Highway 61 Revisited - Reception

Reception

In the British music press, initial reviews of Highway 61 expressed both bafflement and admiration for the record. New Musical Express critic Allen Evans wrote: "Another set of message songs and story songs sung in that monotonous and tuneless way by Dylan which becomes quite arresting as you listen." The Melody Maker LP review section, by an anonymous critic, commented: "Bob Dylan's sixth LP, like all others, is fairly incomprehensible but nevertheless an absolute knock-out." The English poet Philip Larkin, reviewing the album for The Daily Telegraph, wrote that he found himself "well rewarded" by the record: "Dylan's cawing, derisive voice is probably well suited to his material ... and his guitar adapts itself to rock ('Highway 61') and ballad ('Queen Jane'). There is a marathon 'Desolation Row' which has an enchanting tune and mysterious, possibly half-baked words."

In September 1965, the US trade journal Billboard praised Dylan's "dynamic, deep-thinking delivery" and as being "in top form throughout his story-telling". The magazine predicted big sales for the album: "Based upon his singles hit 'Like a Rolling Stone', Dylan has a top-of-the-chart-winner in this package of his off-beat, commercial material." The album peaked at No. 3 on the US Billboard 200 chart of top albums, and No. 4 on the UK albums charts. In the US, Highway 61 was certificated as a gold record in August 1967, and platinum in August 1997.

Highway 61 Revisited has remained among the most highly acclaimed of Dylan's works. Biographer Anthony Scaduto writes that it may be "one of the most brilliant pop records ever made. As rock, it cuts through to the core of the music—a hard driving beat without frills, without self-consciousness." Commenting on Dylan's imagery, Scaduto argues: "Not since Rimbaud has a poet used all the language of the street to expose the horrors of the streets, to describe a state of the union that is ugly and absurd." Michael Gray has called Highway 61 "revolutionary and stunning, not just for its energy and panache but in its vision: fusing radical, electrical music ... with lyrics that were light years ahead of anyone else's; Dylan here unites the force of blues-based rock'n'roll with the power of poetry. Rock culture, in an important sense, the 1960s, started here." For Clinton Heylin, it was "an album that consolidated everything 'Like A Rolling Stone' (and Bringing It All Back Home) proffered ... an amalgamation of every strand in American popular music from 'Gypsy Davey' to the Philly Sound. The rich, textured sound was folk-rock realized." Tim Riley writes that it was "the first Dylan record to posit protest as a way of life, a state of mind, something as psychologically bound as it is socially incumbent." In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine described Highway 61 as "one of those albums that changed everything", and placed it at No. 4 in its list of the greatest albums of all time. The Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest songs of all time ranked "Highway 61 Revisited", "Desolation Row" and "Like a Rolling Stone" at No. 373, No. 187, and No. 1, respectively.