Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde
Bob Dylan
BLONDE
ON BLONDE.
Bob Dylan pushed the run that began with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited into something even stranger, mixing New York experimentation with Nashville session players across an expansive double album.
Album artwork shown for commentary and historical reference. Image source: Bob Dylan official website.
SEVEN THINGS
WORTH KNOWING.
Dylan had already reinvented himself repeatedly by 1966. Blonde on Blonde pushed that run even further, pairing unfinished ideas, Nashville players and long studio nights with some of his most ambitious songwriting.
Blonde on Blonde contains 14 songs and runs for more than 72 minutes across its original two-LP configuration, making it one of rock music's earliest major double albums.
After difficult January 1966 sessions in New York, producer Bob Johnston moved the recording operation to Columbia's Nashville studios, where Dylan worked with a group of experienced Nashville session musicians.
The album's official credits include Nashville players Charlie McCoy, Kenneth Buttrey, Hargus Robbins, Jerry Kennedy, Joe South and Henry Strzelecki alongside Al Kooper and Robbie Robertson.
The released version of "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" came from take 13 of a session that produced 20 takes, with its familiar descending interlude developing during the session itself.
"Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" was captured on the fourth take on February 16, 1966. Dylan later made its subject explicit when his 1976 song "Sara" referred to writing "Sad-Eyed Lady" for Sara.
The famous front cover uses Jerry Schatzberg's soft-focus portrait of Dylan without the artist's name or album title printed across the image.
The master take of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" was take one. Bob Dylan's official Cutting Edge session archive identifies that first complete take as the version released on the album.
WHY THIS
ALBUM MATTERS.
Blonde on Blonde capped an extraordinary run of albums in which Dylan kept expanding the vocabulary of rock songwriting.
The record combines blues, country, folk, rock and surrealist writing without settling comfortably into any one of them.
The Recording Academy inducted the album into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
THE
NUMBERS.
TRACKS
The double album contains 14 songs, ending with "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands."
MINUTES
Its original two-record running time stretched beyond 72 minutes.
UK ALBUM CHART
Blonde on Blonde peaked at No. 3 on the Official UK Albums Chart.
THE
PHYSICAL OBJECT.
Photographer Jerry Schatzberg worked with Dylan repeatedly during 1965 and 1966, eventually shooting the portrait used for Blonde on Blonde.
The cover does almost nothing to explain itself. There is no giant album title, no band logo and no elaborate graphic concept. Just Dylan filling the frame in a slightly blurred photograph.
On the original double LP, that understated front opened into a much larger physical package, something a streaming thumbnail cannot reproduce.
RESEARCH SOURCES
Facts are checked against Bob Dylan's official archives, session documentation, chart records and the Recording Academy.
KEEP
DIGGING.
More recording stories, strange credits, cover art, chart numbers and details hiding inside the records.