Over 15 months in 1965 and 1966 Bob Dylan released three albums (one of them a double). Before March 1965 Bob Dylan was America's top folk singer, beginning to come to wider national attention, but those months transformed him into DYLAN, an iconic figure with major cultural and musical impact.
If the 1964 arrival of The Beatles and the ensuing British Invasion revolutionized pop music and culture, 1965 was the year that revolution deepened and expanded, proving it was not a fad. The Beatles kept on the move, releasing three consecutive singles, each of which would have been considered unusual before '65 - Ticket To Ride, Help!, and Yesterday, ending the year with the release of Rubber Soul, an album much different from their earlier efforts and clearly influenced by Dylan.
The breadth of the change was also expanding. At Motown, Berry Gordy had been trying for several years to break into white radio. He'd had occasional success since 1961, and '64 was a breakthrough with the label having three #1's - Mary Wells' My Guy, and the first two hit singles from The Supremes, Where Did Our Love Go? and Baby Love (essentially the same songs with different lyrics), while Martha & The Vandellas reached #2 with Dancing In The Streets.
In 1965 Motown greatly expanded its beachhead, becoming a fixture on white AM radio, a position it maintained for the rest of the 60s. The Supremes continued with their stream of #1's, Come See About Me, Stop! In The Name of Love (their finest song), Back In My Arms Again, and I Hear A Symphony. The Four Tops (I Can't Help Myself) and The Temptations (My Girl) scored their first #1's, and a slew of other singles became hits including Ain't That Peculiar (Marvin Gaye's first hit), Uptight (Stevie Wonder's return after his voice changed), The Tracks of My Tears (The Miracles), Nowhere to Run (Martha & The Vandellas), and Shotgun (Junior Walker & The All Stars).
In Memphis, Stax, with its rougher sound, also broke through with Wilson Pickett's In The Midnight Hour and 634-5789.
The three Dylan albums were Bringing It All Back Home (March 22, 1965), Highway 61 Revisited (August 30, 1965), and Blonde on Blonde (June 20, 1966). Prior to the first of these, Dylan had released four albums, with none of them charting higher than #20. All three of the new records reached the Top Ten, with Highway 61 reaching #3. Dylan had never had a hit single, but then came Like A Rolling Stone in 1965.
There were four factors contributing to Dylan's breakthrough:
The first was a decision Dylan made in late 1964. Though he had achieved huge success and a devoted following as a folk singer he decided to turn his back on that phase of his career and change both the content of his lyrics and the way his music was played. The latter is the well-known switch from acoustic guitar and harmonica to drums, bass guitar, keyboards, and electric guitar. It didn't happen completely, one side of Bringing It All Back Home was acoustic but it was dramatic and offended part of his fan base.
Dylan always wrote on a variety of topics, but in his folk days there were a lot of"protest" songs like Masters of War, The Times They Are A-Changin, A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, and, my favorite of that genre, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. He deliberately stopped writing those types of songs, not wanted to be branded as a protest singer and wanting to chart his own path, independent of the expectations of his audience. Dylan wrote a song in '64, My Back Pages, about his feelings on political songs. There are no protest songs on the 1965 and 1966 albums. 1965 was the year the American military presence became large in Vietnam, but Dylan never wrote a song about the war nor, to my knowledge, did he every make any public statement about it.
The second was the decision by a new band, The Byrds, to record Mr Tambourine Man and release it as its first single. The founders of The Byrds, Roger McGuinn and David Crosby were folkies who were inspired by The Beatles to go electric. They knew Dylan's music and heard a pre-release version of Mr Tambourine Man which would be on Bringing It All Back Home. Adding twelve string guitar, a memorable bass riff, soaring harmonies, and dropping several verses of the original, their version of Mr Tambourine Man was released in April 1965, just after Bringing It All Back Home hit the record stores. It was a giant hit, the first Dylan song to chart and it made #1. For my 14 year old ears it was unique and thrilling, the bass and jangling twelve string sounding great on a car radio, and I got the single as well as the album of the same name when it was released in June and which contained three more Dylan covers. It brought Dylan into the mainstream.
The third was the July 20, 1965 release of Like A Rolling Stone as a single, a month in advance of Highway 61 Revisited. It became a sensation. You heard it everywhere in August and September and no one had ever heard lyrics like that before on AM radio.
Ahh you've gone to the finest schools, alright Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street
And now you're gonna have to get used to it
You say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?
And it wasn't just the lyrics, it was the way Dylan sang them with the band behind him on fire, never letting up. The single was the same length as the album cut, six minutes, but to conform to current radio practices, most stations just played the first two verses making it three minutes long. He followed it up with another hit (not included on an album), Positively 4th Street, the most scathing put-down song in pop history.
I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you
The success of Mr Tambourine Man and Like A Rolling Stone led to the final step. For about a year it seemed like everyone in pop music was releasing covers of Dylan songs, many of which became big sellers. We had hits like All I Really Want To Do by Cher, It Ain't Me Babe by The Turtles (also recorded by Johnny Cash and June Carter), and Blowin' In The Wind by Stevie Wonder. Even Elvis Presley got into the act, recording a beautiful version of an early Dylan ballad, Tomorrow Is A Long Time.
Dylan even influenced music that wasn't a cover. Just after Blonde On Blonde came out in '66, the Four Tops released Reach Out (I'll Be There), my favorite Motown tune and a #1 song, written by the great Motown hitmakers Holland-Dozier-Holland. While researching the background of the song, I discovered the HDH had been inspired by Like A Rolling Stone. Dylan's half-singing, half speaking vocal was their model for the melody, which they pitched at the top of singer Levi Stubbs' range causing him to adopt the same singing/speaking approach, almost preaching, just like Dylan. The pulsating rhythm section was also modeled on the relentless approach of Dylan's backing band.
The quality of the songs from those three albums is also impressive. Along with those already mentioned here are some other notables:
Bringing It All Back Home
Subterranean Homesick Blues
She Belongs To Me
Maggie's Farm
It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding ("even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked")
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Highway 61 Revisited
Ballad of a Thin Man
Highway 61
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Queen Jane Approximately
Desolation Row ("they're selling postcards of the hanging")
Blonde On Blonde
Visions of Johanna
I Want You
Just Like A Woman
Absolutely Sweet Marie
Most Likely You Go Your Way
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again (if you want to know the inspiration for the lyrics and music of every early Bruce Springsteen song, listen to this one)
After Blonde on Blonde, Dylan decided once again, as he'd done in late '64, that he needed a change. He wanted to slow down and spend time with his wife and young children in Woodstock, New York. In the fall of '66 it was announced he'd been injured in a motorcycle accident and would be taking some time off to recover. He would not release another album until December 1967; John Wesley Harding, a very laid back, mostly acoustic record. He also began working on other new material with the members of what later became The Band in the basement of the pink house they rented in Woodstock. The recordings of those sessions, which generated further Dylan classics, would be released years later as The Basement Tapes.
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