With the Timothée Chalamet-starring Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown about to be released, it is well worth considering the greatest songs he wrote during the timelines of the film, so up to 1965’s album Highway 61 Revisited.
While his self-titled debut record came out in 1962, the rapid acceleration in the volume, style and scope of his songs in those three years is absolutely staggering. And of course, carried the weight of him switching from acoustic folk to electric rock ‘n’ roll that caused such a scandal; “Judas!” as one British fan famously put it.
To chart this period is to explore one of the most killer periods of musical and literary expansion of any artist, ever. Yes, that includes S Club Juniors.
16. Masters of War (May 1963)
OG protest singer in excelsis here. This is young Bob at his angriest, with his guitar and voice gathering up storm clouds of accusation around those sending young folk to die for profit. The very real threat of nuclear apocalypse at the time, was cast here as the result of the military-industrial complex not ideology, men sat behind desks playing games with the world and making money out of death.
‘”You hide in your mansion/While the young peoples’ blood/Flows out of their bodies/And is buried in the mud,’”he spits, before going, ‘” think you will find/When your death takes its toll/All the money you made/Will never buy back your soul.”
Breathtaking in its incensed intonation, although he soon rejected the protest singer tag, such songs remain indelible.
15. It Ain’t Me Babe (August 1964)
His early love songs were often waspish kiss-offs, this one being the epitome, though I’ve always taken it as the dismissive retort by someone who has already been dumped and claiming it was their idea all along.
“You say you’re lookin’ for someone/Who’s never weak, but always strong/To protect you and defend you/Whether you are right or wrong/Someone who will die for you and more”
Yeah, well, I think we should break up too….maybe I’m not the average Joe, that’s your problem with me, I’m too radical.
Sure, Bob, sure.
14. Mr Tambourine Man (March 1965)
Sheer ubiquity has degraded this song to the point of irritation. Blowin’ in the Wind has been left off this list entirely for the same reason; its drift through university corridors has made many a person swear off education, music, people, forever. And yet Mr Tambourine Man’s delightful imagery tends to drag you from your cringe into the admission that you are wrong, and he is right.
“Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky/With one hand waving free/Silhouetted by the sea/Circled by the circus sands/With all memory and fate, driven deep beneath the waves/Let me forget about today until tomorrow.”
Bong smokers have been known to dwell upon those lines for entire winters.
13. With God On Our side (1963)
This is a prime protest song about the use of religion to whitewash war, claiming God backs a country even as it commits brutal war crimes. It takes in horrors past and present, from America’s genocide of Native Americans, to the Holocaust, to the Cold War, and tightens into unnerving coils like, “But now we’ve got weapons of chemicals dust/If fire them we’re forced to, then fire them we must/One push of the button and they shot the world wide/And you never ask questions when God’s on your side.”
This is why his early Eighties shift into Christianity felt like such a betrayal. Also, the songs were rubbish.
12. My Back Pages (January 1964)
Dylan being Dylan, the will o’ the wisp forever slipping away from your grasp. Just as his protest songs were most potent, leaving him on the cusp of leading generational change, he was already turning his back on it all, and rejecting the spokesman tag.
This was the starting point of the album Another Side of Bob Dylan, and My Back Pages shows a man rejecting anyone who has all the answers – especially himself – in the complex rush of life. Any piety must be suspect.
With the refrain of “I was so much older then/I’m younger than that now”, he looks ‘back’ at his protest stance (this was like, three months later) and chastises, “In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand/At the mongrel dogs who teach/Fearing not I’d become my enemy/In the instant that I preach.”
11. Tombstone Blues (August 1965)
Alright, by this point on Highway 61 Revisited, he was in full-flow as the gremlin in the machine, blistering through an American cityscape of violence, police brutality and systemic evil.
Truth is, it’s not far from the protest songs of ‘old’ yet hyper-accelerated under impressionistic imagery bringing in everyone from Jack the Ripper (who sits at the head of the Chamber of Commerce) to Delilah (who sits worthlessly along/But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter) that has no answers but plenty of questions.
By way of ‘explanation’ for this approach he concludes, “I wish I could write you a melody so plain/That could hold you, dear lady, from going insane/That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain/Of your useless and pointless knowledge.”
What does it all mean? Well, it’s all in the title and the savage music: this is a land of the dead.
10. It’s All Over Now Baby Blue (March 1965)
Another rejection song, rejection of your own past that is, written as another kiss off to the protest movement – or possibly Joan Boaz, or the acoustic guitar, or more likely, Dylan himself – but which moves beyond specifics into the need to ditch the past and seek renewal: “Strike another match, go start anew/And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.”
That said, it isn’t some solipsistic Matt Haig thumb-sucking inspo-quote song, it’s a stark and brutal listen, and delivered with a sneer that doesn’t stand clean of the past nor has too much hope looking forward.
“The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense/Take what you have gathered from coincidence.” This is advice for mystic street rats not AirBnB owners.
