7. Blonde on Blonde

It is going to take a decennium to finish this blog, if I carry on listening to new Dylan albums in the tempo I do it now. But the thing is: there is no speeding up when utter joy is concerned.

Blonde on Blonde - I have been listening to it for months now, and will keep listening for years. What a great album! There is not one weak song, I feel (although I am not a huge fan of the first track, which I wrongly called 'Everyone Must Get Stoned' some time ago; of course (?) the right name is 'Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35'). And what I especially love are the musicians in the band - listening to the drummer in for example 'One of Us Must Know' or 'Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine' makes me decide I have to take up drumming soon (and what about the long tone Dylan holds on in the chorus of 'One of Us Must Know', one beat longer than you would expect - it is song-writing genius for me), and the organ in the absolute masterpiece of the album 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' is terrific, and 'Visions of Johanna' comes in on a solid second place for me.

Basically, the whole album breathes the blues - 'Pledging My Time', 'Memphis Blues Again' (no blues though - and great Otis-Redding-sound-underwater-bubbly-electric-guitar), 'Leopard-Skin Pill-box Hat' (great timing of the lyrics, again), 'Obviously 5 Believers', they all ask for playing them at high volume while driving the car fast, while the lazy 'Temporary Like Achilles' ("I'm helpless like a rich man's child" - such a brilliant phrase) asks for playing while cruising slowly on a warm summer evening along the lake.

'Absolutely Sweet Marie' reminds me of songs from I-don't-know-who; desperately I try to remember the singer's name for weeks now, he must be quite famous, a 70's pastiche-like song - so it goes, things hook somewhere in the back of your memory, waiting to relate to something in the future or remembered from the past. For me it's all about connections, the brain is filled not with facts but with relationships between facts, which makes me suspect that there is no end to the brain's capacity, because the more there is in it, the more will fit into it, relationship-wise.

I notice that it is easier for me to become a fan of songs I don't know yet - as if I become a fan of them because of the newness of the album to me, and the songs I know from the only Dylan-CD I knew earlier, the Essential Bob Dylan, ('I Want You', 'Just Like a Woman')  resist to share in this fandom-out-of-newness.

I must state as a besides that I just finished reading Robert Hilburn's biography of Johnny Cash. Dylan plays an enormous role in it, and the book states that the common element in both lives is the search for the independent expression of the own voice, regardless of the audience; something both have struggled with, leading to work that distracts from this own voice and work that has found it. Blonde on Blonde seems to be in the second category, as the early (Sun) and late (American Records) work by Cash, I guess; and I am curious to figure out how Dylan sounds in his weaker moments - I have not heard it yet. (As a besides to this besides: I can relate to this idea that life sometimes seems to consist mainly of pedantic attempts to keep to your road with all the distractions from that road the rest of the world offers to you.)

And I will leave you with the immediate recognition I had when I first heard '4th Time Around': that this is the Beatles' (Lennon's, rather) 'Norwegian Wood' in Dylan-remake. Then I stumbled on the Rolling Stone list of 500 greatest rock albums ever (the top 10 contains four albums of my beloved Beatles and two by Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited on 4 and Blonde on Blonde on 9; and none by Cash, I must add), and the following quote from the review of the Beatles' Rubber Soul album (nr. 5 on the list) tells it all: "Bob Dylan's influence suffuses the album, accounting for the tart emotional tone of 'Norwegian Wood', 'I'm Looking Through You', 'You Won't See Me' and 'If I Needed Someone'. (Dylan would return the compliment the following year, when he offered his own version of 'Norwegian Wood' – titled '4th Time Around' – on Blonde on Blonde, and reportedly made John Lennon paranoid.)"