Visions of Johanna
Encyclopedia
"Visions of Johanna" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan
on his 1966
album Blonde on Blonde
. Dylan first recorded the song in New York City in November 1965, under the working title of "Freeze Out", but was dissatisfied with the results. When the Blonde on Blonde recording sessions moved to Nashville in February 1966, Dylan attempted the composition again with different musicians, and decided to release this performance. Three alternate versions of the song have been officially released: one of them a November 1965 studio outtake
, and two others live performances from his 1966 world tour
.
Several critics have acclaimed "Visions of Johanna" as one of Dylan's highest achievements in writing, praising the allusiveness and subtlety of the language. Rolling Stone
included "Visions of Johanna" on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
. In 1999, Andrew Motion
, poet laureate of the UK
, listed it as his candidate for the greatest song lyric ever written. Numerous artists have recorded cover version
s of the song, including The Grateful Dead
, Marianne Faithfull
and Robyn Hitchcock
.
places the writing of "Visions of Johanna" in the fall of 1965, when Dylan was living in the Chelsea Hotel
with his pregnant wife Sara
. Heylin notes that "in this déclassé hotel…the heat pipes still cough", referring to a line from the song. Greil Marcus
reports that when first heard, "the story was that the song had been written during the great east coast blackout of November 9, 1965
."
Dylan first recorded this song, backed by The Hawks, in the CBS New York recording studio, on November 30, 1965, announcing his new composition with the words: "This is called 'Freeze Out'." Andy Gill notes that this working title captures the "air of nocturnal suspension in which the verse tableaux are sketched...full of whispering and muttering." According to Marcus, Dylan introduced the song in live performances in 1966 with the words, "Seems like a freeze-out."
Some of the New York recordings, released on bootlegs
, were uptempo and contain in the fifth verse the additional line "He examines the nightingale's code". Two slower versions were recorded in New York, one with a march-like tempo, which was released on the No Direction Home soundtrack
in 2005, and another with a more conventional rock tempo, closer to the album version recorded in Nashville. Historian Sean Wilentz
, for his book Dylan In America, listened closely to full studio tapes of the Blonde on Blonde sessions, and describes how Dylan guided the New York backing musicians through fourteen takes, trying to explain how he wanted "Visions of Johanna" played. At one point, Dylan says: "It's not hard rock
, The only thing in it that's hard is Robbie
." Analyzing the evolution of the song in the New York recording session, Wilentz writes that Dylan "quiets things down, inching closer to what will eventually appear on Blonde on Blonde—and it is still not right."
"Visions of Johanna" fell into place when Dylan was persuaded by his producer, Bob Johnston
, to move the recording sessions to Nashville, Tennessee
. During his first day in the CBS Nashville studio, on February 14, 1966, the Blonde on Blonde version of the song was recorded. In an interview with Andy Gill, Al Kooper
has said that he and guitarist Robbie Robertson became sensitive to the nuances of Dylan's vocal. Kooper added that "it's very important what Joe South's
bass is doing in that"; Kooper described it as "this throbbing...rhythmically amazing bass part". Other backing musicians were Charlie McCoy
, guitar, Wayne Moss, guitar, and Kenneth Buttrey on drums.
Dylan first performed "Visions of Johanna" in public on December 4, 1965, at the Berkeley Community Theatre
. Present at this concert was Joan Baez
, who believed the lyrics referred to her. She said, "He'd just written 'Visions of Johanna', which sounded very suspicious to me...he'd never performed it before and Neuwirth told him I was there that night and he performed it." Heylin suggests that if Dylan performed it for anyone that night it was Allen Ginsberg
, who was also present. Heylin argues Dylan considered Ginsberg to be an important influence on his songwriting at this juncture, and was keen to showcase the song for the Beat poet
.
Two live versions of the song recorded during Dylan's 1966 tour of England have been released. His performance of the song at London
's Royal Albert Hall
concert, on May 26, 1966, appeared on Biograph
, released in 1985. Asked by Cameron Crowe
, for the liner notes for Biograph, how he could remember the words of such a complex song in live performance, Dylan responded, "I could remember a song without writing it down because it was so visual." A second version of the song, recorded at the Manchester
Free Trade Hall
concert, was released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966.