9. Desolation Row (August 1965)
His most Beat poet moment, a trawl through the carnival of New York that finds heaven in the sleaze. It is a Felliniesque delve into grotesquerie and big characters, who included Einstein, Cinderella and TS Eliot. It is a filthy joy to behold, one which was exploding the limits of popular song.
And it’s funny too: “Here comes the blind commissioner/They’ve got him in a trance/One hand is tied to the tightrope walker/The other is in his pants.”
8. The Times They Are A-Changin’ (February 1964)
It’s impossible to start ordering any Top Ten as we’re well into stone-cold classic territory here and it becomes a game of preferring red over green. Times They Are A-Changin’ perhaps hasn’t dated as well as some records, but that might be because it lacks the cynicism that links his subsequent work to our times.
Yet the very seriousness of intent here remains very moving, a man and a guitar delivering a hypnotic, Biblical description of a country in turmoil and a young generation finding its voice: “Come mothers and fathers throughout the land/And don’t criticise what you can’t understand/Your songs and your daughters are beyond your command. “
Again ubiquity has lessened its potency. Until you actually listen to it again.
7. It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (March 1965)
In an interview that keeps doing the rounds on TikTok (at least in my little algorithm noose), Dylan speaks to 60 Minutes Ed Bradley and quotes the first verse of this song, saying it was “magically written”:
“Darkness at the break of noon/Shadows even the silver spoon/The handmade blade, the child’s balloon/Eclipses both the sun and moon/To understand you know too soon/There is no sense in trying.”
He then says, “Try and sit down and write something like that. There’s a magic to that and it’s not a Siegfried and Roy kind of magic. It’s different, penetrating kind of magic. And I did it at one time.”
Quizzed further, he sadly admits he can’t write like that any more: “I can do other things now, but I can’t do that.”
6. Ballad of a Thin Man (August 1965)
A hilarious takedown of hipsters which could be the soundtrack to any air-headed scenester scene even today:
“You raise up your head/And you ask, “Is this where it is?”/And somebody points at you and says, “It’s his,”/And you say, “What’s mine?”/And somebody else says, “Well, what is?”/And you say, “Oh my God, am I here all alone?”
And it’s all done with a carnivalesque tone that makes a critic want to write the word Felliniesque. But I’ve already done that for Desolation Row so there we are.
5. Highway ’61 Revisited (August 1965)
Dylan going full electric here, in a jazzed-up road movie that tells the story of the road that runs from his native Minnesota down to New Orleans.
America as seen from the window of a car, a playground of garish hypocrisy and confusion in which even God and Abraham can get involved in a petty spat:
”God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son’/Abe said, ‘Man you must be puttin’ me on.’/God said, ‘No,’ Abe say, ‘What?’”
Sets up the album of the same name as the most visceral and effortlessly artistic plunge into rock ‘n’ roll imaginable.
4. Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright (August 1963)
A heartbreak song that is, again, a denial of the heartbreak when you’ve got no choice but to deny it because the heartbreak is so bad.
It was written after Suze Rotolo – who is on the famous cover of the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – left him in New York to go to Italy, for good it seemed. The song is a bitter retort, but within it lies self-castigation and the lovelorn’s self-pity, which may not be pretty but, well, who hasn’t been there, done that:
I” ain’t a-saying you treated me unkind/You could’ve done better but I don’t mind/You just kinda wasted my precious time/But don’t think twice, it’s all right.”
3. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (May 1963)
The peak of his protest songs, this sees him leaving behind some of the literal issues and move into symbolism as a means to capture something more, well, magical. As such, the song remains an everlasting apocalypse song, a street preacher’s warning of a coming storm, and a Blakeian litany of spooky prophecies:
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw 10,000 talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
2. Subterranean Homesick Blues (March 1965)
Immortal ‘fuck you’ move into electric and a proto-rap rush of words which captures the adrenalized addictiveness of American Life while also ripping apart its authoritarian nonsense, and the whole notion of the American Dream:
“Ah, get born, keep warm, short pants, romance/Learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed, try to be a success/Please her, please him, buy gifts, don’t steal, don’t lift/20 years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift.”
Yet for all its cleverness it stands up as a straight up rock ‘n’ roll song against Great Ball of Fire or Anarchy in the UK or anything you like. Kids love it too.
1. Like a Rolling Stone (July 1965)
There have been whole books written about his one song alone, so what can you possibly add? Nothing, you just need to stick it at number one on these lists, then go home.
It was world-changing and it remains unbeatable. If the band sound like they’re making it up as they were going along that’s because they were. It still carries the power to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand-up, which then drag you into your boss’ office, make you quit your job and then take you outside to hit the road.
This list-maker has quoted too many lyrics, so may as well just continue with the eternal refrain for anybody who wants to leave their comfortable situation for the chance of something better:
“How does it feel?/ To be on your own? /With no direction home? /Like a complete unknown?/ Like a rolling stone?”
A Complete Unknown is released on January 17th
