If
Highway 61 Revisited played as a
garage rock record, the double album
Blonde on Blonde inverted that sound, blending
blues,
country,
rock, and
folk into a wild, careening, and dense sound. Replacing the fiery
Michael Bloomfield with the intense, weaving guitar of
Robbie Robertson,
Bob Dylan led a group comprised of his touring band
the Hawks and session musicians through his richest set of songs.
Blonde on Blonde is an album of enormous depth, providing endless lyrical and musical revelations on each play. Leavening the edginess of
Highway 61 with a sense of the absurd,
Blonde on Blonde is comprised entirely of songs driven by inventive, surreal, and witty wordplay, not only on the rockers but also on winding, moving
ballads like
"Visions of Johanna," "Just Like a Woman," and
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." Throughout the record, the music matches the inventiveness of the songs, filled with cutting guitar riffs, liquid organ riffs, crisp pianos, and even woozy brass bands (
"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35"). It's the culmination of
Dylan's electric
rock & roll period -- he would never release a studio record that rocked this hard, or had such bizarre imagery, ever again. [In 2004,
Columbia/
Legacy reissued the two-CD remastered
Blonde on Blonde as a single disc.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
