But Dylan was always a restless character, who kept on immersing practically anything he would hear and liked and shaping it into not just something personal, but also unique and – magical.
Of course, that seemed to change when they went into a basement. The problem was that Dylan and The Hawks gelled so well on stage, but the studio sessions not so much. After ‘Blonde on Blonde,’ ‘ New Morning‘ was the last studio album on which Kooper was to appear. The cooperation came through Robbie Robertson, then Hawks guitarist instrumental on his previous two ‘electric’ albums (‘ Bringing It All Back Home’ and ‘ Highway 61 Revisited’), but it was also the moment when one of the musicians also instrumental for that electric Dylan sound, keyboardist Al Kooper, decided not to tour live with Dylan anymore. Dylan began writing and demoing the songs that comprise ‘ Blonde on Blonde’ at the time when he started rehearsing and playing live with a band that was then called The Hawks, later to become his staple (live) band – The Band. It is the fact that on this 72-minute epic Dylan actually brought to the main music scene a combination of musical styles that was simply more than just what was named country rock, but moreover an intricate combination that now bears the name(s) of roots music and Americana. No, it is not the fact that it was what quite a few critics considered the third part of his ‘electric’ trilogy, nor that it was one of the first double albums in modern music ( in some countries, Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention beat him to the punch with their ‘ Freak Out’ album). And that is where one of his (and everybody else’s) masterpieces ‘ Blonde on Blonde’ comes in. OK, sometimes he did, but it was with completely different eyes, ears, and voice.īut what about Dylan and Americana? Back in the Sixties practically nobody really spoke, considered, or tried to combine genres into something that currently bears that name. Once he strapped on an electric guitar he never stopped or looked back. Whether it was something that was influenced by his ever-expanding lyrical imagination or it was the other way around (or most probably both) makes no difference. While he started out as a full-fledged musician/singer/songwriter and stuck strictly to the folk part of this equation, at the well-recorded horror of folk purists at the time he started incorporating elements of other musical genres into his music. Even as a young music enthusiast when he still responded to the name of Robert Zimmerman, Dylan was completely enamoured with what was then divided into very neat genres of folk, blues, roots, and country (& western).
In the first two installments, Egan visited locations in Bearsville, New York, and NYC’s Gramercy neighborhood, respectively, with photographer Daniel Kramer. For this final video, covering the Blonde on Blonde cover, Egan remains in Manhattan but meets up with a new face - photographer Jerry Schatzberg - and heads southwest to the Meatpacking District in search of the original site. Unlike the prior two covers, the Blonde on Blonde image, a blurry shot of Dylan against a brick wall, offers very little for the would-be location sleuth to go on.For those less initiated (are there any?) or less interested in Bob Dylan, a pertinent question might come up here – when did the connection between Dylan and Americana start? The answer is quite clear – from the beginning. In the lead-up to the release, rock scholar and PopSpots founder Bob Egan is filling in another piece of the puzzle with his trilogy of mini documentaries on the album covers of these classic releases.
Bob dylan blonde on blonde album cover series#
On November 6th, The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 - the latest installment in Bob Dylan‘s sprawling Bootleg Series - will tell the complete sonic story of the songwriter’s initial trilogy of electric albums: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde.
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