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Published: Feb 2, 2010
Category: Rock
When my stepson was 16, he delighted me by asking if “Visions of Johanna” --- which Bob Dylan recorded in 1966, two decades before this lad was born --- wasn’t one of the greatest songs of the century.
He surprised me, too, for although he’d heard a lot of Dylan in his childhood, no one ever pointed a finger at the stereo and said, “Kid, that is greatness such as you will rarely witness.”
So I was a bit …flummoxed the other day when I was standing with a friend my own age and chatting about Blonde on Blonde, the two-record album that contained “Visions of Johanna” --- and while he recalled some of the songs on that that monumental release, the record itself eluded him.
And I thought of you.
You may not, like me, be knocking on heaven’s door. Youngster that you are, you may see Dylan simply as some old guy who refuses to retire. Once, you have heard, he was a folk singer --- and you know about “Blowin’ In the Wind” and maybe some other songs from the Kumbaya days. And you know he threw away his acoustic guitar and plugged in, and some booed and some cheered. And then there may be a big gap in your knowledge of Dylan --- and why not? He’s not like a course you need to pass in order to graduate --- until very recently, when he’s accepting some honor at an awards show.
If that is your situation --- or if you missed the first round of Dylan’s 1960s flowering --- come closer.
We are going to do a brief, painless remedial session.
Context: Before “Blonde on Blonde” came Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. These were breakthrough records, but more in the music than in the lyrics; it’s on these albums that Dylan made the break from folkie to rocker. And, yes, many fans had a problem with Dylan standing in front of a rock band. Not me. I’d had a problem with Dylan as a folkie.
“Blonde on Blonde” was something else. It stood alone, as adult music. That is, it was challenging --- surrealistic word play, piercing love songs, flashes of scorn, and a song that lasts for eleven minutes and nineteen seconds and fills one entire side of a record. How great is it? Number nine on the all-time list of greatest-ever albums, says Rolling Stone.
A sample: “Fourth Time Around.”
But I want to focus on one song. Permit me a personal story by way of explanation: When was a tot compiling my first book, I arrived at the moment every writer dreads --- many words to produce and a limited time to produce them. Crunch time. No choice in the matter. I was looking at an all-nighter. There are many who regularly go to bed at dawn. I am not one of them. Getting up at 4 AM --- yeah, I can do it. But I’m no good between midnight and four, and no amount of caffeine changes that. And yet I was clearly going to need those midnight hours.
I played “Blonde on Blonde” that night. I started with the entire thing, but one song --- “Visions of Johanna” --- stood out for me, and I played it over and over as I wrote, until finally the dawn came and I typed THE END. That song was a parallel to my experience of that night: a 3 AM song, written from the vantage point of a downtown loft, everyone asleep except the songwriter. I’m not saying I merged with Dylan’s narrator, just that I took courage from the precision and originality of his words and music, and maybe --- maybe --- I wrote a little better than usual. Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
The cool thing about digital media is that you can listen as you read. Please do; you’ll hear a marriage of music and image that’s rare. And beautiful. Here is Visions of Johanna. And here’s how it starts:
Ain't it just like the night to play tricks
when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it.
And Louise holds a handful of rain temptin' you to defy it.
Lights flicker from the opposite loft.
In this room the heat pipes just cough.
The country music station plays soft,
But there's nothing, really nothing, to turn off.
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.
when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it.
And Louise holds a handful of rain temptin' you to defy it.
Lights flicker from the opposite loft.
In this room the heat pipes just cough.
The country music station plays soft,
But there's nothing, really nothing, to turn off.
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.
In the empty lot where the ladies play
blindman's bluff with the key chain,
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the "D" train.
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight,
ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane.
But Louise she's all right, she's just near,
She's delicate and seems like the mirror,
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here.
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face.
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.
Can you consider that the correct response might be: Wow?
I could tell you how Dylan recorded this album in Nashville, and how chilly he was to the musicians he hired, and how his hair was ratty and he smelled bad --- but what would be the point? Genius has its own rules. And all these years later, does the trivia matter?
“It’s what in the grooves that counts.” Berry Gordy, founder of Motown, used to say that. Well, these grooves are filled with beautiful, exciting, challenging music. They count. And, a century from now, still will.
To buy “Blonde on Blonde” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy the MP3 download of “Blonde on Blonde” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Bringing It All Back Home” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Highway 61 Revisited” from Amazon.com, click here.