Clinton Heylin has described what he construes as the strange circumstances surrounding the song. Written around the time of Dylan's marriage to Sara Lownds, Heylin describes it as "one of the oddest songs ever written by a man who has just tied the knot and is enjoying a brief honeymoon in the city". Connecting the songs with Dylan's experiencing a dearth of material as he commences work on his seventh studio album, Heylin speculates that "it is awfully tempting to see Johanna as his muse" who, in the song, is "not here". For Heylin, the triumph of the song lies in "the way Dylan manages to write about the most inchoate feelings in such a vivid, immediate way".
Dylan critic Michael Gray
also praises the subtlety of the song. Gray acknowledges that it is difficult to say what this song is "about", since it is at once indefinable and precise. For Gray, its principal achievement lies in the way it confuses categories, using language to be simultaneously serious and flippant, delicate and coarse, and mixing up "abstract neo-philosophy and figurative phraseology".
Robert Shelton called "Visions of Johanna" one of Dylan's major works. He writes that Dylan's technique of throwing out "skittering images" evokes "a mind floating downstream"; these "non-sequential visions" are the record of a fractured consciousness. Shelton argues that the song explores a hopeless quest to reach an ideal, the visions of Johanna, and yet without this quest life becomes meaningless. He suggests that the same paradox is explored by Keats
in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn
".
Mike Marqusee
situates the song in New York City, "a flickering, electric, ghostly, cityscape". Dylan describes himself stranded in a fog of detachment which provides a haven, and at the same time is pained by a piercing clarity: an unmediated response that is "too concise and too clear". For Marqusee, Dylan describes his predicament, suspended between freedom and slavery, yet hungry for an authentic experience. Johanna and Louise are objects of desire and yearning. "It is their elusiveness and unreality that's the point."
Guitarist and critic Bill Janovitz
also emphasizes the urban, unreal quality of "Visions of Johanna", calling it a "sprawling epic". "The journey takes Dylan through lofts, the D train, a museum, empty lots, and through snippets of overheard conversation, as well as a discussion with some 'little boy lost', who 'takes himself so seriously', and who is 'so useless and all/muttering small talk at the wall'." For Janovitz, this could "possibly be a swipe at a critic".
Literary critic Christopher Ricks
, in his study of Dylan's work, pinpoints the emotional effect of these same lines:
Ricks writes that the phrase "and all" turns a mood of helplessness into a sense of "aggression and baffled anger".
Trying to unravel the mystery of the song, Greil Marcus writes that the song is concerned with internal questions, rather than external ones: "Line by line, 'Blowin' in the Wind' is pious, or falsely innocent—isn't it obvious that whoever wrote "Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail / Before she sleeps in the sand?" already knows the answer, assuming he, or anyone, can actually bring themselves to care about such a precious question? But 'Visions of Johanna' is asking different sorts of questions. Such as: Where are you? Who are you? What are you doing here?" Evoking the drugged, urban milieu of the song, Marcus writes of "People wandering from one corner of a loft to another, doped, drunk, half-awake, fast asleep, no point to the next breath, let alone the next step." For Marcus, "'Visions of Johanna' makes a narrative solely out of atmosphere."
magazine placed the song at No. 404 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
, commenting that Dylan "never sounded lonelier than in this seven-minute ballad, cut in a single take on Valentine's Day 1966." (When Rollings Stone updated their list in 2010, the song dropped to No. 413.) In 1999, Britain's Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion
, chose it as his candidate for the best song lyric ever written. Motion praised "the concentration and surprise" of Dylan's lyrics, and said that, although he distanced himself from some of the singer's views about women, the "rasp of his anger" was a part of his greatness. Commenting on the song in a 1985 interview, Dylan said, "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."
