Bob Dylan's BLONDE ON BLONDE is a great rock album, and like all great rock albums, it's about love. The only difference between this and the others is other songwriters don't have Dylan's deep rooted pessimism. Apart from John Lennon, Dylan is the only great songwriter who can denounce love, portray the fairer sex as cold-hearted and still be one of the most romantic songwriters to ever have lived. There is a melancholy in his pro-love songs that only go to further enhance the emotion when his anti-love songs kick in. He has you gripped by fancy in one song of how great the world is, how content in love he is, only to rip out your heart with a next song of incidents you can't help but relate to. As this album testifies, he truly is a master of words, a poet of the heart.

1. 'Rainy Day Women Nos 12 & 35.'

The album starts with this highly misunderstood song, which at first hearing might perhaps give you second thoughts as to Dylan being a great poet, but it is in fact a craftily constructed, purposely wild and messy jam between Dylan and his distinguished session musicians that included Robbie Robertson of The Band. "Well, they'll stone you and then say that it's the end, they'll stone you and then they'll come back again, they'll stone you when you're riding in your car, they'll stone you when you're playing your guitar..." What first appear to be absurd lyrics condoning the smoking of pot is in fact referring to the influence of women. "They'll stone you when you're at the breakfast table, they'll stone you when you are young and able, they stone you when you're trying to make a buck, they'll stone you and then they'll say good luck..." But this pessimistic view of women and the heartache they can bring is always justified at the end of each verse with his acceptance that he wouldn't be without them.

2. 'Pledging My Time'

A beautiful and intimate declaration from Dylan that he would be willing to give his all to someone he loves.

3. 'Visions of Johanna'

In this sombre ballad an anxious Dylan waits for his girl to come back late one night, determined not to let his tormenting visions of what she must be doing take over him. "Ghosts of electricity howl in the bones of her face, well these visions of Johanna have not taken my place." But the song ends in defeat when he sings "the harmonica's playing, the skeleton key's in the rain, and these visions of Johanna are now all that remain."

4. 'One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)'

Following after that long night of misery we learn now that she did eventually come back... but not alone. "When I saw you say goodbye to your friend and smile, I thought that it was well understood that you'd be coming back in a little while, I didn't know you were saying goodbye for good." So four songs into the album and what romance there might have been is all over.

5. 'I Want You'

In the grand old tradition of you don't know what you've got until it's gone, Dylan now professes his longing for his love, a crying declaration all the more heartfelt when you are aware of the different style of song, his usual pinpoint sarcasm, that is here replaced with a direct plea. Any anger we might feel towards his lover for having hurt him is therefore replaced with our pleading with him, appealing on his behalf.

6. 'Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again'

Dylan comes to terms with her absence through this song's brilliant repetitive nature, perfectly conveying the hundred and one thoughts that must be running through his mind as the rejected lover. The universal frustration he feels as relationships never seem to go right is heightened through his despairing lyrics. He can't help reminding himself of her, reading Shakespeare to him or seeing other women who resemble her. He worries about what she must be saying and torments himself by thinking of their past conversations. At one point in the song his grandfather dies but because his heart has been deadened he feels next to nothing of the loss. He can only imagine her getting married to her lover and sneaking into the ceremony to watch. He even tries easing the pain with drugs and prostitution. He is a mess and with such bottled-up frustration resentment is its natural accompaniment.

7. 'Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat'

A hilarious attack on her fashion, "well you look so pretty in it, honey, can I jump on it sometime, yes I just want to see if it's really that expensive kind, you know it balances on your head like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine", but his attempts at humouring himself never hides the underlying loss he feels. "Well I asked the doctor if I could see you, it's bad for your health, he said, yes I disobeyed his orders, I came to see you but I found him there instead." The humour: "you know I don't mind you cheating on me, but I sure wish he'd take that off his head, your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat." The loss: "I see you got a new boyfriend, no I never seen him before, but I seen you making love with him, you forgot to close the garage door". The humour: "you might think he loves you for your money, but I know what he really loves you for, it's your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat". This battle of his desperation goes on until all that is left is the trail of animosity.

8. 'Just Like A Woman'

The bitterness subsided, the heartache diminished, all he's left with now is himself as he views the world as an outsider, a place he "doesn't fit", noted right from the start with his declaration of "nobody feels any pain..."

9. 'Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine'

Taking stock of himself, he wakes up one morning to a brand new day. "You say my kisses are not like his, but this time I'm not gonna to tell you why that is, I'm just gonna let you pass." He has decided not to let the pain control him anymore, to wash his hands not of love, but of her. "I just can't do what I done before, I just can't beg you anymore, I'm gonna let you pass, and I'll go last, and time will tell who has fell, and who's been left behind, when you go your way and I go mine."

10. 'Temporary Like Achilles'

Temporary is the key word here, as his brand new revitalised self is turned inside out. He now finds himself spending the whole of his days wondering about her and even watching her from afar, and due to his behaviour towards her previously she takes no interest whatsoever in his existence, no sympathy, but chooses to go on with her life. "Standing on your window, honey, yes I've been here before, feeling so harmless, I'm looking at your second door, how come you don't send me no regards? You know I want your loving, honey, why are you so hard?"

11. 'Absolutely Sweet Marie'

Wondering where she might be and what, without him, she must be doing, he adopts a new resolution that although he's still suffering he is infinitely more capable of coping with his heartache. "Well, anybody can be like me, obviously, but then again, not too many can be like you, fortunately." Humour aside, he's still where he was, and you can't help but feel for him. "Well I've been in jail, where all the males showed that a man can't give his address to bad company, and now I stand here looking at your yellow railroad, in the ruins of your balcony."

12. '4th Time Around'

A beautiful epic, this is the masterpiece of a masterpiece, which fills in so many gaps, so many unanswered questions that you can listen to it countless of times. It has Dylan and his lost love suddenly making love and after asking her why she did it, after all that had happened between them. "It was then that I got up to leave but she said don't forget, everybody must give something back for something they get". It is a cruel end to his suffering, then, being told she was with him again only through her motives of pity. She then breaks down in a fit of anger, a flurry of hysterical tears, in which time Dylan looks around her home and learns the real reason she slept with him. The man she left him for, the cause of his own endured heartache, has now left her for another woman, and it was out of pity for herself, not for him, that she slept with him. Dylan, as expected, is not however hurt but philosophical about the whole affair, realising that love does exist, it just doesn't always get it right first, second, third or even fourth time around.

13. Obviously 5 Believers'

The title of this song is a clear continuation of the latter, whereupon Dylan and his love having now crossed the same path again, he is convinced that, even after all her cheating in the past, a fifth time is possible to make love work, and that if not they can always just be friends. "Fifteen jugglers, fifteen jugglers, five believers, five believers, all dressed like men, tell your momma not to worry, because you're just my friend."

14. 'Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands'

The finale is a marathon of a song that has him trying to convince her that they are right for each other whilst iterating how everything has ended through his usual sharp-eyed third-person perspective. Everything from the miserable way she lives, now compared to before, to the child she raises alone, "the child of the hoodlum". Maybe as a way to add resonance to this conclusion she is not only living a sad and lonely life raising her fatherless child alone, but a sorry life not unfamiliar to the one we lived with Dylan because of her. You can call this payback on Dylan's part, you can call it the spite she shown him in making love to him in pity, but whatever you call it he continues to show her his love, using the grim examples of her life now to prove that they're really meant to be together after all. And as love is left open to everyone, we're not told whether she accepts or not, whether they live happily ever after, together or apart.

The same way Martin Scorsese has made masterpieces of a male's role in the modern world, or George Orwell wrote masterpieces of social decline, Bob Dylan has done the same more than once with the influence of woman, and, like his other masterpieces, within BLONDE ON BLONDE's context of blues, rock, folk and country the music matches the inventiveness of his lyrics, songs not so direct as to go straight to number one in the charts, but instead pieces that fit together to form this beautiful, beautiful jigsaw of an album. Astonishing.