Hello, my name's Ben Barrel and welcome back to Bob Dylan album by album, a podcast that takes an in-depth look at each Bob Dylan's studio recording record by record.

Thank you to everyone that has supported the podcast this week. Hello to Mick and String Bean. What a great name. Jimmy and Noel and Peter and also Leona 46. I won't read any more of email address. That's what we need to know.

Thank you to you. You too can support the podcast by buying me a coffee. There's a link as usual

in the episode description. If you reviewed the show this week and you dropped in a little

subtle Bob Dylan reference, then good work. I will give you a name check at the end of this episode.

But let's not waste any more time.

Let's get straight back into this classic album and have a look at a couple more tracks from it.

And also the sonic identity of the record, too.

This is part number four on Highway 61 Revisited.

Oh, Howard just pointed with his gun and said that way down Highway 61. Yeah. visited.

Listening to this album now has reminded me just how compact and cohesive it is.

It isn't lengthy like its successor and it knows what it wants to be, unlike its predecessor.

Whilst for me, the record never quite has the sonic intrigue of blonde-on-blond. I mean, that sound is almost undefinable. It's murky, it's thin,

and it's wild, and it's mercury, as it's been described. This is a much cleaner affair. Whereas I've

always seen Blond-on-Blon as a night-time album in the haze of the midnight hour, this feels like the early

evening. Things are just starting to get going. So while the Sonics might not be as advanced

as the next record, at the time, this was as far as Bob had gone. He'd fully shared the acoustic

sound and this rock and roll phase was now in full swing. It feels like it wasn't too far away

from say Willie Dixon and Backdoor Man.

But this is not a parody. This is Dylan's rock and roll, and it's very distinctive.

For a start, we have that honky-tonk barrel piano sound I've mentioned many, many times before.

Bob stuck metal thumbtacks into the felt pads on the hammers in the piano to get that sound,

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