The Grateful Dead
played "Visions of Johanna" in concert a number of times between 1986 and 1995, and both they and Jerry Garcia
solo each released a live version on record. Other artists who have covered the song include Marianne Faithfull
, Robyn Hitchcock
, Lee Ranaldo
, Michel Montecrossa
, Chris Smither
, former Flamin' Groovies guitarist Chris Wilson
, Julie Felix
, and Maggie Holland
. The jazz trio Jewels and Binoculars
, who named themselves after a phrase from "Visions of Johanna", recorded an instrumental treatment of the song on their album The Music of Bob Dylan. Foreign language versions of the song include a recording by Jan Erik Vold
, Kåre Virud and Telemark Blueslag in Norwegian, Gerard Quintana
's and Jordi Batiste's version in Catalan, Steffen Brandt
's in Danish, and Ernst Jansz
's in Dutch.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
on his 1966
1966 in music
-Events:*January 3 – Hullabaloo shows promotional videos of The Beatles songs "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work it Out".*January 8 – Shindig! airs for the last time on ABC, with musical guests the Kinks and the Who...
album Blonde on Blonde
Blonde on Blonde
Blonde on Blonde is American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's seventh studio album, released in May or June 1966 on Columbia Records and produced by Bob Johnston. Recording sessions commenced in New York in October 1965, with a plethora of backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing...
. Dylan first recorded the song in New York City in November 1965, under the working title of "Freeze Out", but was dissatisfied with the results. When the Blonde on Blonde recording sessions moved to Nashville in February 1966, Dylan attempted the composition again with different musicians, and decided to release this performance. Three alternate versions of the song have been officially released: one of them a November 1965 studio outtake
Outtake
An outtake is a portion of a work that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version. In the digital era, significant outtakes have been appended to CD and DVD reissues of many albums and films as bonus tracks or features, in film often, but not...
, and two others live performances from his 1966 world tour
Bob Dylan World Tour 1966
The Bob Dylan World Tour 1966 was a concert tour undertaken by American musician Bob Dylan, from February to May 1966. Dylan's 1966 World Tour was notable as the first tour where Dylan employed an electric band backing him, following his "going electric" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival...
.
Several critics have acclaimed "Visions of Johanna" as one of Dylan's highest achievements in writing, praising the allusiveness and subtlety of the language. Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
included "Visions of Johanna" on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" was the cover story of a special issue of Rolling Stone, issue number 963, published December 9, 2004, a year after the magazine published its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time"....
. In 1999, Andrew Motion
Andrew Motion
Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.- Life and career :...
, poet laureate of the UK
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
The Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, also referred to as the Poet Laureate, is the Poet Laureate appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom on the advice of the Prime Minister...
, listed it as his candidate for the greatest song lyric ever written. Numerous artists have recorded cover version
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...
s of the song, including The Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
, Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....
and Robyn Hitchcock
Robyn Hitchcock
Robyn Rowan Hitchcock is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. While primarily a vocalist and guitarist, he also plays harmonica, piano and bass guitar....
.
Recording
Clinton HeylinClinton Heylin
Clinton Heylin is an English author who has written extensively about popular music and the work of Bob Dylan.- Education :...
places the writing of "Visions of Johanna" in the fall of 1965, when Dylan was living in the Chelsea Hotel
Hotel Chelsea
The Hotel Chelsea, also known as the Chelsea Hotel, or simply the Chelsea, is a historic New York City hotel and landmark, known primarily for its history of notable residents...
with his pregnant wife Sara
Sara Dylan
Sara Dylan , born Shirley Marlin Noznisky and later known as Sara Lownds, was the first wife of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and mother of singer Jakob Dylan. She was married to Bob Dylan from November 1965 until June 1977.-Early life:Little is known about Sara Dylan's early life or family...
. Heylin notes that "in this déclassé hotel…the heat pipes still cough", referring to a line from the song. Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.-Life and career:Marcus was born in San Francisco...
reports that when first heard, "the story was that the song had been written during the great east coast blackout of November 9, 1965
Northeast Blackout of 1965
The Northeast blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in the supply of electricity on November 9, 1965, affecting Ontario, Canada and Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey in the United States...
."
Some of the New York recordings, released on bootlegs
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
, were uptempo and contain in the fifth verse the additional line "He examines the nightingale's code". Two slower versions were recorded in New York, one with a march-like tempo, which was released on the No Direction Home soundtrack
The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack is the third most recent installment in the Bob Dylan "Bootleg Series" of rare and/or officially unissued recordings....
in 2005, and another with a more conventional rock tempo, closer to the album version recorded in Nashville. Historian Sean Wilentz
Sean Wilentz
Robert Sean Wilentz is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979.-Background:Born in 1951 in New York City, where his father Eli and uncle Ted owned a well-known Greenwich Village bookstore, the Eighth Street Bookshop, Wilentz earned...
