Track Listing

1. Like A Rolling Stone
2. Tombstone Blues
3. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
4. From A Buick 6
5. Ballad Of A Thin Man
6. Queen Jane Approximately
7. Highway 61 Revisited
8. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
9. Desolation Row

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1589 in Music
• Released on: 2004-03-29
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Dylan was virtually gushing great songs when this masterpiece arrived in the summer of 1965. For the epochal opening of "Like a Rolling Stone" through the absurdly apocalyptic closer, "Desolation Row", his command of surrealistic language was daring and amazing. As a vocalist, he was rewriting the rules of the game. Jimi Hendrix made note of Mr Z's technically suspect pitch and decided that he, too was a singer. And the backing, though ragged, is precisely right. Is this the essential Dylan album? It's certainly one of them. --Steven Stolder

Customer Reviews

insert your own clever word-play joke here
I know this is supposed to be one of Dylan's best albums... but I don't think it is. Since I was born in 1978, I can't really comment on how revolutionary this record was, and I can't comment on Dylan's abandonment of folk for the new rock n' roll sound. Unlike Dylan's audience in 1965, I am unhampered by any anti rock n' roll prejudices, but I'm afraid that for me it's just a fact that Dylan's early folk albums are better than his mid 60s rock n' roll albums. I say it's a fact, but of course you know that I mean it's just my opinion. It's not a case of whether he betrayed his fans, folk music or the civil rights movement. It's just that I don't respond emotionally to the tunes on Highway 61 Revisited. I've always thought that Like A Rolling Stone was bland, and the rest of the album strikes me that way too. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues is the one bright spot - I like the bass line. Elsewhere these tunes are plodding and overlong, with seldom more than one musical idea, the "free association" lyrics are inventive but lack much of a discernable meaning and as a result fail to engage the attention and even tracks I used to like, such as Ballad of a Thin Man sink into anonymity amongst such repetitively turgid fare.

So... I think I've pretty much summed up my feelings about the record in one paragraph there! Just a couple of other things: the cover is dreadful and so is the out of tune guitar on Queen Jane Approximately.

IM GOING BACK TO NEW YORK CITY.....
This is truly Dylans greatest album bar none, their is not a duff track on this album!!!!!
In fact its probably the greatest rock album ever made in the history of music. Dylan is at the top of his game here, spouting super hip New York poetry with a tip of the hat to the Beat Generation poets.
Sure, it contains one of Dylans most loved songs...Like a Rolling stone but it contains sooooo much more!
It climaxes with the astonishing Desolation row, and where Dylan has been known to occasionally pick the wrong take for release anyone who has heard the outtake of this song will know he got it dead right here.
The interraction between the two acoustic/Flamenco style guitars has to be heard to be believed, I cant throw at it enough superlatives.
If you are doubtful about buying this album dont be, it will change your life forever.
This album I would take to a Desert Island if I only had one choice of anything on Earth. Truly Awesome. Steve Vallely...Middlesbrough

Literate, complex, and totally unprecedented; one of rock's first great albums

In 1965, Bob Dylan released HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED, arguably the single most important record in 1960s rock. A total break with anything occurring in popular music before (save Dylan's own albums), HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED merged biting, sharp lyricism and great garage-rock and blues. When most other bands were singing about boy-girl topics and writing insubstantial lyrics (in 1965 The Beatles were singing "You're gonna lose that girl"), Dylan combined edgy, hip lyrics with garage rock, blues, and epic folk. His voice, rough hewn and very off-kilter technically, rewrites the rules for rock vocals. As Mark Prindle says, Dylan's voice turned off a lot of people, but influenced a whole lot more.

"Like a Rolling Stone," Dylan's most famous song, kickstarts HIGHWAY 61 with a sledge hammer. Significant as the single that broke the three minute barrier Dylan berates a woman, very much trying to be with the `in' movement. Filled with images never before conceived with in pop music, this song sets the tone of the rest of the album, and indeed this period of Dylan's life. "Ballad of a Thin Man," however, proves itself to be the really brutal put-down to all those to unwilling to open their minds and see where the counter-culture was headed. "Mr Jones," the acrimonious protagonist, finds himself thrown into a world of freaks, and he simply doesn't know what is happening. He is wealthy, well-read, and in all likelihood corporate - the very materialism and hypocrisy the youth of the 1960s were so ardent to overthrow. (Many 1960s' youth turned into 1980s' yuppies; that is neither here nor there.)

