Bob Dylan ‎– Highway 61 Revisited

To my ear, the greatest of the Dylan albums. "Like a Rolling Stone's" folk-rock arrangement still sounds current to me. That's the testament of a great song. It never enters "Overplay Hell", although the song has been overplayed.

It's an album of nightmare visions. "Jack the Ripper who sits at the head of the Chamber of Commerce..." from "Tombstone Blues". Michael Bloomfield's leads are slashing affairs here, like Norman Bates' knife. Al Kooper's ghostly organ becomes part of the paranoia in "Ballad of A Thin Man". The slow, sleepy "It Takes A Lot to Laugh" lulls the listener into a vague desolation. The only 'up' tune on side one is the blues "From a Buick Six", a paean to Dylan's 'junkyard angel". But even here he needs a 'steamshovel mama to keep away the dead'.

The only 'minor' composition here is "Queen Jane Approximately". I wish someone had tuned the rhythm guitar here.

The amusing "Highway 61 Revisited", replete with police siren is about the only comic relief we get on this collection. We then enter the dark world where "the cops don't need us and man, they expect the same..." But "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" is but a teaser for Dylan's epic "Desolation Row", which may be T.S. Eliot on mescaline.

The word images come fast and furious in this masterpiece. Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead once said that "Desolation Row" should be America's national anthem. This may have been the only intelligent thing Jerry ever said.

Though running eleven minutes, Dylan carries it throughout with one of his best poems.

Dylan's next album, "Blonde on Blonde" may be even better than this. I can't decide. This is Bob Dylan At The Top Of His Game.