Quoted By:
>Dylan, already ahead of most rockers, took another prodigious step forward with the double album Blonde On Blonde (CBS, May 1966), recorded in Nashville between october 1965 and march 1966, a milestone of the twentieth century, one of the greatest cultural divides of the times. This album closed an era and began another. After Blonde On Blonde rock music would not longer be an underground phenomenon or a commercial enterprise, it would be an art form. With Blonde On Blonde begins the process of quality control that would transform every record into a work of art. With Blonde On Blonde rock rivals jazz among the great musical conquests of the twentieth century. This album neatly separates the amateurish diletantism from knowledgeable and conscious art, as the Middle Ages separate from the Renaissance. On one side it completes the assimilation of British rock by folk music, on the other it personalizes the blues and folk, redressing both with marvelous esthetics saturated by creative arrangements of psychedelic derivation. Above all, Dylan reprises the experiment begun with Desolation Row in lengthy pieces that do not seem to end, that are continuously reborn.
>Blonde On Blonde is, together with the contemporary Freak Out by Frank Zappa, the first creative record of rock music, its first work of art. Its influence on the music of the time was enormous because it inspired an entire generation of musicians to express themselves first and foremost. Within a few years all English and American bands conceived creative works, including the Beatles with Sgt. Pepper. The doors of psychedelia were unlocked.
>9/10
