Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited - Vinyl LP

2022 reissue

Its title references the road that spans North Minnesota to the Mississippi Delta, and the formative blues, country, and roots sounds connected to its existence. The highway also lays claim to towering musical myths and deaths, many tied to the blues lexicon and narrative. All figure prominently on the revolutionary beacon that is Highway 61 Revisited, the 1965 set that overturned rules, upended preexisting limits, and utterly changed everything in its path. Ranked the fourth-greatest album ever made, by Rolling Stone, its reach, power, and content boggle the mind nearly five decades after its release.

Teeming with organic energy, palpable voltage, and countless textures, the LP faithfully recreates the dimensions, vibes, and events associated with the six days Dylan and Co. spent at Columbia’s Studio A. Everything from the soundstages to dynamics, instrumental separation to balances, resonates with enormous might and insightful perspective. Wider grooves mean more information reaches your ears.

Recorded amid a time of unfathomable turmoil and frustration that witnessed Dylan booed by fans, labeled a traitor, and call into question his work, Highway 61 Revisited roars and snarls, jabs and criticizes. Its bonfire of cynicism, fury, indignation, and absurdity forever transformed rock, what it could mean, and what it could do. Supported by a thundering, commanding band that included guitarist Mike Bloomfield and organist Al Kooper, Dylan hopscotches between tempos, moods, and melodies. The symmetry of the songs references a scattered hybrid of R&B, blues, folk, soul, gospel, vaudeville, and garage rock pieces that Dylan assembles in the shape of a brilliant, mind-teasing aural puzzle.

At its core, Highway 61 Revisited is about experience, reality, and the cruelties and truths that lie outside soporific safety nets and bourgeois ideals. These reasons—and the bold musicianship, ace performances, inimitable sonics, and vast lyrical expanses—are why the album means as much today as it did in the mid-1960s.