Visions of Johanna
All of the alternate versions of the song have been officially released, but some only on a limited edition collectors set: many of them are November 1965 or later 1966 studio outtakes, and two others are live performances from his 1966 world tour.
Numerous artists have recorded cover versions of the song, including the Grateful Dead, Cat Power, Marianne Faithfull, Chris Smither, and Robyn Hitchcock.
Scholar Laurence Coupe has argued that the identity of the title character "echoes" Jack Kerouac's Visions of Gerard (written 1956, published 1963), and the song as a whole, like the novel, "would seem to be about the hunger for beatific experience—the hope that the sacred realm might yet be glimpsed within the profane.
"[6] 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.
"[10] Andy Gill notes that this working title captures the "air of nocturnal suspension in which the verse tableaux are sketched...full of whispering and muttering.
Analyzing the evolution of the song in the New York recording session, Wilentz writes that Dylan "quiets things down, inching closer to what will eventually appear on Blonde on Blonde—and it is still not right.
"[10] Several complete takes of the song[12] were recorded on November 30, including one with an uptempo rock beat, containing harpsichord accompaniment, and another with a march-like tempo, which was released on The Bootleg Series Vol.
[13] "Visions of Johanna" fell into place when Dylan was persuaded by his producer, Bob Johnston, to move the recording sessions to Nashville, Tennessee.
Heylin argues Dylan considered Ginsberg to be an important influence on his songwriting at this juncture, and was keen to showcase the song for the Beat poet.
For Gray, its principal achievement lies in the way it confuses categories, using language to be simultaneously serious and flippant, delicate and coarse, and mixing up "abstract neo-philosophy and figurative phraseology".
He writes that Dylan's technique of throwing out "skittering images" evokes "a mind floating downstream"; these "non-sequential visions" are the record of a fractured consciousness.
[23] Dylan describes himself stranded in a fog of detachment which provides a haven, and at the same time is pained by a piercing clarity: an unmediated response that is "too concise and too clear".
"The journey takes Dylan through lofts, the D train, a museum, empty lots, and through snippets of overheard conversation, as well as a discussion with some 'little boy lost', who 'takes himself so seriously', and who is 'so useless and all/muttering small talk at the wall'."
Evoking the drugged, urban milieu of the song, Marcus writes of "People wandering from one corner of a loft to another, doped, drunk, half-awake, fast asleep, no point to the next breath, let alone the next step."
404 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time,[26] commenting that Dylan "never sounded lonelier than in this seven-minute ballad, cut in a single take on Valentine's Day 1966."
Motion praised "the concentration and surprise" of Dylan's lyrics, and said that, although he distanced himself from some of the singer's views about women, the "rasp of his anger" was a part of his greatness.
In 2020, during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Bruce Springsteen cited "Visions of Johanna" as one of his three favorite Dylan songs (along with "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Ring Them Bells").
"[17] The Grateful Dead played "Visions of Johanna" in concert a number of times between 1986 and 1995,[33] and both they and Jerry Garcia solo each released a live version on record.
The jazz trio Jewels and Binoculars, who named themselves after a phrase from "Visions of Johanna",[44] recorded an instrumental treatment of the song on their album The Music of Bob Dylan.