, for his book Dylan In America, listened closely to full studio tapes of the Blonde on Blonde sessions, and describes how Dylan guided the New York backing musicians through fourteen takes, trying to explain how he wanted "Visions of Johanna" played. At one point, Dylan says: "It's not hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
, The only thing in it that's hard is Robbie
Robbie Robertson
Robbie Robertson, OC; is a Canadian singer-songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known for his membership as the guitarist and primary songwriter within The Band. He was ranked 59th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time...
." Analyzing the evolution of the song in the New York recording session, Wilentz writes that Dylan "quiets things down, inching closer to what will eventually appear on Blonde on Blonde—and it is still not right."
"Visions of Johanna" fell into place when Dylan was persuaded by his producer, Bob Johnston
Bob Johnston
Donald William Robert 'Bob' Johnston is a noted American record producer, best known for his work with Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Willie Nelson and many Nashville recording artists, as well as Simon and Garfunkel.-Early days:Johnston was born into a professional musical family...
, to move the recording sessions to Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
. During his first day in the CBS Nashville studio, on February 14, 1966, the Blonde on Blonde version of the song was recorded. In an interview with Andy Gill, Al Kooper
Al Kooper
Al Kooper is an American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears , providing studio support for Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965, and also bringing together guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills to...
has said that he and guitarist Robbie Robertson became sensitive to the nuances of Dylan's vocal. Kooper added that "it's very important what Joe South's
Joe South
Joe South is a multi-talented American singer-songwriter and guitarist.-Career:...
bass is doing in that"; Kooper described it as "this throbbing...rhythmically amazing bass part". Other backing musicians were Charlie McCoy
Charlie McCoy
Charles "Charlie" Ray McCoy is an American musician noted for his harmonica playing. In his career, McCoy has backed several notable musicians including Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Tom Astor, Elvis Presley and Ween. He has also recorded thirty-seven studio albums, including fourteen for Monument Records...
, guitar, Wayne Moss, guitar, and Kenneth Buttrey on drums.
Live performances and recordings
Berkeley Community Theatre
The Berkeley Community Theatre is a theatre, located in Berkeley, California on the campus of Berkeley High School. The Art Deco-style theater has 3,491 seats, including a balcony section...
. Present at this concert was Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
, who believed the lyrics referred to her. She said, "He'd just written 'Visions of Johanna', which sounded very suspicious to me...he'd never performed it before and Neuwirth told him I was there that night and he performed it." Heylin suggests that if Dylan performed it for anyone that night it was Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, who was also present. Heylin argues Dylan considered Ginsberg to be an important influence on his songwriting at this juncture, and was keen to showcase the song for the Beat poet
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
.
Two live versions of the song recorded during Dylan's 1966 tour of England have been released. His performance of the song at London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
concert, on May 26, 1966, appeared on Biograph
Biograph (album)
Biograph is a 53-track compilation spanning the career of Bob Dylan, from his 1962 debut album to the 1981 LP Shot of Love. Released in 1985 by Columbia Records, on both a 5-LP and a 3-CD Box set, it was one of the earliest and most successful examples of the CD Box set...
, released in 1985. Asked by Cameron Crowe
Cameron Crowe
Cameron Bruce Crowe is an American screenwriter and film director. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes....
, for the liner notes for Biograph, how he could remember the words of such a complex song in live performance, Dylan responded, "I could remember a song without writing it down because it was so visual." A second version of the song, recorded at the Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
Free Trade Hall
Free Trade Hall
The Free Trade Hall, Peter Street, Manchester, was a public hall constructed in 1853–6 on St Peter's Fields, the site of the Peterloo Massacre and is now a hotel. The hall was built to commemorate the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The architect was Edward Walters The hall subsequently was...
concert, was released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966.
