Expecting Rain

The Blonde on Blonde arrangements always seemed too harsh for such a surreal, dreamy song.

To me, the live '66 versions are the height of his hallucinogenic poetry. The way he enunciates every single syllable is the best argument for amphetamine use.

Ginsberg's words come to mind when he said Dylan had become "Identified with his breath, like a shaman, with all his intelligence and consciousness focused on his breath. A column of air."

This song for me is the sound of youth, of being in love with your first woman, getting stoned with her for the first time, finding each other in the night. This is soul music. It's a song of mystery, taking you out of yourself and into Bob's surreal world. I've always felt that unlike Sad Eyed Lady, which speaks directly to someone, Visions Of Johanna is a construct, a series of images all built upon one another like a Great Pyramid, all drawn back to a very real fixed reality of an image of a dream and so on....
Visions of Johanna is a painting, a film, a prayer. It is ultimately a gift.
As much as I could never give up the song on that oh so perfect album, I could never live without certain 66 versions either, the finest for me being Sheffield, perhaps the finest deliverance of a song he's ever given. The harmonica, so perfectly understated here CShoe, is only the necessary connective tissue between verses, which pour out of his consciousness so it seems, with no restriction to strict rhythm, the song sounds as if sung by a haunted spirit or a fallen angel.

May 16 1966

http://www.sendspace.com/file/5csz4k

I wish William Shatner had done a cover of this song. That would have been sublime.

As for Bob himself - after the majestic 66 versions, he never got close to the heart of the song again.

I take that as a good thing though majestic certainly isn't a word I would ever use for that performance.

Shatner Ha!


66 seems to be it with many people, me too...

hi M M MIM , do you know if this is the same as the (masters .com) version from wild wolf boot ? ......in terms of sound quality ?........thanx

No, but on the NET he has approached the rectum of the song on a few occasions.

I'm afraid I do not have the Wild Wolf boot to compare, so I couldn't tell you. I do know that the From The Vaults boots from Dandelion are sourced from the lossy website streams and the difference is noticeable. Same with the various fan projects that have collected all the website tracks. Monicasdude makes it sound in his review like the Morose Moose version (the source of my track) is a copy of the Wild Wolf boot, but he also says the latter is sourced from the website streams, which as I said does not seem to be the case of the former. Perhaps he can clarify?

Gaumont Theater, Sheffield May 16, 1966

Just unbelievable.

+1 for Sheffield 66

Visions Of Johanna is one of the few Bob Dylan songs that I feel has never been performed anywhere as successfully as the original album version. I like the version with the hawks, live 1966 and most NET performances but they never excite me like the original. There's a real subtlety in the guitar and organ parts that enhances the lyrics without overpowering them, which is the issue with the hawks version.

A really good live version is on the boot Roadmaps For The Soul which I think is Slovenia 1999.

What if Shatner did a version in 1966?? Even better?

So true!

I love the orginal album version of this, everything about it from the vocal to the band. I know it's going against the grain, but the live '66 versions generally don't do it for me--when you hear a bad comic doing Dylan it's usually the 1966 voice they're doing, and somehow I find it hard to listen to those versions of this song. Some fine performances during the NET---there would be more but it's such a long song that he usually boffs it somewhere.

Dublin 05 is nigh perfect lyrically, never wayward or offkey, and displays the full range of Dylan's inventiveness while never losing the meaning of the lines. At the very end he holds it a little closer to the vest--he'd been fairly going for it through the whole song and he holds back just a bit, as though he knew what he had just sung was pretty damn good and didn't want to mess it up, so he repeats the melodic cadence instead of improvising something different (I'm not talking about upsinging here). I don't know who else is familiar with it, but it seems noticable enough to me to create just the right amount of tension as the lyric comes to a close. In the end, it's this tension that really makes it special--despite the wonderful singing that got the song so far in the first place.

My first favorite Dylan song. The version from the Royal Albert Hall 66 is in my opinion, the best.

It hits me the same way that a Picasso painting does. Wild, disjointed imagery and a fountain of colors.

Light one up sometime and have a listen, you won't be disappointed. It's that type of song.

3 rows back and a kind lady and sir let myself and my friend in their place for a song or two. i usually never hope for specific songs to be played at gigs but there we were...dublin city 2005..on the rail...sunday night..and bob pulls out that visions. something i will never forget till the day i shuffle off this moral coil

seriously, one of the most frequently well or sublimely done songs.
here's a few favorites, off the top...

1. 05 dublin (nothing to add... celestial)
2. 08 house of blues (fiery and backbeat)
3. 99 chicago (the drawn out words and smooth voice)
4. 07 wantagh (the rumbling deep notes)
5. 08 atlanta (inventively sung staccato-fest, short burst versus outdrawn wails)
6. 04 toledo (neat and perfect)
7. 06 roma (short but sweet and emotional)

In general, the NET has not been kind to Visions of Johanna.

Well I don't know about amphetamine use but like what you have to say.

I think this song talks about death. Everything compared to the vacuum of death. That's what this song is about for me. It's specially clear in these lines:

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

But I see this in the whole song from the first line to the last.


And by the way, I still think the live 66 version sucks (the whole acoustic part)

Considering the '66 version, Shatner doing a better version is not much of a stretch.

I advocate raising the bar a bit... so it's not lying on the sidewalk...



or, as in this case, below the surface of the sidewalk.

Visions Of Johanna

Used as an opener a few times in 1989, Bob and G.E. Smith did a few incredible Telecaster power driven electric performances of this delightful tune that just mezmerizes the crowd. On September 6, 1989, the entire set was all '60s songs and every single one of them blow their '60s counterparts (studio or live) out of the water... no contest... And Visions of Johanna cooks electrically!!!

Anyone have the 1992 version from the Bob Dylan.com collection? The whole show is circulating in a not so hot audience recording, but I'm looking for the perfect soundboard that was sent through his site.

i have it, but there is an error towards the end that makes the track skip a little bit.

I've never been too interested in the song besides the album version. The 66 versions are ok (I Think the best is the one on biograph), but the lack of the organ really just dulls it. I wish there was a decent recording of the one from the RTR, the entire song consists of about 6 people yelling at some x to sit down.

It's an absolutely shattering song. When I first heard it, I felt like the world was caving in. Everything about it is perfect. For some reason, one of the lines that always catches me is "The country music station plays soft, but there's nothing, really nothing to turn off." In such a surreal song, to have such a grounded line...it's just beautiful. That one little thing sets the rest so completely--we've all had those "the music was playing soft" moments in our lives. At least most of us. When people ask me why I love Bob Dylan as much as I do, it's really an impossible thing to describe, but when I listen to "Visions of Johanna," I know why I love Bob Dylan. Same with all of his great songs. There's just something THERE that you feel.