HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED
Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde. Surely, that eighteen-month stretch from the start of 1965 to the middle of 1966 was - and will remain - the most creative and influential period in Dylan's career. During this time he was not only producing ground-breaking works at a phenomenal rate, but also getting them heard by a larger audience than any artist had ever had available before. His influence could be heard everywhere, from The Beatles to The Golden Gate Strings.
But it seems that Dylan was moving so fast in this period that his record company could barely keep up with him, and the result was an unparalleled degree of confusion and inconsistency in the production and packaging of his recorded work. I have already written about Blonde On Blonde, the most confused release of all; the album which preceded it, Highway 61 Revisited, comes in a clear second.
Like nearly all of Dylan's 1960s albums it has a split personality, divided between the once-definitive mono version and the now ubiquitous stereo release. However, unlike Blonde On Blonde, which at the latest count has had two mono, five stereo and one surround mix, Highway 61 Revisited appears only to have one of each. The variation has come in different ways: an occasionally-appearing out-take, remasterings from different generation tapes, different sleeve designs and content. This article attempts to document the album's history.
As with the earlier Blonde On Blonde article, I make no claims of completeness or total accuracy. Rather, this is intended to be a structured presentation of all the information I can muster at this point in time, based on my own research and listening. I will be very happy to keep building on this foundation as further information becomes available. If you have any corrections or further information, please do send them to rogerfordxblueyonder.co.uk , replacing the x with an at-sign.
A few parameters:
1. I have generally confined discussion to the US and UK issues of the album, with one or two notable exceptions. I am aware that there are countless editions from other countries, some with changes to the sleeve design and occasionally even to the album title. But these alterations are just matters of local marketing policy, and appear to reflect no variation in Dylan's artistic intentions. As far as I am aware there is no further variation in musical content.
2. I have also generally ignored releases in different formats such as tape or mini-disc, or alternate mixes and remasterings of individual tracks from Highway 61 Revisited which have appeared on promotional releases or anthologies.
3. Although the number of released alternate mixes of the album is relatively low, I have included in the discussion a couple of tapes of the album's songs which came out of the mixing process and which have circulated widely in tape and bootleg form. I do appreciate that these cannot be judged in the same light as officially released versions of the album, but they fit well into the article and will, I suspect, be of interest to readers.
Part
I: History
Recording
Like Dylan's previous albums, Highway 61 Revisited was recorded entirely at Columbia's Studio A in New York. The first sessions, on June 15 and 16, were produced by Tom Wilson, who had handled all of Dylan's sessions for the previous two years. The musicians too were mostly chosen from those who had accompanied Dylan five months earlier on Bringing It All Back Home, but with the key additions of Mike Bloomfield (invited to play) and Al Kooper (invited to watch). While these sessions yielded Dylan's greatest single, "Like A Rolling Stone", this was the only track which made it to the final LP. Indeed, it seems likely that these June sessions were primarily intended for the recording of the single rather than for work on the next album. Two other songs were recorded, "Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence" and an early version of "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry", maybe as potential B-sides for the single. However, Dylan cannot have been happy with either song, as he ended up using "Gates of Eden", a track from his previous album, as the single's flip side, and the rejected songs only saw official release in 1991 on The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3. Note
Work on the album proper began just after the Newport Folk Festival, on July 29, and continued through until August 4. Bob Johnston replaced Tom Wilson as producer, and some of the ex-Bringing It All Back Home musicians departed. Some new studio musicians were brought in, perhaps at Bob Johnston's behest; Charlie McCoy was hired late on to do the memorable second guitar part on "Desolation Row", and the Chambers Brothers to try overdubbing gospel-style backing vocals on the refrains of "Tombstone Blues".Note Details of the dates, the musicians and the songs recorded have been well documented by Michael Krogsgaard, working from the records in Sony's archives - see the reference in Appendix D.
Mixing
A tape of rough mono mixes from the album sessions has been in circulation since the mid-1970s, and was later bootlegged on Highway 61 Revisited Again. This tape contains the released take of "Like A Rolling Stone" plus one take of each of the songs recorded at the second group of sessions, including "Positively 4th Street" and "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window". It was sent to Witmark and Sons, most likely for the purpose of registering this new set of songs for copyright, and was probably never intended to reflect the final content or running order of the album.Note It sounds very much a rough mix compared with the released mono album, and the ends of the tracks are not faded properly - most of them just go on until the musicians run out of steam, or are abruptly cut.Note More significant than the extended endings is the fact that the tape includes performances of "Crawl Out Your Window" and "Desolation Row" which have not appeared elsewhere.
