Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35

The story behind

Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35 begins with a sound that doesn't ask for permission: raspy harmonica, electric guitar with just the right amount of distortion, and drums that hit like time itself is soaked. It's not the folk ballad that made him famous in the sixties, nor the psychedelic rock of Highway 61 Revisited. Here, Dylan sounds as if he borrowed the dirty air of a roadside bar at three in the morning, with a chorus that repeats like a drunken mantra: "Everybody must get stoned". The song doesn't tell a linear story; instead, it floats between images of rain, whiskey, and a drunkenness that seems more philosophical than chemical.