Highway 61 Revisited is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 30, 1965, by Columbia Records. Dylan continued the musical approach of his previous album Bringing It All Back Home (1965), using rock musicians as his backing band on every track of the album in a further departure from his primarily acoustic folk sound, except for the closing track, the 11-minute ballad "Desolation Row". Critics have focused on the innovative way Dylan combined driving, blues-based music with the subtlety of poetry to create songs that captured the political and cultural climate of contemporary America. Author Michael Gray argued that, in an important sense, the 1960s "started" with this album.
Highway 61 Revisited
Al Kooper's improvised organ riff on "Like a Rolling Stone" has been described as "one of the great moments of pop music serendipity".
Nashville sessions musician Charlie McCoy's chance visit to New York resulted in the guitar flourishes accompanying "Desolation Row", the last track on the album.
Having toured continuously since the inception of his Never Ending Tour in June 1988, Dylan has performed "Like a Rolling Stone" more than 2,000 times in concert.
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter. Often considered to be one of the greatest songwriters in history, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 60-year career. He rose to prominence in the 1960s, when his songs "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements. Initially modeling his style on Woody Guthrie's folk songs, Robert Johnson's blues, and what he called the "architectural forms" of Hank Williams's country songs, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry". His lyrics incorporated political, social, and philosophical influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture.
Dylan in 2010
The Zimmerman family home in Hibbing, Minnesota
Joan Baez and Dylan during the civil rights "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom", August 28, 1963
Bobby Dylan, as the college yearbook lists him: St. Lawrence University, upstate New York, November 1963