Subterranean Homesick Blues

Bob Dylan opened Bringing It All Back Home with a track driven by a frantic, electric rock-and-roll band. Recorded in early 1965, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" heavily borrowed the rapid-fire, syncopated rhythm from Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business," delivering a chaotic, dense stream-of-consciousness about political paranoia, drug culture, and police harassment. The aggressive, kinetic recording shocked the folk purists but proved that high poetry could be welded to a heavy, blues-based beat, helping to expand the lyrical possibilities of rock music well beyond its previous boundaries.