"Ballad of a Thin Man" is a song written and recorded by Bob Dylan, and released in 1965 on his sixth studio album, Highway 61 Revisited.
[3] Record producer Bob Johnston was in charge of the session, and the backing musicians were Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar, Bobby Gregg on drums, Harvey Brooks on bass, Al Kooper on organ,[4] and Dylan himself playing piano.
"[7] Dylan's song revolves around the mishaps of a Mr. Jones, who keeps blundering into strange situations, and the more questions he asks, the less the world makes sense to him.
"[7] In August 1965, soon after recording the song, when questioned by Nora Ephron and Susan Edmiston about the identity of Mr. Jones, Dylan was deadpan: "He's a real person.
"[9] In March 1986, Dylan told his audience in Japan: "This is a song I wrote a while back in response to people who ask me questions all the time.
[7] In 1975, reporter Jeffrey Jones "outed" himself in a Rolling Stone article, describing how he had attempted to interview Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
"[12] In the John Lennon-penned Beatles song "Yer Blues", Lennon describes the character as feeling "suicidal, just like Dylan's Mr. Jones".
For Marqusee, the song became the anthem of an in-group, "disgusted by the old, excited by the new... elated by their discovery of others who shared their feelings", with its central refrain "Something is happening here/ But you don't know what it is/ Do you, Mr.
Gill writes that this interpretation is based upon "the cumulative inference of references" to a series of images in the song: "pen in your hand", "hands you a bone", "contacts among the lumberjacks", "sword swallower", "he clicks his high heels", "he says, 'Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan'", "one-eyed midget" and "give me some milk".
An incomplete early take of the song, immediately preceding the master and featuring organ fills by Paul Griffin, was released on the 6-disc and 18-disc editions of The Bootleg Series Vol.
7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack (2005; recorded May 20, 1966; also released in 2018 on Live 1962–1966: Rare Performances From The Copyright Collections), and The Bootleg Series Vol.
[17] The live debut occurred at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium on August 28, 1965 and the last performance (to date) took place at Darien Lake Amphitheater on September 17, 2024.