Visions Of Johanna

"Visions of Johanna" is a song by Bob Dylan from the 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. Considered among Dylan's greatest works, Dylan referred to it as his favorite song on the album which captured that "thin, wild mercury sound". [2] The song is ranked #404 on the Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. There have been a number of speculations about the meaning of the song of which none have been supported by statements made by Dylan. Commenting on this song, Marqusee characterises it (p. 196) as 'Dylan's definitive treatment of "strandedness"', and notes that 'in contrast to most of the material in "Blonde on Blonde", he brought it to the studio as a finished composition'. He later comments 'In VoJ Dylan is stranded between extremes - total freedom and abject slavery.' Others have subjected the words to poetic 'close reading' and have found in it a wealth of allusion, for example, to William Blake; thus Thakkar [3] says 'My claims will be these: Louise represents the earthly, the prosaic, the finite; and Johanna represents the pure, the poetic, the infinite'. The song was originally titled "Seems Like a Freeze Out"; studio recordings from Blonde on Blonde's' early New York sessions, released on bootleg, have a much faster tempo (more similar to Most Likely You'll Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine) and, in the fifth verse, contain 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), and another with a more conventional rock tempo, closer to the album version recorded in Nashville. Two live versions of the song recorded during Dylan's 1966 tour of England have been released. One version appeared on Biograph, released in 1985. A second version was recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall concert, released as the fourth volume of the Bootleg Series, which was titled The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert as a jab at bootleggers who had erroneously referred to the Manchester concert as such for years prior. Many critics and fans have come to regard these stark, evocative live recordings as superior to the album version. In Perth, during the Australia tour of 1966, Dylan treated the audience to an otherwise unknown verse of "Visions of Johanna". This verse introduces two new characters, Amelia, who describes Australia as "God's favourite failure", and "A Maya with gloves", who talks about love and chocolate. There is no indication that Dylan has performed this verse on any other occasion.[1] 1- Lyrics from the Australian performance Amelia, when asked "Was it awesome, your stay in Australia?" Said, "Sort of, but short, this land must be God's favourite failure I left after finding out that even here, even here there is daily a Dawn, I could just as well choose Vancouver or the Ivory Coast" I said "Yes, but in places like those There are no kangaroos." A Maya with gloves, once said "Love is like cacao beans" Well, these visions of Johanna are the darkest pralines.

Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin' to be so quiet? We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it Lights flicker from the opposite loft In this room the heat pipes just cough The country music station plays soft But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off Just Louise and her lover so entwined And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near She’s delicate and seems like the mirror But she just makes it all too concise and too clear That Johanna’s not here The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously And when bringing her name up He speaks of a farewell kiss to me 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 How can I explain? It's so hard to get on And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues You can tell by the way she smiles See the primitive wallflower freeze When the jelly-faced women all sneeze Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze I can’t find my knees” Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him Sayin’, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him” But like Louise always says “Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?” As she, herself, prepares for him And Madonna, she still has not showed We see this empty cage now corrode Where her cape of the stage once had flowed The fiddler, he now steps to the road He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed On the back of the fish truck that loads While my conscience explodes The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain