Visions of Johanna is my favourite song in contemporary music. It’s the official bootleg version below from Live 1966 that I feel is the definitive one, at least for me. As you can see from the official bootleg cover above, it is titled the “Royal Albert Hall” concert, but it was actually performed at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on May 17, 1966, because early bootleggers mistakenly labelled the tape with that title.

I have three versions of Visions in my collection – the original studio release from Blonde on Blonde, the aforementioned live 1966 Manchester version, and the very cool ‘acoustically eclectic’ performance from 24 September 2000 in Portsmouth. But, there is no other song, lyrically or in its mode of presentation, that I find more emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually impactful and immersive than Visions in the Live 1966 version.

In 2012, I conducted a poll on the Expecting Rain (ER) Bob Dylan discussion forum, asking participants to list, in no particular order, their 10 favourite Bob Dylan songs. In total, 58 submissions were received, with 147 different Bob Dylan songs voted for overall. Visions of Johanna received more votes than any other Dylan song with 25 votes, which gives some indication of how highly regarded Visions remains among Dylanholics.

No. 2 was Tangled Up in Blue with 22 votes, and No. 3 was Mississippi with 19 votes. You can read the rest of the results here.

I was always daunted by the idea of writing about this phenomenal piece since it almost feels futile to subject one’s own interpretation to Visions of Johanna. It is so dense, filled with surreal imagery, and remains resistant to strict decipherment. Each line feels like a poem in and of itself and contains its own dream-state imagery particular to whatever it conjures in the mind of the listener.

As I grow older, the imagery I alluded to feels even more vivid, and the meaning more profound and relevant. Not just that, but upon each new listen the song feels renewed and reborn, changing and morphing each time and meaning different things on different occasions – much like how no two dreams are ever the same. In this sense, it feels alive, like its own living and breathing organism, operating mostly on a subconscious level.

Without sounding like I’m using a “get out of jail free” card, such is its profundity and the intimate connection I have with it, I’m reluctant to disclose fully, for personal and privacy reasons, where this song takes me. That’s not to suggest it is always negative, but it is challenging and can be confronting if I’m being totally honest with both myself and the song.

For example, take these lines:

“Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously”

To me – and this is as personal as I’m willing to go, so please forgive my candidness – I probably should have taken more heed of lines like this when I was younger. And there are other difficult moments interspersed throughout the song, such as:

“He’s sure got a lotta gall
To be so useless and all.”

Visions of Johanna does not contain explicitly reassuring lines; rather, it is characterised by existential doubt, isolation, longing, and frustration instead of comfort or affirmation. Yet ironically, there is comfort in knowing someone was willing to express this so honestly. I always knew it wasn’t going to be pretty facing up to this song, yet the melancholy and resignation framed within it act partly like a lighthouse for a stranded vessel adrift.

In terms of musical art, songs really do not get much more potent or cutting-edge than this. It’s like reading old scripture adapted for modern times. After all these years of listening to it, there still is not a single line that does not blow my mind. So I’m here to say that, in my admittedly meagre musical estimation, I still have not heard its equal.

According to Wikipedia, many critics have acclaimed Visions as one of Dylan’s highest achievements in writing. In 1999, Sir Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, listed it as the greatest song lyric ever written.

Clinton Heylin 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.

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.”

Andy Gill writes that 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.

[Verse 1]
Ain’t it just like the night to play
Tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded
Though we’re all doing our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting 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

[Verse 2]
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 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

[Verse 3]
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
Oh, how can I explain?
It’s so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn

[Verse 4]
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, “Jeez, 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

[Verse 5]
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
“You can’t look at much, can you, 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 everything’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

References:
1. Visions of Johanna – Wikipedia