So, only six more songs to go
by Jochen Markhorst
The history of my love affair with Highway 61 Revisited is probably not that different from most of us: upon discovering the LP in my father’s record collection, I kept putting the needle back to the lead-in groove after 6’13” – longing for “that snare shot that sounded like somebody kicked open the door to your mind,” as Bruce Springsteen aptly described that first bang of “Like A Rolling Stone”.
Not to take anything away from the beauty of “Tombstone Blues” or, say, “Desolation Row” (on the contrary), but certainly in the first few weeks, the ratio of “Like A Rolling Stone” to the rest of the LP must have been about 20:1.
The rest, of course, soon caught up. Highway 61 Revisited is for many of us the GOAT, a monument without a single dull spot. Unlike, say, Sgt. Pepper or Dark Side Of The Moon, we don’t secretly skip a “When I’m Sixty-Four” or some “On The Run”. No, while still enjoying the fade-out of “From A Buick 6” we are already looking forward to “Ballad Of A Thin Man”, we get already excited for “Highway 61 Revisited” halfway through grooving to “Queen Jane Approximately” and by the time the doorknob breaks in “Desolation Row” we know we want to hear the whole album again.
Some fifty years after that initial excitement all the impressions have sunk in and the processing begins. Or rather: the attempt to put the magic into words, the attempt to peek into the magician’s sleeve. “Like A Rolling Stone” was still a bit too big, too scary, so I started with the last chapter; with “Desolation Row”. I did expect it to be a big chapter, but the richness of the song turned out to be even greater than expected – after 130 pages, it dawned on me that a Highway 61 Revisited book might be very, very ambitious.
The second H61 book, about “Tombstone Blues” plus an epilogue about the unfinished, rejected song fragment “Jet Pilot”, also clocked in at over 100 pages, which meant that an H61 book was off the table; nine songs, and for the sake of completeness you’d want to include the non-album single “Positively Fourth Street”, and, in addition to “Jet Pilot” also include the outtake “Sitting On A Barbed-Wire Fence”, and knowing that you won’t be able to cover “Like A Rolling Stone” in less than 100 pages either… that H61 book was going to be an unwieldy 1,000-page tome. No, we’ll do it in parts.
After Desolation Row – Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965 (2020) and Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot – Dylan’s looking for the fuse (2021), came the book focusing on the unforgettable canon shot of the album a.k.a. one of the most beautiful singles in rock history, Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden – Bob Dylan kicks open the door (2025), and now Part 4 follows: about the two melancholic moments of calm. One on Side A, the brilliant fermata between the frenzy of “Tombstone Blues” and the brutal neuroticism of “From A Buick 6”. The other on Side B, the hypnotic breather after the commotion of “Highway 61 Revisited”: It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry b/w Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Bob Dylan’s melancholy blues.
So, only six more songs to go:
“From A Buick 6”
“Ballad Of A Thin Man”
“Queen Jane Approximately”
“Highway 61 Revisited”
“Sitting On A Barbed-Wire Fence”
and
“Positively 4th Street”
In 2030, Highway 61 Revisited will reach retirement age. A great moment to have completed the H61 series. Should be doable.
The H61 series:
- Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
- Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
- Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden: Bob Dylan kicks open the door
- It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry b/w Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Bob Dylan’s melancholy blues