Link to Song: Queen Jane Approximately
What you should know about this song: The Queen of Folk, Joan Baez, once called the Highway 61 Revisisted album a “bunch of crap,” maybe for its new sound or more likely for this particularly song. Despite the speculation, though, Dylan informed a journalist, “Queen Jane is a man.” (Rolling Stone Issue 1131).
This expressively rich song waited 22 years before it ever made it to Dylan’s live performance set since its original recording for Highway 61 Revisited in 1965. Dylan performed it live for the first known time on the 1987 Independence Day featuring the Grateful Dead. He later recorded another rendition for the Dylan & The Dead album.
“Dylan gave rock ‘n’ roll the thing I’d wished it had when I was a kid – respectability, some authority. He took it out of the realm of ignorant guys banging away on electric instruments and put it somewhere else altogether.” – Jerry Garcia, Grateful Dead*
*Source: “Dylan: 100 Songs and Pictures” by Fine Communications
Photo Source: The Independent
