March 9: Bob Dylan’s 10th (and final) Blonde On Blonde recording session in 1966





blonde on blonde

The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It’s that thin, that wild mercury sound. It’s metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up. That’s my particular sound.
~Bob Dylan (to Ron Rosenbaum – Nov 1977)

He had a piano in his room at the hotel and during the day I would go up there and he would teach me a song. I would be like a cassette machine. I would play the song over and over on the piano for him. This served a double purpose. One, he could concentrate on writing the lyrics and didn’t have to mess with playing the piano; two, I could go to the studio early that night and teach it to the band before he even got there, so they could be playing the song before he even walked through the door.
~Al Kooper (talking about BoB recording sessions)

bob dylan al kooper 1966

Columbia Music Row Studios
Nashville, Tennessee
9-10 March 1966

Produced by Bob Johnston

Songs:

  1. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)
    (recorded  March 9, 6-9 pm)
    It also served as the first and last song on most nights of the 1974 tour, which announced his live return. Between that false dawn and the start of the Never Ending Tour, fourteen years later, it was only tried out during rehearsals for a TV “in concert” in April 1976 and at rehearsals for the 1978 world tour, never gaining live relief. It was eventually restored to performance duties in 1989, initially as a show opener. By then time had telled who’d been felled.
    ~Clinton Heylin (Revolution in the air)
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  2. Temporary Like Achilles
    (recorded March 9, 9-12 pm)
    Standing on your window, honey
    Yes, I’ve been here before
    Feeling so harmless
    I’m looking at your second door
    How come you don’t send me no regards?
    You know I want your lovin’
    Honey, why are you so hard?
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  3. Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
    (recorded March 10, 12-3 am)
    Rainy Day Women happens to deal with a minority of, you know, cripples and orientals and, uh, you know, and the world in which they live, you realize, you know, you understand, you know. It’s another sort of a North Mexican kind of a thing, uh, very protesty. Very, very protesty. And, uh, one of the protestiest of all things I ever protested against in my protest years. But, uh…
    ~Bob Dylan (to Klas Burling – April 1966)
  4. Obviously Five Believers
    (recorded March 10, 12-3 am)
    …on that blues-soaked album, Blonde on Blonde. ‘Obviously 5 Believers’ is a filler track on the album, with a repetitive and undistinguished lyric..
    ~Michael Gray (BD Encyclopedia)
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  5. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
    (recorded March 10, 12-3 am)
    ..a nice, brash, somewhat ugly (sarcastic, rude, to my mind the only mean-spirited song on the album) transition between the bright, extroverted beauty of “I wan’t you”/”Memphis Blues Again” and the warm, enveloping beauty of “Just Like A Woman”.. “Leopard-Skin Pill-box hat” is a misogynous belly laugh..
    ~Paul Williams (BD Performing Artist 1960-73)


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  6. I Want You
    (recorded March 10, 3-7 am)
    The Dylan who delivers the chorus is hurtin’. The need is real—real enough for Dylan to generally give the song an inflection of real interest when he performs it. The gorgeous tune helps, being a perfect illustration of what he was talking about when he told one reporter, as he started work on Blonde on Blonde, that he tended to “think of [a song] in terms of a whole thing. It’s not just pretty words to a tune or putting tunes to words. . . . [It’s] the words and the music [together]—I can hear the sound of what I want to say.”
    ~Clinton Heylin (Revolution in the air)

bob dylan 1966 5

Musicians:

  • Bob Dylan (guitar, harmonica, vocal)
  • Charlie McCoy (guitar)
  • Robbie Robertson (guitar)
  • Wayne Moss (guitar)
  • Joe South (guitar, bass)
  • Al Kooper (organ)
  • Henry Strzelecki (bass)
  • Kenneth Buttrey (drums)

-Egil

5 thoughts on “March 9: Bob Dylan’s 10th (and final) Blonde On Blonde recording session in 1966”

  1. Michael Gray’s indifferent view on OBVIOUSLY FIVE BELIEVERS means he didn’t get it; he didn’t FEEL it; one of the most bad-assed, funkified, and groove-soaked rave-ups by Dylan, or any other blues-steeped musician. Listen with headphones a few times…you could never soak it all in in one spin….that sucker’s LOADED…..EricScottBloom aka MOD~

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