Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited

… And speaking of records you don't need to play (see yesterday), I wouldn't mind much if I never heard Like a Rolling Stone again before I die; it's not even in my top 50 Dylan songs. I'll probably listen to it a couple of times when I finally get round to reading Greil Marcus' book about it, but I wonder if all this raking over old ground really helps bring it to life, or whether it just wears it out.

On the radio I've heard DJs fetishising not just the song, but the strike of the snare drum that opens the song, as though it were the moment that brought down the walls of Jericho, and not just a bloke trying to get on with his job so he could get away to the bar as early as possible. (And remember when we saw Dylan at Wembley Stadium in 1984, with Mick Taylor squirting tedious and inane solos over Rolling Stone and everything else?)

Just to think: at the time Like a Rolling Stone was released, I was busy being born.

So the only real joy I got out of digging out my 20+ year old copy of this was in the songs that aren't ubiquitously featured as part of an anniversary of something that no-one made much of a fuss about at the time. Queen Jane Approximately, It Takes a Lot to Laugh…, From a Buick 6 — and Desolation Row, well, it's so hard to maintain attention all the way through that you can often hear something you haven't fully noticed before.

Yo La Tengo did a great version of It Takes a Lot to Laugh… with Georgia singing. John Peel played it in one of his late 1999 programmes, but I've never been able to track it down. Now that I would like to hear again before I die.

MusicBrainz entry for this album