For the month of January, I’m selecting some of the most memorable and influential songs of the 60’s. While they all hail from the same decade, these are some of my favorite songs of any era. They remind me that the 60’s were so much more than just Woodstock and psychedelic rock. It was a flourishing period for blues, folk, progressive and straight-ahead rock. #31DaysOf60sSongs
One of these days I need to sit down with a proper Dylan fan and ask them, “What makes him the legend you think he is?” I just think I don’t completely get Dylan. But that doesn’t stop me from liking a small crop of his songs. I think “All Along the Watchtower” and “Hurricane” are some of the greatest songs ever written. And “Mr. Tambourine Man” I’ll forever associate with the birth of my oldest child who I would try to rock to sleep with that song. Right behind these classics is the Blonde on Blonde track “Visions of Johanna”.
The song has this dual life as prose and poetry. Prose, because it’s an ongoing story that continues to unfold on the writer’s stroll through the city. Poetry, because it’s written like a poem that doesn’t need music to accompany it. Whether you hate Dylan, or don’t completely understand him (like me), “Visions of Johanna” is all the evidence you need to know that the man was indisputably a tremendously gifted songwriter. I don’t love his entire body of work – and sometimes I just can’t stand his nasal delivery. But I do respect his abilities, his contributions to music and well-crafted songs like “Visions of Johanna”.
“We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it. And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it.”