61 Highway - Martin Simpson

Advantages: Absolutely essential for anyone interested in popular music.
Disadvantages: Probably can't dance to it

...Highway 61 Revisited opens with the gun shot drum beat of 'Like A Rolling Stone', surely a major contender for best rock single of all time. After it was released in 1965, nothing was the same in US and European popular music. Although Dylan understood the British pop scene, he knew that rock music belonged to the USA and that even the Beatles were formed out of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Elvis. The sound is tough, loud guitars, organ and Dylan's unique powerful harmonica style. But most of all it is American. Making the title track Highway 61, the huge road that runs down the US is typical. Dylan's lyrics flash from one street scene to another, pausing to watch the characters living in a society where just about anything goes. Coupled with great melodies, it means there isn't a bad song on this album. It ends with Desolation Row... Read review

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...Taking the first, electric side of Bringing It All Back Home to its logical conclusion, Bob Dylan hired a full rock & roll band, featuring guitarist Michael Bloomfield, for Highway 61 Revisited. Opening with the epic "Like a Rolling Stone," Highway 61 Revisted careens through nine songs that range from reflective folk-rock ("Desolation Row") and blues ("It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry") to flat-out garage rock ("Tombstone Blues," "From a Buick 6," "Highway 61 Revisted"). Dylan had not only changed his sound, but his persona, trading the folk troubadour for a streetwise, cynical hipster. Throughout the album, he alternates between druggy, surreal imagery, which can either have a sense of menace or beauty, and the music reflects that, jumping between soothing melodies to hard, bluesy rock. And that is the most... Read review

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Advantages: Two seminal albums from rock's greatest singer-songwriter
Disadvantages: Rather an odd coupling

...In 1965 Bob Dylan went electric, stood firm when audiences tried to boo him off stage (or else turned the amps up twice as loud) and moved the goalposts again with the unforgettable 'Highway 61 Revisited'. It opens with what must be the most famous single drumbeat in rock music and Al Kooper's matchless swirling organ work on the intro to "Like a Rolling Stone", a song which still sounds just as powerful now as it did the first time round. Poet meets rock'n'roller again on the next track, the action-packed "Tombstone Blues", takes a breather for the finger-pointing "Ballad of a Thin Man" ('something's happening but you don't know what it is, do you Mr Jones?') and the bluesy "It Takes a Lot to Laugh...". There's a mesmerising, surreal quality to "Queen Jane Approximately" and "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues", and the whole record... Read review

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