The mono album proper was probably mixed under the direction of Dylan and Bob Johnston in the week or so following the recording sessions. Completed mixes appear to have been compiled on a master reel with the Columbia job number SW 98151.Note Acetates documented as having been derived from this tape were given to Dylan's friend Emmett Grogan, and recordings of these passed into circulation some years ago. This set contains all the songs from the July-August sessions, but this time includes the version of "Desolation Row" as included in the album, and the more polished take of "Crawl Out Your Window" which was later accidentally released as a single under the title "Positively 4th Street".Note The real "4th Street" is also present, in the mono mix eventually released as a single. The only other surprise is that "Tombstone Blues" has a much longer fade than on the released mono album; otherwise these appear to be the final mono mixes.
This SW 98151 compilation may perhaps, therefore have functioned as the pool of candidate tracks for the album.Note It's interesting that, at least at the time it was transferred to acetate, the set apparently did not include "Like A Rolling Stone"; perhaps it was not originally intended to go on the album, having already been out for a month or so as a single.Note However, in the end it was "Crawl Out Your Window" and "Positively 4th Street" that failed to make the final running order, the latter presumably being held back to serve as Dylan's next single. "Like A Rolling Stone" became the album's opener, in the same mono mix as the single. The track was of course remixed, with the other eight songs, for the stereo album.
Dylan's involvement in the mixing of the stereo version of the album is very questionable, given its many differences from the mono version. To begin with, the wrong take of "From A Buick 6" was used for the initial US stereo release - surely not a mistake Dylan would have made if he had been involved in the process. The editing of the ends of the tracks is also a lot less tidy on the stereo album. Perhaps whoever made the stereo mix felt they could take some liberties with extended fade-outs given that the stereo version was less likely to be used for radio airplay. See the separate article on mono and stereo records for a more detailed discussion of relevant historical and technical issues.
The track-by-track differences between the rough mix and the released mono and stereo mixes are detailed in Part II of this essay.
Vinyl Releases
The album was released in the US at the very end of August 1965; the official release date is given by Sony as August 30, three days after Dylan's celebrated concert at the Forest Hills tennis stadium. In Britain the album appeared sometime in September, but here the stereo edition contained the same version of "From A Buick 6" as the mono. The early US stereo version with the alternate take of this song seems to have been pressed in substantial numbers (any copy with a matrix number ending -1A to -1C apparently contains the alternate take), but of course thirty-five years later good copies are hard to find. However, the US was not the only country where the alternate take appeared: it reportedly also appeared on some early stereo copies in Canada, and in Japan it was used for all vinyl issues of the album right through into the 1980s at least. I've yet to find any evidence to support rumours that the alternate take also appeared on some early US mono copies of the album; first pressings of the mono album all seem to contain the standard take of the song.
The mono version of the album seems to have been deleted in 1968 in the US, and in 1969 in the UK, but in some countries - Italy, at least - the mono Dylan LPs remained in print until the latter half of the 1970s. Recently (May 2001) the mono Highway 61 Revisited has been reissued by American label Sundazed as part of their programme of Dylan reissues on 180g vinyl.
The stereo LP appeared until quite recently to be still in production in the US; certainly, new US copies turned up sporadically in some English record shops; possibly it is now finally deleted. However, there have been two recent vinyl editions, both produced by English audiophile reissue companies: the first by Absolute Analogue (now apparently out of print) and the second by Simply Vinyl. Each of these comprised the regular stereo version of the album, pressed on high-grade 180g vinyl, reportedly from the UK copy of the stereo master tape.
CD Releases
Highway 61 Revisited was one of the first Dylan albums to be issued on CD, in April 1984. Whereas Blonde On Blonde, released on CD three years later, was remixed for CD from the 4-track studio master tapes, Highway 61 Revisited appears to have been mastered from tapes originally used for cutting stereo LPs. The problem with this approach was that the CD inherited a sound which was severely compromised by the limitations of 1960s stereo vinyl-cutting technology. Bass, in particular, had to be restricted - see the separate article on mono and stereo records.
In 1991 Steve Hoffman of DCC Compact Classics negotiated with Sony/Columbia for a licence to release Highway 61 Revisited in DCC's series of audiophile gold CDs. His original ambition was to remaster both the mono and stereo versions of the album and include some of the session out-takes (including "Positively 4th Street"). Dylan's management, though, reportedly refused permission for him to do anything other than the standard stereo album, with no alterations - not even extra photos on the sleeve. However, what Hoffman proceeded to do within these limits was an object lesson in remastering, so I'm going to go into some detail about it; bear with me.
