It’s pretty common knowledge that the studio aces of Columbia’s Nashville Studio A were not ready for Bob Dylan when he arrived there to finish BLONDE ON BLONDE. For one, he was famously not into rehearsing or multiple takes; for another, he did not observe the Golden Mean of the three-minute song; for YET another, he was composing IN the studio, unconcerned about the cost, while the musicians, used to knocking songs out like a stamping machine, sat around, smoke, drank, and played cards. Check this out, from Clinton Heylin’s BEHIND THE SHADES: “On February 15, the session began at 6 p.m., but Dylan simply sat in the studio working on his lyrics, while the musicians played cards, napped, and chatted. Finally, at 4 a.m., Dylan called the musicians in and outlined the structure of the song. Dylan counted off and the musicians fell in, as he attempted his epic composition, ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’. [Drummer] Kenny Buttrey recalled, ‘If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody’s just peaking it up ’cause we thought, Man, this is it…This is gonna be the last chorus and we’ve gotta put everything into it we can. And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse and the dynamics had to drop back down to a verse kind of feel…After about ten minutes of this thing we’re cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?'”

Well, after Dylan was gone, HERE is where producer Bob Johnston, Buttrey, and the rest of the studio cast went: