Highway 61 Revisited [Remastered] [Remaster]

Performer: Bob Dylan
Artist: Mike Bloomfield; Charlie McCoy; Al Kooper
Producer: Bob Johnston; Tom Wilson
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: Personnel: Bob Dylan (vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano); Michael Bloomfield Charlie McCoy (guitar); Al Kooper, Paul Griffin (piano, organ); Frank Owens (piano); Harvey Goldstein, Russ Savakus (bass); Bobby Gregg (drums). Engineers include: Peter Dauria, Roy Halee, Frank Laico. Recorded in Columbia Studios, New York, New York in June-August 1965. Includes liner notes by Bob Dylan. Taking the first, electric side of Bringing It All Back Home to its logical conclusion, Bob Dylan hired a full rock & roll band, featuring guitarist Michael Bloomfield, for Highway 61 Revisited. Opening with the epic "Like a Rolling Stone," Highway 61 Revisited careens through nine songs that range from reflective folk-rock ("Desolation Row") and blues ("It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry") to flat-out garage rock ("Tombstone Blues," "From a Buick 6," "Highway 61 Revisited"). Dylan had not only changed his sound, but his persona, trading the folk troubadour for a streetwise, cynical hipster. Throughout the album, he embraces druggy, surreal imagery, which can either have a sense of menace or beauty, and the music reflects that, jumping between soothing melodies to hard, bluesy rock. And that is the most revolutionary thing about Highway 61 Revisited -- it proved that rock & roll needn't be collegiate and tame in order to be literate, poetic, and complex. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine Though 1966's BLONDE ON BLONDE is usually singled out as the most innovative Bob Dylan album, its predecessor HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED is the one that definitively marks Dylan's transformation from progressive folk singer to visionary rock poet. It's Dylan's first fully electric album, powered by the manic intensity of Mike Bloomfield's skull-and-crossbones blues-rock guitar leads and Al Kooper's rich organ fills. While many of the songs are presented in a traditional 12-bar blues format, the lyrics find Dylan finally abandoning conventional linear narrative in favor of poetic abstraction, surreal imagery, and biting sarcasm. In the rock world, there has never been a lambasting harsher or more cathartic than the excoriation of "Ballad of a Thin Man," and no challenge more bold than that offered in the iconic "Like a Rolling Stone." When Dylan invokes the names of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot towards the end of the poetic epic "Desolation Row," he's not just name-dropping; he's merely delineating the company in which a work as rich and ground-breaking as HIGHWAY 61 belongs.

Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.88) - Ranked #4 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time" - "...One of those albums that, quite simply, changed everything..." Q (7/01, p.45) - "...Dylan is in stinging form..." Q (Magazine) (p.110) - "[A] dizzying rush of moody disquiet, surreal imagery and freakshow characters culminate in the mighty 'Desolation Row.'" NME (Magazine) (10/2/93, p.29) - Ranked #14 in NME's list of the "Greatest Albums Of All Time."

Bob Dylan began as a Woody Guthrie acolyte, imitating the dust-bowl balladeer as faithfully as a baby boomer from Hibbing, Minnesota, could. It wasn't long before he found his own voice, spearheading the early-1960s folk revival as well as the singer-songwriter movement, and introducing poetry into pop music. Through countless changes in sound, image, and even religion, he retained his unique artistic vision even when his popularity occasionally waned. By the 21st century, he was enjoying an upsurge of critical and popular interest based on a series of powerful late-career albums that crystallized his aesthetics and unique world view.

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