Artforum
February 1995
5) James Marsh, director: Highway 61 Revisited (Arena Television/BBC, 1993). Part of a “Tales of Rock ’n’ Roll” series unseen in the U.S., this one-hour documentary—“a biography of a song”—focuses on one of Bob Dylan’s most inspired recordings and the spine-of-the-nation highway it’s named for. There are surprises everywhere: “Blind Willie McTell” orchestrates footage of Civil Rights demonstrations, a specter dissolving the words of heroes; a rough, clanking piano demo of “Like a Rolling Stone” turns into the anthem everyone knows as New York City looms up; Dylan’s old buddy John Bucklen shares high-school tapes. Bucklen and then Bobby Zimmerman talk into the tape recorder self-consciously, as if they know someday we’ll be listening, judging whether Dylan’s claim that Johnny Cash is more boring than dirt, or that Elvis was a thief, sounds convincing (not completely).
Dylan hammers out Little Richard’s “Jenny, Jenny” on the piano. He sings “Little Richard”—the song. His song. Good, too.
“Little Richard,” “Jenny, Jenny,” and twelve other segments from tapes made by John Bucklen in Hibbing, Minnesota, in 1958, can be found on I Was So Much Younger Then (Dandelion bootleg).