BETA   Bob Dylan Song Ratings | Bob Dylan Album Ratings | Bob Dylan's New Album | Bob Dylan iTunes Albums

"Blonde On Blonde", Track #3


"Visions of Johanna" Music Video

CHRISTY: I adore this song and consider it to be one of his best. Blonde On Blonde was his masterpiece and it made me fall in love with the music of Bob Dylan! (09/21/09)

BILL: "we sit here stranded, tho we're all doin' our best to deny it!" "...He said, what do doctors Know about farms, pray tell? I said, I was born At the bottom of a wishing well." (xtra credit if you know what song this line is from) Dylan was born at the bottom of a wishing well, and we are all the better for it! (03/19/09)

SLUMDOG: Simply the most emotive song ever written with the best melody ever sung. (02/17/09)

KIM: I fell in love with this song the very first time I heard it.It opens with some of the best lines I've ever heard in a song. But what really strikes me is the way he specifically says "Johanna". I probably can't explain it, but it seems to convey a type of sympathy and mournful mood at the same time. (04/29/08)

DIANA WOLF: This song has to be one of the most beautiful songs ever written. There are lines in this which create visual portraits in my mind, and more importantly heart and soul. Something about it is haunting, it embraces you, you can fall into it like a lover's arms. Comfort and the shadow are present... that kind of comfort where things are hard, and even though they are you can still sit with the person who it is hard with and feel the polarities, the love as well as the distance. Maybe this isn't making any sense. Here is an example: "The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face" Can you envision two lovers in an old loft,or a dinky hotel... light from the neon signs blinking on and off seep into the room through the blinds. A woman lies in the bed under the window, her lover is watching her, perhaps she is crying, or sad, perhaps they are making love.Her face has high cheekbones, large eyes, angles accentuated with the blinking neon. Just gorgeous. And what is so beautiful about the poetry of thsis song... and all good poetry is that we each find our own meanings, and the meanings change over the years. I have several versions of this song on a playlist and each one had a different feel to it... so it changes for Bob too, which is why he has to be the most amazing artist ever to hit the planet from wherever he came from! Of course today I say it is the most beautiful, yet another song pops up and i think, this has got to be one of my favorite Dylan songs! (01/20/07)

PETE: It's the sound, to me. The words are brilliant -- arguably it's his most fully realized poem -- but the performance is ineffable. It's not just the vocal, it's the sympathy and strength and pain and togetherness floating through the playing that holds the attention and tells the story. On the out-take, the wordless moan is as powerful a line as any in the lyric, and the released cut contains and channels and frames that precise emotion in a way that is unmatched anywhere. We are all lost, permanently, the void is entirely real, and yet tragedy is as unimportant as joy or any other doom. Except maybe beauty. Also, the drums are perfect. (01/20/07)

MARK KLEIN: If you have to pick a #1, this works. Yes, Like A Rolling Stone changed the world. But fJohanna is just exquisite. And one of his best vocals. Ginsberg said that Dylan had become "a column of air", a shaman of holy breath. And this is the song where that perception was realized. "Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet? We all sit here stranded though we do our best to deny it. " Well, fuck man - yeah. Not sure I wanted you to point that out, but truth is a bitch. I once read of a masquerade party in Sydney where the guests were supposed to come as characters from Dylan's songs. I'd probably try to come as Einstein disguised as Robin Hood, but I bet a LOT of the characters came from "Johanna". Louise, the jelly faced woman with the mustache, the night watchman, little boy lost . But for me the song has the greatest single line he ever wrote: "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face." A vision. A painting. The story of a life in a line. (09/06/06)

ANDREW MCCOY: i only wish this song was longer than brownsville girl i love love love love love this song love isnt a good enough word to descibe this song and these visions of johanna keep me up past the morn is my favourite expression in this song as ive had many a sleepless night worrying and thinking about loved 1s its the way he sings it as well uyou want to take his pain away from him i really do think bob was having a really bad time during this time in his life with drugs woman people who he thought were friends or knew wearnt but kept them around anyway frank zappa famously gave dylan a hard time on a song on sheik yer booty im also a massive zappa fan and the imitation he does of dylan is mastorful its a take on the songs on blonde on blonde desperation tortured regretful and out of his nut on mandrex what was an anthetamine based tablet and put a few downers into the mix and you got a guy who is all over the place this song and a few others on blonde on blonde really bring this home to the forefront i think this is dylans least favourite period in his life yet he produced his best writing and he was also writing at an alarming rate 1 of the true imsomniacs of that generation he had no time for sleep i can picture him everynight getting maybe 2 hours sleep at the table were his typewriter was thanks for the ong but your health is more important man is what i grew to think as i turned into an adult still its done and im glad that he wrote it (07/18/06)

KATE D.: This song makes you feel the longing and the pain of an absent lover. My favorite line is, "And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it." Who hasn't lost a lover and felt that way? (06/07/06)

JENNY KELLY: when i was a kid,this to me was sophistication (04/11/06)

SILLYGAL33436: Postively in my top ten......ain't it just like Bob to play tricks that never fail to expose his true lyrical genius (04/10/06)

ISIS: One of the songs you can put on repeat and fall asleep listening to at night. (03/14/06)

TIFFANY: Bob is at his best here. How could anything in music sound any better. (02/26/06)

JOHN S. PAUL: I have been asked, "If you were stranded on an island and could only have one album what would it be?" It would be 'Blonde on Blonde'! And if it was narrowed down to a song, 'Visions of Johanna' without a doubt. Pure musical genius! (01/18/06)