
From the pistol-crack snare that opens “Like a Rolling Stone” to the hazy dream visions of “Einstein Dressed as Robin Hood” that close “Desolation Row,” the action never stops on Bob Dylan’s most relentless and flawless album. Powered by Mike Bloomfield’s slashing guitar lines and Al Kooper’s bracing, rudimentary organ, the head-spinning race Highway 61 Revisited offers through America’s music — rock, blues, folk, country — maps the strip of road that gives the record its title. The next forty years of Dylan’s career would trace the routes mapped out on this album, and most of these songs remain part of his concert repertoire to this day.