Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan (1966)

There’s a common trope in rock critic lore about the epic, unfocused, hodge podge but brilliant double LP by an artist who couldn’t be told no.

The Stones have Exile On Mainstreet. The Beatles had the White Album. Elton John had Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Fleetwood Mac had Tusk.

This is Dylan’s entry in the canon, and it does have some of the same tendencies to long-windedness and grandiosity. But what you don’t find here is very much wasted space.

About half the tracks here were staples of his live sets over the decades, even lately when he easily has a repertoire of over 1000 songs he might reasonably perform. Some of his biggest and most recognizable tracks are here. It’s part of the “holy trilogy” of gigantic-rock-star era of “electric Dylan” albums. If you ask for an association about Dylan from pretty much any random dipshit, they’ll likely come up with either Just Like A Woman (if they’re a classy dipshit) or mimic the delivery of “Everybody must get stoned!” from Rainy Day Women (if they’re just a run-of-the-mill dipshit)

Dylan himself said several times that this was the album where he got closest to the sound he envisioned. There’s a golden glow to a lot of the tracks. Even though they’re messy and churning in their details, the overall effect is what he described as “thin, wild mercury music.” No you don’t know what that means and neither does anybody else. But that’s The Poet for you.