bringing It All Back Home had just been released in stores. Returning from his UK tour, Dylan was greatly affected by the public’s reaction and seriously considered ending his career. “Last spring, I guess I was going to quit singing. I was very drained, and the way things were going, it was a very draggy situation… Anyway, I was playing a lot of songs I didn’t want to play. I was singing words I didn’t really want to sing. I don’t mean words like ‘God’ and ‘mother’ and ‘President’ and ‘suicide’ and ‘meat cleaver.’ I mean simple little words like ‘if’ and ‘hope’ and ‘you.’ But ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ changed it all.”4 In 2005, Dylan stated, “After writing that I wasn’t interested in writing a novel, or a play. I just had too much, I want to write songs.”6
The lyrics to “Like a Rolling Stone” began with a long version of a dozen pages that Dylan himself described as a “long piece of vomit.”4 He selected some verses and the chorus from this draft during his stay at Woodstock, New York, at the house he had rented from the mother of the folksinger Peter Yarrow. These lyrics are fundamentally innovative. “Once upon a time you dressed so fine / You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?” Playing on the assonance, Dylan portrays a heroine once powerful, who “never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns,” who �
�used to be so amused / At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used.” And the narrator is ruthless: “How does it feel / How does it feel / To be on your own / With no direction home / Like a complete unknown / Like a rolling stone?”
The poetic originality of “Like a Rolling Stone” derives its substance from the narrator’s resentment of and desire for revenge on this mysterious “Miss Lonely.” These two feelings, however, diminish over the stanza, even if at the beginning the narrator does not hide his satisfaction at seeing the “princess on the steeple” face the reality of a world that she once despised. Gradually, the narrator moves toward compassion.
Beyond the history of decadence, Dylan also subtly describes American society of the mid-sixties. At the beginning of the second verse, he sings, “You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely.” What the songwriter wants to express is that the best education is not one that is given at gilded universities or in the family cocoon, but the one drawn from the vicissitudes of daily life. Dylan’s biographer Robert Shelton wrote that “Like a Rolling Stone” “is about the loss of innocence and the harshness of experience.”7
Who is the person behind this “Miss Lonely”? As usual opinions differ. Miss Lonely could be Joan Baez or Sara (considering the background of her painful divorce from photographer Hans Lownds), but is more surely Edie Sedgwick, the daughter of a wealthy California family and Andy Warhol’s muse. She acted in no less than eight of Warhol’s films in 1965, including Poor Little Rich Girl. Dylan had a brief affair with her at the time at the Chelsea Hotel. In an interview with Scott Cohen, he firmly denied any relationship. “I don’t recall any type of relationship. If I did have one, I think I’d remember.”49
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 24