Hoffman spent a long time trying to get Columbia to locate the pair of tapes he wanted: not the studio multi-tracks (he didn't want to re-mix the album), not the compressed, equalised "cutting masters" which had been used for making the vinyl LP and the standard CD release; but the stage in between these, the original undoctored stereo mix-down tapes. These turned out to be in some dusty corner, on reels labelled "DO NOT USE", simply because they were technically unusable for the purpose of mastering vinyl discs. They were, however, the only true record of what would have been heard over the studio monitors during the mixing sessions. Note
Having found the right tapes, Hoffman spent most of the first half of 1992 working on getting the best possible sounding digital transfer; a crucial part of his method was using an original Ampex valve deck to play back the tapes. Despite the fact that this remastering was done before the advent of Super Bit Mapping and other 20- and 24-bit digital transfer technologies, the resulting CD has gained universal praise for its wonderful sound quality, which I'll discuss further in Part II of this article. What this shows is that the source tapes used - and the care taken in reproducing them - are far more important than the use of the latest refinement in digital technology.
The DCC disc has now been out of print for some time, as the licence from Sony was for six years only. It sometimes appears on internet auction sites, but starting prices tend to be fairly high.
In 1996 Sony in Japan produced limited edition CD reissues of Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde using SBM 20-bit mastering. While the latter appears simply to be a clone of the Blonde on Blonde MasterSound gold CD, the genesis of the Highway 61 Revisited disc is not so clear. It is certainly not a copy of the DCC gold CD, and is possibly just a 20-bit remastering from the same vinyl LP cutting master as was used for the standard CD. It does not, alas, contain the alternate version of "From A Buick 6" which had been on all Japanese vinyl issues of the album.
Another "conventional" reissue appeared early in 2002 (though the sleeve is dated 2001). This was another European edition pressed in Austria, and apparently produced for sale in specific European countries, though it was picked up by a number of US internet stores. It came in a tri-fold digipak sleeve, and was initially thought to be a remastered version. However, it's actually just a repackaging of the standard CD, and even has the same matrix number on the disc.
In September 2003, Sony's major Dylan reissue programme brought us a new hybrid SACD edition of Highway 61 Revisited. However, unlike Bringing It All Back Home and Blonde On Blonde, this album was not been remixed from the original four-track recordings. It was only remastered (this time by Greg Calbi), apparently from the same 1965 stereo mix-down tape as was used for the DCC edition. The conventional CD layer was no doubt mastered using a more sophisticated analogue-to-digital conversion process than was available to Hoffman in 1992, and the SACD layer uses a completely different encoding method. (See the separate article about the reissue series for further explanation of these technicalities.) And again unlike Bringing It All Back Home and Blonde On Blonde, there is no 5.1 surround mix on this SACD.
Greg Calbi's conventional CD remastering has now also been released (in 2004) in standard CD format, at a lower price than the hybrid SACD.
Album Sleeves
The original US mono album is probably the best starting point and standard
for the comparison of alternative sleeves. The front cover of this initial
release had the title and Daniel Kramer's colour photo centrally placed, with a
wide white border all round, while the back had three uncredited monochrome
studio shots of Dylan apparently from a series taken at the late July / early
August album sessions by Chuck Stewart.Note
It also had credits for the musicians, for both Bob Johnston and Tom Wilson as
producers, and for Dylan as author of the sleeve notes. At the bottom of the
rear sleeve was a box giving the track timings - always something to marvel at
on a Dylan LP in those days. Also squeezed in were some useful hints about
"Other albums by Bob Dylan you will enjoy".
The original US stereo release followed a convention often used by Columbia
at that time, which was to take the front cover layout of the mono album, shift
it down an inch or so, and add at the top the stereo serial number and the
"360 Sound" double-arrow logo. On Highway 61 Revisited this
resulted in the white border at the bottom practically disappearing. Note
Later US stereo pressings from around the mid-70s onward - when there was no need to distinguish them from the deleted mono version and the "360 Sound" tag had been dropped - moved the front picture and title back up to a central position, and for some reason removed the track timing box from the rear sleeve, along with the "Other albums . . ." information.
In Europe all sorts of variant sleeves appeared, right from the album's release in 1965. The front sleeve was always similar to the US mono layout, but there the similarities ended. Some countries, Holland included, used the US rear sleeve layout, with the same three photos. France, as usual, went its own way and produced a gatefold sleeve with the transcribed lyrics in English and some short notes in French on the inside; the rear cover had the track listing, the musician credits and two of the three photos from the US rear sleeve, together with adverts for other French Dylan LPs and EPs. Dylan's own sleeve notes did not appear at all, probably being judged neither translatable into French nor intelligible in English.
England and some other countries - certainly Italy - received a more interesting
rear sleeve. This did include Dylan's notes, but a different version, with
various small but intriguing changes - the characters Savage Rose &
Fixable, for example, being replaced throughout by Savage Rose & Openly.Note The layout and typography of the rear
sleeve was also completely different; there was only one black and white
photograph, again uncredited, but almost certainly from the sequence taken by
Columbia staff photographer Don Hunstein at the mid-June "Like A Rolling
Stone" sessions. Note
The normal UK sleeve omitted the credits for musicians,
production, sleeve notes
and
cover photo. Some early UK
copies, however, in both mono and stereo versions, did include these
credits. Why they were subsequently dropped is
not clear; possibly it was because they made the layout too cluttered. All
variants of the UK sleeve, like the early US editions, contained the track
timing details and the "Other albums by Bob Dylan . . ." information.
So, where did this alternative rear sleeve originate? Some of the differences in Dylan's notes are just alternative ideas which could only have come from Dylan himself: "the barbarians jammed into pay phones" instead of "Vivaldi's green jacket", for instance. Others, though, appear to be more in the nature of corrections. For example the UK sleeve's "Paul Sargent, & plainclothes man from 4th street, comes in" becomes "Paul Sargent, a plainclothes man . . ." on the US version; likewise "some college kid whose read all about Nietzsche" becomes "some college kid who's read . . .". This, and the fact that the UK rear sleeve includes an earlier photograph, leads me to think that the US version is the final, corrected one, and that the English album's artwork is an earlier version which was sent to CBS in London by mistake. Maybe CBS in Holland got their artwork a little later from Columbia in the US, while Italy and others obtained theirs - the early version - from CBS in England.
The UK sleeve disappeared when CBS stopped producing vinyl in the UK in the early 1990s; subsequent Sony/Columbia copies were imported from Holland and therefore had the standard US rear sleeve layout. Recently, however, the Absolute Analogue and Simply Vinyl reissues revived the original UK stereo sleeve layout, though without the personnel and other credits.
Moving on to CD sleeve designs, the original US Sony edition has a strangely cropped look to it: the main cover photo and title are centrally-placed, but with only a very narrow border all round. The back uses one of the three photos from the US LP rear sleeve (the one of Dylan at the piano wearing a striped shirt); this photo is repeated in the fold-out front insert to accompany the standard version of Dylan's sleeve notes and the personnel and other credits.
European CDs prior to the SACD reissue look from the front like the original album, with the wider borders, but with no CBS logo in the corner. The same single photo from the original US trio is on the back, but the booklet also contains the other two photos along with the notes (standard US version) and credits.
The DCC gold CD has a booklet which reproduces exactly the front and back of the original US stereo album, with the lowered title and front photo. Picture Inside the booklet it merely prints at a legible scale the track listing, credits and notes.
The 1996 Japanese limited edition is packaged in a CD-sized card sleeve inside a clear plastic slip-case. The sleeve is pretty well a replica of the Japanese LP sleeve, which in turn was a rather poor quality reproduction of the US sleeve. A folded sheet inside the cover contains the lyrics in Japanese and English.
The 2001 European digipak edition has quite a nicely produced tri-fold card sleeve. The front reproduces the original US mono sleeve (even to the extent of including the mono serial number), while one of the other faces has the back of the US stereo LP. The front cover photo is also reproduced, slightly enlarged, inside. The remaining faces have track listings, personnel credits and a couple of the monochrome pictures from the back of the US sleeve, in rather variable quality.
The new SACD edition really takes off, with ten
photographs that have never appeared on the album's packaging before. For
the front cover Sony have sensibly
used the mono LP layout again (though this
time the old serial number is omitted). The rear has something of the feel
of the original US rear sleeve, with all three small black and white photos, but
without the sleeve notes and credits. Inside the digipak there is a Daniel
Kramer photo of Dylan writing notes at the "Positively 4th Street"
session, and another taken backstage at an unknown venue showing Dylan at the piano.
Then there's the booklet: the front cover again (this time in proper square
format), seven-and-a-bit photos taken by Don Hunstein at the "Like A
Rolling Stone" sessions, and one from the Fender promotional series with
Dylan playing a Fender bass. The sleeve notes appear in the US version,
but the first page of these seems to make a nod to the old UK rear sleeve, with
a centrally-placed photo of Dylan at the piano. It's a shame they didn't
use the same shot, though - for anyone who grew up with the LP in England,
that one picture really encapsulated the feeling of the entire album.
Finally, the new standard "remastered" CD edition comes in a jewel case whose inserts follow closely the external design of the SACD digipak. The booklet is the same except for the deletion of the SACD technical information and credits.
Part II of this essay looks in detail at the differences between the released versions of the album - and the pre-release tapes - in terms of mixing, editing and overall sound.
Last updated October 2004