Interpretation
Noting how popular "Visions of Johanna" remains among "hardcore Dylanophiles", Andy Gill suggests it is the enigmatic quality of the song which is responsible for its popularity—"forever teetering on the brink of lucidity, yet remaining impervious to strict decipherment". Gill writes the song begins by contrasting two lovers, the carnal Louise, and "the more spiritual but unattainable" Johanna. Ultimately, for Gill, the song seeks to convey how the artist is compelled to keep striving to pursue some elusive vision of perfection.Clinton Heylin has described what he construes as the strange circumstances surrounding the song. Written around the time of Dylan's marriage to Sara Lownds, Heylin describes it as "one of the oddest songs ever written by a man who has just tied the knot and is enjoying a brief honeymoon in the city". Connecting the songs with Dylan's experiencing a dearth of material as he commences work on his seventh studio album, Heylin speculates that "it is awfully tempting to see Johanna as his muse" who, in the song, is "not here". For Heylin, the triumph of the song lies in "the way Dylan manages to write about the most inchoate feelings in such a vivid, immediate way".
Dylan critic Michael Gray
Michael Gray (author)
Michael Gray is a British author who has written extensively about popular music.Gray grew up on Merseyside, attended Birkenhead School, and read History and English Literature at the University of York. Gray subsequently lived and worked in North Devon, Birmingham, West Malvern, London and North...
also praises the subtlety of the song. Gray acknowledges that it is difficult to say what this song is "about", since it is at once indefinable and precise. For Gray, its principal achievement lies in the way it confuses categories, using language to be simultaneously serious and flippant, delicate and coarse, and mixing up "abstract neo-philosophy and figurative phraseology".
Robert Shelton called "Visions of Johanna" one of Dylan's major works. He writes that Dylan's technique of throwing out "skittering images" evokes "a mind floating downstream"; these "non-sequential visions" are the record of a fractured consciousness. Shelton argues that the song explores a hopeless quest to reach an ideal, the visions of Johanna, and yet without this quest life becomes meaningless. He suggests that the same paradox is explored by Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode on a Grecian Urn
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819 and published in January 1820 . It is one of his "Great Odes of 1819", which include "Ode on Indolence", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale", and "Ode to Psyche"...
".
Mike Marqusee
Mike Marqusee
Mike Marqusee is an American-born writer, journalist and political activist in London. His partner is the barrister Liz Davies.Marqusee, who describes himself as a "deracinated New York Marxist Jew" has lived in Britain since 1971...
situates the song in New York City, "a flickering, electric, ghostly, cityscape". Dylan describes himself stranded in a fog of detachment which provides a haven, and at the same time is pained by a piercing clarity: an unmediated response that is "too concise and too clear". For Marqusee, Dylan describes his predicament, suspended between freedom and slavery, yet hungry for an authentic experience. Johanna and Louise are objects of desire and yearning. "It is their elusiveness and unreality that's the point."
Guitarist and critic Bill Janovitz
Bill Janovitz
Bill Janovitz is best known as the singer and guitarist of the alternative rock band Buffalo Tom.-History:After enrolling at the University of Massachusetts, Janovitz formed Buffalo Tom with fellow students Chris Colbourn and Tom Maginnis. A friendship with J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr...
also emphasizes the urban, unreal quality of "Visions of Johanna", calling it a "sprawling epic". "The journey takes Dylan through lofts, the D train, a museum, empty lots, and through snippets of overheard conversation, as well as a discussion with some 'little boy lost', who 'takes himself so seriously', and who is 'so useless and all/muttering small talk at the wall'." For Janovitz, this could "possibly be a swipe at a critic".
Literary critic Christopher Ricks
Christopher Ricks
Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks, FBA is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University and Co-Director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 2004...
, in his study of Dylan's work, pinpoints the emotional effect of these same lines:
-
-
-
- He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
- Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
-
-
Ricks writes that the phrase "and all" turns a mood of helplessness into a sense of "aggression and baffled anger".
Trying to unravel the mystery of the song, Greil Marcus writes that the song is concerned with internal questions, rather than external ones: "Line by line, 'Blowin' in the Wind' is pious, or falsely innocent—isn't it obvious that whoever wrote "Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail / Before she sleeps in the sand?" already knows the answer, assuming he, or anyone, can actually bring themselves to care about such a precious question? But 'Visions of Johanna' is asking different sorts of questions. Such as: Where are you? Who are you? What are you doing here?" Evoking the drugged, urban milieu of the song, Marcus writes of "People wandering from one corner of a loft to another, doped, drunk, half-awake, fast asleep, no point to the next breath, let alone the next step." For Marcus, "'Visions of Johanna' makes a narrative solely out of atmosphere."
