Highway 61 Revisited

Artist: Bob Dylan
Label: Sony Mid-Price
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Original recording remastered
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1
EAN: 5099750605523
ASIN: B00005UDPD

Release Date: 1989-12-04

Highway 61 Revisited

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Tracks:

Like a Rolling Stone
Tombstone Blues
It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry
From a Buick 6
Ballad of a Thin Man
Queen Jane Approximately
Highway 61 Revisited
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Desolation Row

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Album Description

Digipak reissue of 1965 album. Sony. 2005.

Album Details

Digitally Remastered Millennium Edition with Tri-fold Digipack Packaging.

Customer Reviews:

Blistering Images in Rhyme.......2006-08-27

This is Bob Dylan at his very finest and this is probably his best record, from "Like a Rolling Stone" to the album's closer, "Desolation Row," the listener is assaulted with blistering images in rhyme that she will never forget. Dylan changed the shape of the musical landscape with this record, changed rock and roll forever. His songs broke the three minute mold, they weren't about love and love lost anymore. In fact some of them are darned hard to understand, but they stay with you none the less. Bob Dylan was, and is, the poet laureate of Rock and Roll, the poet laureate of America. Love after we're all gone, his lyrics will be sung, recited, read.

One of the greatest milestones of the rock era.......2006-07-04

Hyperbole rules in customer reviews, but I honestly believe that this is the greatest album ever released. It almost certainly influenced the history of rock and roll more than any other single album made, even more than SGT PEPPER. Why? The greatest influence on the Beatles after their initial fame was listening to Bob Dylan. The influence of the single "Like a Rolling Stone" alone was staggering. (It was released as a single months before the album.) Upon listening to Dylan and this album/song, Sam Cooke wrote a masterpiece in trying to imitate him ("A Change is Gonna Come"), as did Otis Redding ("Sitting on the Dock of the Bay"). Both Lennon and McCartney abandoned the pop love songs that had been the staple of the Beatles success through 1965 to write the more complex lyrics found on REVOLVER and RUBBER SOUL. Virtually every rock songwriter on both sides of the Atlantic had to rethink everything that they were doing with their music. His previous albums had found a wide audience, but primarily in the folk scene. This was true even of BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME. Primarily because of the success of "Like a Rolling Stone" as a single, this was the first Dylan album that was primarily a rock album rather than folk.

There are so many remarkable aspects to this album. The lyrics are so incredible as to seem beyond the capacity of someone as young and uneducated as Dylan, full of deep cultural resonances and references while maintaining a poetic perfection. Every fan can name his or her own favorites: mine are "Like a Rolling Stone," the title song, "Ballad of a Thin Man," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," and "Desolation Row." The success of the album made his earlier albums equally essential for rock performers, instantly providing rock with a verbal palette that dramatically extended the simple love song to almost any subject.

One thing that sets this album from so many Dylan albums that followed is the excellence of the session musicians. As great as Dylan is, on many of his albums he employs musicians that simply aren't among the best. Take the guitar work alone. Although Robbie Robertson would provide superb work on BLONDE ON BLONDE, no Dylan album after HIGHWAY 61 would feature such stellar solo work as what Michael Bloomfield would provide on this one. The filler lines he provides at the end of the various lines in "Tombstone Blues" is just one example. But as fine as Bloomfield is, he is matched by the astonishing playing by country guitarist Charlie McCoy on "Desolation Row," who achieves the near impossible by playing eleven minutes of acoustic guitar in counterpoint to Dylan's strumming, and manages to make it compelling throughout.

Above all else, HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED created the potential for rock to be difficult and challenging. Before Dylan, no one listening to rock had to use more than just a tiny fraction of their brain. After this album, rock became intelligent, or at least had that potential. Take "Desolation Row." Apart from Chuck Berry telling Beethoven to roll over, rock contained in its first decade virtually no cultural references to speak of. But in that song alone Dylan sings of Cinderella, Bette Davis, Romeo, Cain and Abel, the hunchback of Notre Dame, the Good Samaritan, Ophelia, Noah, Einstein, the Phantom of the Opera, Casanova, Nero, Neptune, the Titanic, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot. Rock had never been so literate before and has only rarely been this intelligent since. Somehow in an eleven-minute song Dylan managed to sum up huge hunks of modern culture. In conjunction with the other songs on the album, in particular "Ballad of a Thin Man" and "Highway 61 Revisited," Dylan seemed to sum up all the alienation that the youth of the sixties was feeling in regard to the consumerism that had exploded in the fifties.

It is hardly conceivable that any serious fan of music in general or rock in particular isn't already familiar with every second of this album, but if not, you must get it. On its own merits, it is one of the supreme cultural achievements of the century, and its massive influence on every single songwriter who grew up in its wake only makes knowing it all that more essential.

I Love this Record.......2006-04-03

"Like a Rolling Stone" the first song on HIGHWAY 61 grabs you right from the getgo and this album does not let go till the last guitar lick in "Desolation Row" and in between there are some of the best rock and roll you are ever going to listen too. It seems like the band has been playing together forever, though from what I've read of how Bob Dylan makes records, they probably just got together, did a few run throughs, then bang, they probably cut the record. Well, they did great, this record not only stands the test of time, it will never get old.

Gone are the Protest Songs on this Rockin' Rocker.......2006-04-03

It must have been hard for the Dylan faithful to make the switch from folk to rock. He didn't make it as easy as Steve Jobs apparently has done with the switch to the new Intel processor in his new Macs. However he set the world on fire with "Like a Rolling Stone." Al Kooper's keyboards are nothing short of haunting. I've heard Dylan do this song on countless live tapes and in person a few times, but never have I heard him approach the power he does on this record with this song. "Like a Rolling Stone" is followed by "Tombstone Blues" more shear rock and roll music and this time it's piled on top of beautiful poetry. Next up comes my favorite song on the record, "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry" more raw power. And the record goes on in that vein, ending with the long and very wonderful "Desolation Row." Just wonderful. Wait, I already said that. Well now I'm saying it again.

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