Blonde On Blonde - Songs

Songs

"Rainy Day Women #12 and 35"

According to author Andy Gill, by starting his new album with what sounded like "a demented marching-band...staffed by crazy people out of their mind on loco-weed", Dylan delivered his biggest shock yet for his former folkie fans. The elaborate puns on getting stoned combine a sense of paranoiac persecution with "nudge-nudge wink-wink bohemian hedonism". Heylin points out that the Old Testament connotations of getting stoned made the Salvation Army-style musical backing seem like a good joke. The enigmatic title came about, Heylin suggests, because Dylan knew a song entitled "everybody must get stoned" would be kept off the airwaves. Heylin links the title to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 15: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike." Released as a single on March 22, 1966, "Rainy Day Women" reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart, and No. 7 in the UK.

"Pledging My Time"

Following the good-time fun of "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35", the Chicago blues-influenced "Pledging My Time" sets the somber tone that runs through the album. It draws on several traditional blues songs, including Elmore James' recording of "It Hurts Me Too". For critic Michael Gray, the lines "Somebody got lucky but it was an accident" echo the lines "Some joker got lucky, stole her back again" from Robert Johnson's "Come On in My Kitchen", which is itself an echo of the Skip James 1931 recording "Devil Got My Woman". Gray suggests that "the gulping movements of the melodic phrases" derive from the melody of "Sitting on Top of the World", recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930. The couplet at the end of each verse expresses the theme: a pledge made to a prospective lover in hopes she "will come through, too". Besides Dylan's vocals and improvised harmonica breaks, the song's sound is defined by Robbie Robertson's guitar, Hargus "Pig" Robbins's blues piano and Ken Buttrey's snare drum rolls. The song was released in edited form as the B-side of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" in March.

"Visions of Johanna"
"Visions of Johanna" Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or does not have any supported player.
You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser. Wilfrid Mellers describes "Visions of Johanna" as one of Dylan's finest songs poetically. For Mellers, "The blurring of time and consciousness is marvelously realized...when Johanna becomes a mythic femme fatale as well as a real woman, floating in and out of the 'museums where infinity goes up on trial'."

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