Legacy
The song has been described by several critics as being a masterpiece. In 2004, Rolling StoneRolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine placed the song at No. 404 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" was the cover story of a special issue of Rolling Stone, issue number 963, published December 9, 2004, a year after the magazine published its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time"....
, commenting that Dylan "never sounded lonelier than in this seven-minute ballad, cut in a single take on Valentine's Day 1966." (When Rollings Stone updated their list in 2010, the song dropped to No. 413.) In 1999, Britain's Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion
Andrew Motion
Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.- Life and career :...
, chose it as his candidate for the best song lyric ever written. Motion praised "the concentration and surprise" of Dylan's lyrics, and said that, although he distanced himself from some of the singer's views about women, the "rasp of his anger" was a part of his greatness. Commenting on the song in a 1985 interview, Dylan said, "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."
Cover versions
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
played "Visions of Johanna" in concert a number of times between 1986 and 1995, and both they and Jerry Garcia
Jerry Garcia
Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...
solo each released a live version on record. Other artists who have covered the song include Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....
, Robyn Hitchcock
Robyn Hitchcock
Robyn Rowan Hitchcock is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. While primarily a vocalist and guitarist, he also plays harmonica, piano and bass guitar....
, Lee Ranaldo
Lee Ranaldo
Lee M. Ranaldo is an American singer, guitarist, writer, record producer, and visual artist, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth...
, Michel Montecrossa
Michel Montecrossa
Michel Montecrossa is a German media entrepreneur, author, musician, painter, film-maker, futurist, consciousness researcher and founder of Mirapuri, the City of Peace and Futureman in Europe...
, Chris Smither
Chris Smither
Chris Smither is an American folk/blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter. His music draws deeply from the blues, American folk music, modern poets and philosophers.-Early life, influences and education:...
, former Flamin' Groovies guitarist Chris Wilson
Chris Wilson (guitarist)
Chris Wilson is a guitarist and multi instrumentalist, most known for his role as the singer of the best-remembered line-up San Francisco cult band The Flamin' Groovies, having replaced original singer Roy Loney in 1971...
, Julie Felix
Julie Felix
Julie Ann Felix is a folk rock recording artist, who was notably produced by Mickie Most on his RAK Records label.-Career:...
, and Maggie Holland
Maggie Holland
Maggie Holland is an English singer and songwriter. She was born and raised in Alton, Hampshire and became involved in the local folk club scene in the late 1960s. She has played in a number of bands and formed a number of collaborations with other artists, but has become well-known in recent times...
. The jazz trio Jewels and Binoculars
Michael Moore (saxophonist and clarinetist)
Michael Moore is an American-born jazz musician and composer who has resided in the Netherlands since 1982.- Background and career:...
, who named themselves after a phrase from "Visions of Johanna", recorded an instrumental treatment of the song on their album The Music of Bob Dylan. Foreign language versions of the song include a recording by Jan Erik Vold
Jan Erik Vold
Jan Erik Vold is a Norwegian lyric poet, translator and author. He was a core member of the so-called "Profil generation", the circle attached to the literary magazine Profil. Throughout his career as an artist, he has had the ability to reach the public, both with his poetry and his political views...
, Kåre Virud and Telemark Blueslag in Norwegian, Gerard Quintana
Gerard Quintana
Gerard Quintana Rodeja is a Catalan singer, songwriter, poet, writer, actor, and radio and TV personality. He came to prominence in 1986-2001 as the lead singer of the Catalan rock/pop group Sopa de Cabra. Since the dissolution of the band in 2001, he has pursued a very successful solo career...
's and Jordi Batiste's version in Catalan, Steffen Brandt
Steffen Brandt
Steffen Brandt is a Danish singer-songwriter and composer. Since 1981 he has been lead singer of rock group TV-2, as he also wrote both text and music to all the group's songs....
's in Danish, and Ernst Jansz
Ernst Jansz
Ernst Gideon Jansz is one of the founding members and frontmen of Doe Maar. Doe Maar is a Dutch 1980s ska/reggae band, and is considered one of the most successful bands in Dutch pop history....
's in Dutch.