“Ballad Of A Thin Man” by Bob Dylan

"Ballad of a Thin Man" finds Bob Dylan in a vicious mood on Highway 61 Revisited, his sixth studio album, released in 1965. He wrote it and cut it on August 2 that year in Columbia's Studio A at 799 Seventh Avenue in New York, with Bob Johnston producing. Dylan lays down the somber piano chords himself while Al Kooper's organ lurks around them like something out of a horror flick, with Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar, Harvey Brooks on bass and Bobby Gregg on drums.

The song trails a hapless mister through one mishap after another. Kooper rated it the most musically sophisticated thing on the album, and Gregg, hearing the playback, told Dylan flat out that it was a nasty one; Kooper figured nobody wrote nastier songs than Dylan back then.

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