60 years ago today: Bob Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited

The road that snaked from New Orleans through Duluth and on to the Canadian border was already mythological terrain. Elvis Presley grew up in a housing project on the Memphis stretch and Robert Johnson had conducted his most famous transaction there. Bob Dylan would recreate Highway 61 in his own image, a spooky fairground of lost souls, freaks and Americana where Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot rumble and John The Baptist tortures at the behest of the Commander-in-Chief.

A monumental record...

Inhaler:

"When we were kids discovering Dylan’s music, he was the first artist that made us realise the importance of potent lyrics and at that age got us further into the school of questioning authority. His discography was always the perfect company for us on our long drives to and from gigs, and we have so many good memories of singing ‘Highway 61...’ together in the back of the van.

"He has always had an incredible way of finding the universal in the particular and is undoubtedly one of the most influential songwriters of all time."

Pierce Turner:

"Listen to Bob Dylan singing 'Desolation Row'. It's an absolute masterpiece from beginning to end. It keeps going on and on and it keeps getting better as it does along. If you set that as a standard for yourself then fuck-all songwriters out there are reaching it."

Jim Page:

"I was riding in the car with my brother. And 'Desolation Row' came on the radio. And I had never heard him before. I had never heard of him. And my brother pulled the car over to the side of the road and said, you have to hear this. And we sat there listening to the whole song. It was like my mind was blown. Because it was a song that was not written for anybody's approval at all. That was amazing! This guy didn't care. He would stick his head right out on the chopping block and say, this is it. Go ahead and cut off my head if you want. It was amazing!"

Greil Marcus:

"...‘Like A Rolling Stone’ has a total sound. One of the metaphors that came to me when I was writing was a ship pitching on the sea in the middle of a terrible storm, that’s how it feels. It’s a sense that nothing has been predicted, that these are people playing in the dark in a way.”

Pat Carty:

"William Burroughs’ techniques were certainly an influence when [Dylan] jumped from folky troubadour to hippest man in the world sometime in 1965 and birthed his electric trilogy – Burroughs is there on ‘Tombstone Blues’..."

Listen to Highway 61 Revisited below: