‘Blonde on Blonde’: The Bob Dylan record Jeff Bridges loves “all the way through”
From a bona fide Hollywood star to a supersonic musician who’s managed to position himself as the subject of the film industry’s latest darling, Jeff Bridges and Bob Dylan now find themselves as somewhat unlikely kindred spirits. In between massive movies like The Big Lebowski and Crazy Heart, however, Bridges has a burning passion for music which has blazed all through his life and career, making his worship of the lyrical master all the more special.
In fact, from an early age Bridges was stuck for which of the two mediums was the correct path for him to take. He recalled: “I dug what an actor did, but it took me a while to feel it, to truly appreciate the craft and the preparation. Plus, I was still playing music a lot, and I guess I had a hard time choosing: was I an actor or a musician, or could I be both?”
Ultimately picking a life in front of the camera, Bridges still never let his love for music slide, with his rapture of the rock genre a huge part of that. In particular, there was one special Dylan record which stood out among his favourites of all time, and it was definitely for good reason.
That seminal album was Blonde on Blonde, Dylan’s seventh musical masterpiece, unleashed onto the world back in 1966. Speaking of the magic place it holds in his heart, Bridges enthused: “Bob Dylan’s a lot to take in. Man, I just love Blonde on Blonde. What an amazing album all the way through. Of course, I’m into a lot, all of his records, really. I’ve been following Dylan from the beginning, all the folk stuff and then on to the electric stuff, Highway 61 Revisited, and everything else. It’s kind of mind-boggling.”
Indeed, “mind-boggling” is probably the only correct way to put it because this was the prime of Dylan’s seemingly never-ending rapture across the musical realm. As Bridges puts it himself, Blonde on Blonde had marked the pinnacle of Dylan’s rock dominance, with the album in question signalling the end of the trilogy of his electric era, which included Bringing It All Back Home and the aforementioned Highway 61 Revisited.
But it’s obviously not only Bridges who laps it up. The album is roundly considered one of Dylan’s best – no mean feat considering his 40 studio albums and countless bootlegs – and indeed one of the greatest of all time, especially in terms of classic tunes such as ‘Just Like a Woman’ and ‘Visions of Johanna’. It was certainly a record that turned heads and then captured sonic imaginations, with Bridges leading the pack among them.
You can be dead certain those roles in A Complete Unknown would have been getting clamoured over prior to the definitive casting. Whether Jeff Bridges did go up for it or indeed what part could have suited him is another matter, but he’s sure to have been the first in line to see his musical hero finally hitting the big screen.
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