Recording
Clinton Heylin places the writing of "Visions of Johanna" in the fall of 1965, when Dylan was living in the Chelsea Hotel with his pregnant wife Sara. Heylin notes that "in this déclassé hotel…the heat pipes still cough", referring to a line from the song. Greil Marcus reports that when first heard, "the story was that the song had been written during the great east coast blackout of November 9, 1965."
Dylan first recorded this song, backed by The Hawks, in the CBS New York recording studio, on November 30, 1965, announcing his new composition with the words: "This is called 'Freeze Out'." Andy Gill notes that this working title captures the "air of nocturnal suspension in which the verse tableaux are sketched...full of whispering and muttering." According to Marcus, Dylan introduced the song in live performances in 1966 with the words, "Seems like a freeze-out."
Some of the New York recordings, released on bootlegs, were uptempo and contain in the fifth verse the additional line "He examines the nightingale's code". Two slower versions were recorded in New York, one with a march-like tempo, which was released on the No Direction Home soundtrack in 2005, and another with a more conventional rock tempo, closer to the album version recorded in Nashville. Historian Sean Wilentz, for his book Dylan In America, listened closely to full studio tapes of the Blonde on Blonde sessions, and describes how Dylan guided the New York backing musicians through fourteen takes, trying to explain how he wanted "Visions of Johanna" played. At one point, Dylan says: "It's not hard rock, The only thing in it that's hard is Robbie." Analyzing the evolution of the song in the New York recording session, Wilentz writes that Dylan "quiets things down, inching closer to what will eventually appear on Blonde on Blonde—and it is still not right."
"Visions of Johanna" fell into place when Dylan was persuaded by his producer, Bob Johnston, to move the recording sessions to Nashville, Tennessee. During his first day in the CBS Nashville studio, on February 14, 1966, the Blonde on Blonde version of the song was recorded. In an interview with Andy Gill, Al Kooper has said that he and guitarist Robbie Robertson became sensitive to the nuances of Dylan's vocal. Kooper added that "it's very important what Joe South's bass is doing in that"; Kooper described it as "this throbbing...rhythmically amazing bass part". Other backing musicians were Charlie McCoy, guitar, Wayne Moss, guitar, and Kenneth Buttrey on drums.
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