When I was about 12 or not much older, a neighbor came by with a pile of LP’s he had found in the trash, to see if we wanted any. There were some various late 60s artists; I recall there was some Neil Young and Buffalo Springfield but those didn’t interest me at the time. But there were two Bob Dylan albums, HIGHWAY 61 & BLONDE ON BLONDE. I knew the song “Like a Rolling Stone” from the radio and liked it (I really liked the Rolling Stones at the time and anything remotely tangential to them). I took those two albums for myself. I also knew the song “Rainy Day Women”, but I didn’t know that was the title. I thought it was obviously called “Everybody Must Get Stoned”; so, I didn’t realize I knew one of the songs on BLONDE ON BLONDE.
I put HIGHWAY 61 on the turntable and listened to “Like a Rolling Stone.” Then I let the next song play, which is “Tombstone Blues.” The song opens with, “The sweet pretty things are getting off course, the city fathers they are trying to endorse, the reincarnation of Paul Revere’s horse, but the town has no need to be nervous.” This was far too wacky for 12-year-old me. I took the needle off the record. I put a cassette into the player, put the needle back to the beginning, and hit “record.” With “Like a Rolling Stone” now immortalized on my mix tape, I put the albums aside, for the next four years, and… to be continued.
Tytania 