America Needs ‘Blonde on Blonde’ and ‘Pet Sounds,’ Released on the Same Day 50 Years Ago This Week
On Nov. 30, 1965, Bob Dylan walked into a studio in New York City to continue recording an album, his third that year. He had begun working on it two months earlier, but distractions abounded, including marrying his girlfriend, Sara Lownds, and divorcing his bandleader, Levon Helm, who was tired of playing second snare to a capricious 24-year-old who was just as gnomic instructing his musicians as he was in his inscrutable lyrics. None of these entanglements were evident, however, when Dylan entered the studio that winter day. He had written a masterpiece, he told anyone who’d listen; it was called “Freeze Out,” and he needed to record it right away.
“Stop, that’s not the sound, that’s not it,” Dylan muttered after a few false starts, the whole account captured by historian Sean Wilentz in his book Bob Dylan in America. “I can’t… ‘ats not… bauoom…it’s, it’s more of a bauoom, bauoom… it’snota, it’snota, it’s not hard rock.” A few more duds later, the band seemed to be inching closer to the master’s vision. Bobby Gregg unleashed something that sounded like a slowed-down Motown drum fill, while Robbie Robertson played sharply, cutting Dylan’s harmonica intro with short icepick-like stabs of his electric guitar. Then, the first line: “Ain’t it just like the night/ To play tricks when you’re trying to be quiet?”