Blonde on Blonde
If you’re in a dark room, crammed up with colorful antibiotic pills and the only access to the outside world is either a broken down CD player or a cassette player that blurts out tapes in high speed, do not listen to this album.
Nothing beats personal experience. Especially the ugly ones
So there I was, eighteen years old in the summer of 1999. I didn’t have a care in the world.. My record collection had grown from a single tape of a Doors compilation to a somber small collection of Rolling stones, Springsteen and yeah the ever popular U2.
So in this sweat induced summer of discovery one night I land up at the doorstep of my cousin who is Ten years my senior. A naval dropout, a social miscast an inducer of philosophy, a guitar player who could actually play. a keeper, a finder. He had all the trappings of being utterly cool and I was his biggest fan.
We talked all night. About obscure blues players and rock n roll fables. We listened to strange bands called Velvet underground and the Grateful dead and shared smokes. We talked about everything and anything an eighteen and a 28 year old could possibly talk about and then when dawn came and it was time to leave, He gave me a tape and told me that it was time I gave it a listen. And as with many things that happen at eighteen when puberty stalls and maturity begins. This tape with an inscription that said “Blonde on Blonde” changed my life.
But I didn’t listen to it. I was more interested in cooler things.
That all changed when I got the flu that summer.
Its dark and only a night lamp jumps to attention whenever I open my eyes. It’s difficult to breath and the bed sheet stinks of mucus. My eyes are too heavy to read anything and my head hurts if I think of television. My hand slips to a tape lying near the tape recorder. I put it on and close my eyes.
You do not expect the first song to be an aural circus. Who in his right mind would listen to this song at this moment? It’s called “Rainy day women 12 and 35.” You expect some kind of sweet lonesome duet not weird bass drums playing full centre and people laughing like somebody just died.
Bob Dylan and this carnival fair of a band seem to have a lot of fun. But your not, it’s like some weird nightmare out of Disneyworld. You want to get out but you can’t.
And then more strangeness hits you. A song called “Leopard skin pill box hat” appears. The band has gone into some quirky planet where the blues are extremely funny and savage lyrical content is thrown out of the window onto your head.
“Stuck inside a mobile” is one of the few songs you do not want to put on in a car especially with somebody you don’t really like. Trust me
But things change quickly. Through a course of two more songs and apparently more discomfort this comes, there is none more absorbing imagery in a song than “Visions of Johanna”. No one has ever really understood it. And that night I didn’t either. About two lovers or a triangle of three. Dylan the jester, Dylan the fool becomes a barrage of words, a poet of some other dimension a human that understands that emotional blackout like no one else, listen to “Visions of Johanna”
And then sometimes in an album beauty comes and holds ambiguity by its tiny finger. That night melody was at its purest with “Fourth time around”
And then most haunting of love songs came. Among many Dylan myths they say he wrote “Sad eyed of the lowlands” about his wife Sarah keyed up in some lonely hotel room. But it seemed like she was even there with him then, like all muses are.
The tape died somewhere in the middle of the night and I never recovered. It’s been six years since I first listened to that tape.
There is a lot of information out there of what all these songs really mean, of how Dylan is elusive and that listening to Blonde on Blonde is difficult and how most people don’t understand it.
To be honest I am one of those. I don’t understand what they all mean. I have become frustrated listening to it many times. I dream sometimes that not listening to Blonde on Blonde or Bob Dylan would have made life much easier.
But you know what? When I come home tired and depressed. When I hit the bed and stare at the ceiling. When everything makes perfect sense and then doesn’t. When it hurts and you can literally feel those bruises, I put on that tape. I put on Blonde on Blonde and then greatness comes because greatness comes not when things go always good for you, but the greatness comes when you are really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes; and the only person that I think really understood that was Bob Dylan and his words on Blonde on Blonde.
-Ali Sultan
Tags: Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde
Dolphin says:
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited was the first one i ever listened to.i was hooked from then on.:smile:
His songs are more political in nature. And who can ever forget Bowin’ In The Wind,Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door …….haunting
May 5th, 2006 at 04:59 pm
anirudh says:
listening to tapes eh..? tell you what back summer last year i had nothing to play music of ma choice..i mean i just had a radio and i used to jump every now amd then when a song of ma liking was played on any station..the only possesion where i cud play tapes was ma dad’s car stero..and at times when i felt low(also cos i had nothing to play music on)..i used to go and sit in ma da’s car and play on ma favourite tape ever..lucky ali’s aks…and when the parkin lot’s power used to be out i wished it never comes…had done dat ‘n’ no of times…and now when i have an 80 gb hard disk full of music i still feel nothing can ever come near to that…and the songs…every word and note was magic..still spellbound..!
May 5th, 2006 at 09:19 pm
Baba says:
hey guys:) dont worry baba is my pet name. yeah
dolphin: yaar why do you have to have a fish name?
ok it also is extremely sexy that i dont have any idea waht your real name is:) (iam straight and if your a woman that is:)
oh lord highway 61! who can forget the abraham part. cracks me up all the time. listn to visions of johanna-there is no other song!
anirudh: man tell you what i have only brought 2 cds in my whole life. loathe everything except tape. its just purely sexual holding one:) and yeah lahore mein the dumbest thing check this out:
disc jockeys call themselves “radio jockeys”
yaar that is technically impossible
you can jockey a horse
a tape
a disc
a mp3
but radio?
the cool news is this in a few days ill be on air
got the dream job in a radio station:)
ill be posting the link and the time you guys can hear it:)
chills and pills if your depressed:0
Ali
May 5th, 2006 at 09:30 pm
anirudh says:
congrats man…and bout radio jockeys..i also laugh out everytime ern i hear dat term ..!
May 6th, 2006 at 11:08 am
neha says:
oh cool… nice to hear that, and yeah do NOT forget about putting that link here. Some times music makes more sense than anything else in the words. I once clung to a broken record for two weeks (that was the time when i used to listen to Ghulam Ali on my grandfather’s gramophone) i think i have never clung on that desperately to anything or anyone that desperately ever since. That was the first time i realized that what is broke, is broke… Music, the things it teaches you…
May 6th, 2006 at 01:29 pm
Sarika says:
Q.why boys laugh on blonde joke
A. because they can understand easly
May 18th, 2006 at 11:42 pm