LAST NIGHT A RECORD CHANGED MY LIFE
Lucinda Williams
The Americana outlier bows to Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia, 1965).
We were living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My dad, who was a writer and poet, was teaching at Louisiana State University, and he had a meeting with one of his students at our house. This student walks into the living room waving
Highway 61
and saying, “You have to listen to this, it’s amazing!” I was 12, I had just started taking guitar lessons and was really into the whole folk scene, but I’d never really heard Bob Dylan – Imight have heard a song on the radio or a cover, but I’d never really
studied
him. They went into another room and left this record on the table. I very carefully put it on the stereo, and BOOM!