Link to Song: Visions of Johanna
What you should know about this song: Some people say this was Dylan’s greatest song. Rolling Stone Magazine referred to is as “a tour de force, a breakthrough not only for the writer but for the very possibilities of songwriting.” The song was originally titled “Freeze Out,” and Dylan had already performed this song before it appeared on Blonde on Blonde in 1966.* As Rolling Stone puts it, the song is truly “Dylan’s masterpiece of obsession” (Issue 1131).
“It’s extraordinary. He writes this whole song seemingly about this one girl, with these remarkable description soy her, but this isn’t the girl who’s on his mind! It’s someone else!” – Bono (Issue 1131)
“I still sing that song every once in a while. It still stands up now as it did then. Maybe even more in some kind of weird way.” – Dylan (Issue 1131)
“‘Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues’ – it’s just a great observation. He’s commenting on it in a way that nobody had done, and yet was very contemporary. He came out of that tradition of Woody Guthrie and Jack Kerouac – the road, hitch-hiking, that long line of male guitar-slingers hitch-hiking with guitars over their back, and that was related to the hobo tradition. You knew that the ‘highway blues’ were, but your parents didn’t!” – Loudon Wainwright III*
*Source: “Dylan: 100 Songs and Pictures” by Fine Communications
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