Charts: US #9, AUS #4, FRA #30, SPA #11, UK #3. UK: Platinum; US: 2x Platinum.
Blonde on Blonde is full of that "not around" chill - Dylan mixes up the Texas medicine and the railroad gin for a whole album of high-lonesome late-night dread, blues hallucinations and his bitchiest wit. Still only 24, writing songs and touring the world at a wired lunatic pace that would come crashing to a halt in a couple of months, Dylan was on a historic roll, dropping this double-vinyl epic just 14 months after going electric with Bringing It All Back Home in March 1965 and Highway 61 Revisited in August. He was moving too fast for anyone to keep up, and writing masterpieces faster than he could release them. Yet Blonde on Blonde still feels like it came out of nowhere, with a sound he never attempted again, and neither Dylan nor the rest of the world has ever quite figured out how it happened. As organist Al Kooper put it, "Nobody has ever captured the sound of 3 a.m. better than that album. Nobody, even Sinatra, gets it as good."
If you want to argue that Blonde on Blonde isn’t as perfect as Highway 61 Revisited or Bringing It All Back Home, you may have a point. It’s a wide-ranging double album with some lightweights on Side Three and one profoundly annoying novelty song - which happens to be the leadoff track and hit single. "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35," man - it’s like if the Beatles decided to begin Revolver with "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" or "Hello Goodbye." But it’s his greatest album anyway, creating a sustained 68-minute spell unlike any other listening experience in rock & roll. Hearing Blonde on Blonde puts you in the position of the night watchman who clicks his flashlight at all the losers and freaks and neon madmen and wonders if it’s him or them that’s insane. In these songs, it’s probably both.
(rollingstone.com/music/music-news/blonde-on-blonde-at-50-celebrating-bob-dylans-greatest-masterpiece-158223/)