"On the Road Again" | |
---|---|
Song by Bob Dylan | |
from the album Bringing It All Back Home | |
Released | March 22, 1965 |
Recorded | January 15, 1965 |
Studio | Columbia Recording, New York City |
Genre | |
Length | 2:35 |
Label | Columbia |
Songwriter(s) | Bob Dylan |
"On the Road Again" is a song written and recorded by Bob Dylan for his album Bringing It All Back Home . The song appears on the album's electric A-side, between "Outlaw Blues" and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream". Like the rest of Bringing It All Back Home, "On the Road Again" was recorded in January, 1965 and produced by Tom Wilson. [1]
Musically, "On the Road Again" is a simple rhythm & blues rock number with a twelve-bar structure. The music is untidy, with a thrusting beat, harmonica breaks, and an opposing riff. [2]
The song's lyrics continue to address the myth of sensitive artist versus venal society that informs several other songs from A-side of the album, such as "Maggie's Farm", "Outlaw Blues", and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream". [3] The song also reflects other songs on the album, such as "Maggie's Farm" in that resistance to society is enacted through self-exile, removal and denial. [4] This is particularly reflected in the lyrics: [4]
You ask why I don't live here
Honey, how come you don't move?
The song also previews the comic grotesques that will become more prominent on songs in later albums. [5] [2] The song reflects a paranoid version of dread of dealing with in-laws. [5] The narrator wakes up in the morning and has to face a surreal world where his mother-in-law hides in the refrigerator, his father-in-law wears a mask of Napoleon and the grandfather-in-law's cane turns into a sword, the grandmother-in-law prays to pictures and an uncle-in-law steals from the narrator's pockets, in lyrics such as: [5]
Your mama, she's a-hidin'
Inside the icebox
Your daddy walks in wearin' Napoleon Bonaparte mask [6]
Frogs live in the narrator's socks, his food is covered in dirt, and deliverymen and servants have a sinister presence. [5] [2]
The song's title echoes the title of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road , which was a defining work of the Beat Generation. [7] Dylan has acknowledged being influenced by Kerouac. [7] However, it seems more likely that the title, and the song in itself, is a response to the song "On the Road", a traditional blues performed by the Memphis Jug Band with more serious lyrical content concerning an unfaithful woman. [8]
Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as a double album on June 20, 1966, by Columbia Records. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with numerous backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing band, the Hawks. Though sessions continued until January 1966, they yielded only one track that made it onto the final album—"One of Us Must Know ". At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion, Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper, and guitarist Robbie Robertson moved to the CBS studios in Nashville, Tennessee. These sessions, augmented by some of Nashville's top session musicians, were more fruitful, and in February and March all the remaining songs for the album were recorded.
Bringing It All Back Home is the fifth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in March 1965 by Columbia Records. In a major transition from his earlier sound, it was Dylan's first album to incorporate electric instrumentation, which caused controversy and divided many in the contemporary folk scene.
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