The Danger Of The Double Album

Blonde On Blonde. I'm sure there are many obsessives around who will know why the album is called that but the title isn't of any great lasting significance. Most definitely a rock band album and perhaps at the height of any commercial success Dylan enjoyed in terms of record sales and the big record company push. This change is evident from the packaging. Gone are any of Dylan's poems or prose, to be replaced by a selection of quirky and soulful looking photographs. Originally a double vinyl album, although it now fits comfortably onto a single cd, it has some of the rambling self indulgence that double albums often brought. The band support from the Nashville Area Code musicians and such as Al Kooper and Jaime Robertson ( That's "Robbie" isn't it ? ) is excellent but not always necessarily appropriate. There are some disposable tracks here to my ears ( among them well known ones such as Just Like a Woman and I Want You ) but of course still some classics. There are the nonsense party time Rainy Day Women and Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat, the blues band style Pledging My Time and Obviously 5 Believers and the stream of consciousness surreal story epic that is Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again. And of course the wonderful Visions of Johanna and Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, the latter showing a first indication of his deliberate change of voice style that was demonstrated much later in Nashville Skyline.