Tag Archives: Blonde On Blonde

Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan recording sessions

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

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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:

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan recording sessions

March 8: Bob Dylan 9th recording session for Blonde On Blonde in 1966

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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)

Well I cut it in between. I was touring and I was doing it whenever I got a chance to get into the studio. So it was in the works for a while. I could only do maybe two or three songs at a time.
~Bob Dylan (to Jan Wenner – Nov 1969)

Bob-Dylan 1966

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan albums, Great albums

May 16: Bob Dylan released Blonde On Blonde in 1966

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blonde on blonde

May 16: Bob Dylan released  Blonde On Blonde in 1966

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)

Blonde on Blonde is all resonance. The songs and their stories and evocative lines and seductive melodies inhabit a realm of sound unique to this album, different from anything created before or since by Dylan or anyone else. Dylan called it “that thin, that wild mercury sound-metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up.”
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan Performing Artist I: The Early Years 1960-1973)

bob dylan blonde on blonde photshoot

To have followed up one masterpiece with another was Dylan’s history making achievement here…Where Highway 61 Revisited has Dylan exposing and confronting like a laser beam in surgery, descending from outside the sickness, Blonde on Blonde offers a persona awash inside the chaos…We’re tossed from song to song…The feel and the music are on a grand scale, and the language and delivery are a rich mixture of the visionary and the colloquial.
~Michael Gray (Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan)

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Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon

May 14: Legendary producer the late Bob Johnston was born in 1932

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Photo by Al Clayton
Photo by Al Clayton

May 14: Legendary producer  the late great Bob Johnston was born in 1932

“Is it rolling, Bob?”
– Bob Dylan at the beginning of To Be Alone With You (Nashville Skyline)

“Johnston had fire in his eyes. He had that thing that some people call ‘Momentum.’ You could see it in his face and he shared that fire, that spirit. Columbia’s leading folk and country producer, he was born one hundred years too late. He should have been wearing a wide cape, a plumed hat, and riding with his sword held high. Johnston disregarded any warning that might get in his way. … Johnston lived on low country barbecue, and he was all charm.”
– Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One

“I had the best in the world in my hand – there was no place I couldn’t go with him, so that’s where I went. I think Blonde On Blonde is the best record Dylan ever cut… Blonde On Blonde was the first symphony cut in Nashville!”
– Bob Johnston (Uncut magazine)

Donald William ‘Bob’ Johnston (born May 14, 1932, Hillsboro, Texas, died August 14, 2015) was an American record producer, best known for his work with Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, and Simon and Garfunkel.

Great interview from youtube (by Harper Simon):

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Jazz, Music Calendar

March 9: Happy 85th Birthday Ornette Coleman

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Ornette-Coleman

“Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.” ~Ornette Coleman

“We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we’ve forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We’ve separated music from life.”
~Ornette Coleman

One of the most important (and controversial) innovators of the jazz avant-garde, Ornette Coleman gained both loyal followers and lifelong detractors..
~Scott Yanow

Ornette Coleman – Gent Jazz (2010):

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