Rock’s first studio double LP by a major artist was, as Bob Dylan declared in 1978, “the closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my head … that thin, that wild-mercury sound.” Blonde on Blonde was mainly recorded in Nashville with session pros (another rock first), who created an almost contradictory magnificence: a tightly wound tension around Dylan’s quicksilver language and incisive singing in barrelhouse surrealism such as “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again.” Amid the frenzy, Dylan delivered some of his finest, clearest songs of comfort and desire: the sidelong beauty “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “I Want You,” the title of which Dylan almost used for the album. - RollingStone.com