The very confrontational break with the folk community informs this entire work. The folk community were still idolizing Dylan, and Dylan, being Dylan, abandoned the role, much to their anger. Dylan was following his own muse, transforming himself from a protest singer into a cynical, avant-guard musician, very much a counter-cultural icon, exerting enormous influence over the rest of the fellow musicians as well as the growingly despondent youth culture. Ironically, Dylan would likewise abandon this role for a more mellow, country direction, and anger the counterculture just as much as he angered the folk fans, which is why I believe SELF PORTRAIT is the perfect capstone to Dylan's 1960s work. Because it's Dylan being contrary and inscrutable. That album's infamous for a reason folks.

This transformation, while occurring over the past two albums, comes to full fruition here, and with such offerings as the lead off track, "Tombstone Blues," "Ballad of a Thin Man," and "Desolation Row," this is nothing short of essential listening. "Desolation Row," arriving a full year and a half ahead of the other great epic in classic rock, The Doors' "The End," feels like a journey down a twisted, malignant, decaying road through America, with surrealism abounding and one of the best (and most accessible) answers to T. S. Eliot's modernist masterpiece `The Waste Land." "Tombstone Blues," combining (like the rest of the album) complex, surrealistic imagery and characters given an almost mythological import with seemingly random juxtapositions, rewrote the rules of rock lyrics. It has quite the absurdist touch.

The remaining tracks are just as remarkable. "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, a Train to Cry" musically turns to the blues for its inspiration, but the lyrics are a far cry from the classic blues motifs. "From a Buick Six," based partially on the 1930 Sleeping John Estes "Milk Calf Blues," shows Dylan reinventing the blues with a visceral fist. "Queen Jane Approximately," a dire warning directed to an obviously important woman in the narrator's life, chugs along at a loose, warm, garage frenzy. The narrator warns Queen Jane that she's about to fall apart. Wrapping the message in symbolism, the listener is left wondering if she's a real person in Dylan's life or not. "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," one of my personal favorites (I wrote a story about New York City using these lyrics as inspiration), details a character's descent into a continually more startling and depressing lifestyle, filled with corrupt authorities, shady women, and a haze of drugs and alcohol. Rich with literary allusions, writing like this sets Dylan head and shoulders above any other lyricist. "Highway 61 Revisited," the very song that game the album its name, gives another example of Dylan's surrealistic, stream-of-conscious type of writing, part beat, part symbolist, and undeniably all Dylan. The opening stanza, with its 1960s' reinvention of God telling Abraham to kill his son Isaac, stands as a stroke of genius. Some commentators have pointed out there's Highway 61 in Minnesota, and that Dylan's father's name was Abe. Dylan populates the rest of the song with royalty, roving gamblers, and other colourful characters. One of Dylan's best songs, with a rollicking bit of music to go with the mind-bending lyrics.

Two tracks, recorded during the same sessions and cut very much of the same cloth, would have found a welcome home on this album. "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" a bizaare narrative about a guy trying to win back his love, broke the top 100 but wasn't very successful. Somewhat akin to "I Want You" in the bizaare pop department. "Positively Fourth Street," one of Dylan's biggest hits and one of the nastiest put downs ever committed to tape, shows Dylan totally demolishing a so-called friend. It's one of Dylan's best mid 1960s offerings (and that's saying something, let me tell you) and appears on the first GREATEST HITS album.

HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED's most radical facet is it brought rock and popular music to a totally unprecedented level of sophisticated, artistic mastery. Dylan made music both deeply poetic and complex, redefining rock as we know it. Is it Dylan's best? Maybe. It is certainly one of his most important, not only for his career but for rock in generall. While many people point to The Beatles' SGT PEPPER as the seminal record of the 1960s, HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED is where my money is at.