Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan

For anyone under the age of 30 the name of Bob Dylan probably doesn't mean very much. Those who have heard of him think of him as just another ageing rock star who still makes critically acclaimed records that get five star reviews in Q magazine but that sound a bit dodgy all the same. This would be a very unfair appraisal of such an important figure in modern music. So let me take you back those halcyon days of 1966 when four lads from Liverpool had won the hearts and minds of teenagers everywhere but also a time when an angry young man named Bob Dylan represented all that was rebellious and intellectual about popular music. UNCLE BOB ...  Read the complete review

Following on from the stellar Bringing It All Back home and Highway 61 Revisited comes this double LP, now squashed into one CD, which is probably Dylan's masterpiece of the sixties. The album builds on the blues themes of the previous album and moves into more experimental and unknown territory. This for me is one of the greatest albums ever made and many agree with me, the album itself placed 9th on the 500 best albums of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine. The recording of the album though was thwart with delays and an inability to tie tracks down, with Dylan initially recording with the Band in New York before taking on session musicians in Nashville for ...  Read the complete review

Very few popular artists are as bold and daring as Bob Dylan. For Bob was the king of the world of folk, his loyal subjects professing Him to be the true commentator of this World Gone Wrong. He was infallible. Anyone else would have carried on in the same vein, going from intimate venue to intimate armed with nothing more than a harmonica, an acoustic guitar and a bucket load of rhetorical questions. This was not the way Bob saw his future, he felt that folk had become stale and had self destructed. He needed a change. And change he certainly did. He got himself a band and started to write some of the loudest and most drug fuelled music ever to be heard. ...  Read the complete review

Bob Dylan is to my mind the single most influential figure in modern music. He revolutionised modern poetry, folk music, and popular music. His work bridges generations and the quality of his songwriting has never been rivaled. Even the most accomplished of todays contemporary artists can only imitate. "Blonde on Blonde" is a truly remarkable album that captures Dylan at what was perhaps his creative peak (although, some would argue that of the later "Blood on the Tracks"). Amazingly the entire album (originally released as a double LP) was recorded in two or three days. The direction of the album was hinted at in its predecessor ...  Read the complete review