Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton. According to Anthony Scaduto’s book Bob Dylan, he even strummed the chords while Bob pencilled in the lyrics for Blowin’ In The Wind.
While Bob rallied the masses, Paxton and Ochs signed to Elektra and by 1965 Jac Holzman’s label also had designs on a whole host of other regulars from the Greenwich Village scene. As David S Cohen, Blue’s first recordings appeared on The Singer-Songwriter Project alongside tracks by Richard Farina, Patrick Sky and Bruce Murdoch and, within a year, he was in the studio recording this self-titled album. It should have all been so easy. But it wasn’t. For whatever reason, David Blue left David S Cohen’s folky innocence in the closet. Instead, his debut became a strange mutation of influences – musical, social and otherwise. Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited had changed all the rules about electricity, while Love had just signed to Elektra and their first two albums bookended Blue’s, changing the expectations of the label as the scene matured. Blue took up the challenge but to no avail.
Released alongside Tim Buckley’s self-titled debut, this terrific album went on the missing list. At the time its phased guitars, swirling organ, quasi-classical motifs and jazz-paced breaks were part and parcel of a music scene that was encouraging experiment. But lyrically, Blue added yet another dimension, presenting a grubby insight into Village life. Indeed, the album rolls around the floors of bedsit Greenwich examining its inhabitants, like a Super-8 movie shot against a sub-psychedelic backdrop. Its failure signalled Blue’s departure from the label and his slow decline into moody, morbid introversion. Certainly there’s a sense of foreboding amid the cool and smoky jazz inflections. You kind of know it’s all going to end in tears.
Bob Dylan
Blonde On Blonde
Translucent poetic imagery and steaming Chicago blues – the single most convincing case for Dylan’s genius.
Record label: CBS
Produced: Bob Johnston
Recorded: Columbia Studios, New York; October 5–January 1966; Columbia Music Row Studios, Nashville, Tennessee; February–March 10, 1966
Released: May 16, 1966
Chart peaks: 3 (UK) 9 (US)
Personnel: Bob Dylan (v, g, k, hm); Robbie Robertson (g); Wayne Moss (g); Jerry Kennedy (g); Charlie McCoy (g, hm, t); Al Kooper (k); Hargus ‘Pig’ Robbins (k); Richard Manuel (k); Joe South (b); Henry Strzelecki (b); Rick Danko (b); Kenny Buttrey (d); Bobby Gregg (d); Wayne Butler (tb)
Track listing: Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (S); Pledging My Time; Visions Of Johanna; One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later) (S); I Want You (S); Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again; Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (S); Just Like A Woman (S); Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine); Temporary Like Achilles; Absolutely Sweet Marie; 4th Time Around; Obviously Five Believers; Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
Running time: 72.30
Current CD: Sony 5123522
Further listening: The other core works of Dylan’s electric period, Bringing It All Back Home (1965) and Highway 61 Revisited (1965), form a triple pinnacle with Blonde On Blonde.
Further reading: Chronicles (2006); The Bob Dylan Encylopedia (Michael Gray, 2006); www.bobdylan.com
Download: iTunes
Following some largely unsuccessful sessions in New York (from which only One Of Us Must Know, featuring Band members Rick Danko and Richard Manuel, eventually made the album), Dylan took producer Bob Johnston’s advice and recorded the rest of Blonde On Blonde in Nashville, taking along only guitarist Robbie Robertson and organist Al Kooper to augment a crew of Tennessee’s top session players. Used to recording three tracks in a typical three-hour session, the Nashville cats were surprised to find themselves left to their own devices for hours on end while Dylan finished writing the songs, whereupon Al Kooper – serving as musical director – would translate his ideas for the band.
‘We would come in an hour late,’ explains Kooper, ‘and I would go in and teach the first song to the band. Then he [Dylan] would arrive, and the band would be ready to play.’ Compared to the more abrasive manner of New York players, the Nashville crew took everything in their stride as Dylan searched for what he called ‘that thin, wild, mercury sound’, a more refined blend of the guitars/ piano/organ/bass/drums/harmonica set-up that had proved so effective on Highway 61 Revisited.
‘Nobody bitched or complained or rolled their eyes,’ recalls Kooper. ‘Their temperaments were fabulous – they were the most calm, at-ease guys I’d ever worked with.’ They weren’t even fazed when Dylan requested a marching band to play on Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, assuring him that if he was after a more ramshackle sound, they could ‘play pretty dumb if we put our minds to it’. With a local friend, Wayne Butler, drafted in to play trombone, and Charlie McCoy playing bass and trumpet simultaneously, the track was cut in 20 minutes – so quickly that Robbie Robertson, who had nipped out to buy cigarettes, missed the session completely.
The album’s string of love songs was generally found to be less esoteric than the texts of Highway 61 Revisited, though the dense, allusive imagery of Visions Of Johanna and Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, in particular, exercised the explicatory faculties the time he considered the album’s third epic, Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands – amazingly, cut in one perfect 11-minute take – ‘the best song I’ve ever written’.
‘It’s an amazing record, like taking two cultures and smashing them together with a huge explosion,’ reckons Al Kooper. ‘Dylan was the quintessential New York hipster – what was he doing in Nashville? But you take those two elements, pour them into a test-tube, and it just exploded.’
The Byrds
Fifth Dimension
Splicing Dylan, jazz and quantum physics. And why not?
Record label: Columbia
Produced: Allen Stanton
Recorded: CBS, Hollywood; January 25, April 29–May 25, 1966
Released: September 22, 1966 (UK) July 18, 1966 (US)
Chart peaks: 27 (UK) 24 (US)
Personnel: Roger McGuinn (g, v); David Crosby (g, v); Michael Clarke (d); Chris Hillman (b); Gene Clark (v, hm, pc); Van Dyke Parks (k); Ray Gerhardt (e)
Track listing: 5D (Fifth Dimension) (S); Wild Mountain Thyme; Mr Spaceman (S); I See You; What’s Happening?!?!; I Come And Stand At Every Door; Eight Miles High (S); Hey Joe; Captain Soul; John Riley; 2-42 Fox Trot.
Running time: 28:34
Current CD: Sony Legacy 483707 2 adds: Why; I Know My Rider; Psychodrama City; Eight Miles High (RCA studio version); Why (RCA studio version); John Riley (instrumental)
Further listening: Younger Than Yesterday (1967); The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968)
Further reading: The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited (Johnny Rogan, 1997); Mr Tambourine Man: The Story Of The Byrds’ Gene Clark (John Einerson, 2005); www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/ kadler/public_html/rmcguinn/; www.thebyrds.com
Download: HMV Digital
The Byrds faced some formidable obstacles during the recording of their third album. Their recent groundbreaking single Eight Miles High had been banned because of alleged drugs references in the title and, worse still, its composer, Gene Clark, had flown the nest. Clark had provided the key in-house songs on the first