This album is so masterful, so unique, that it makes everything Dylan did before it seem like practice. Gone is the über-folksinger, the political gadfly — in their place is Dylan the teller of fractured stories, Dylan the dramatist, Dylan the chronicler of the interior soul of his time.

It’s a work that, like Moby Dick or Leaves Of Grass, hasn’t dated a minute since it first appeared, and never will.

This is a great album, but part of its greatness is its foreshadowing of the two albums that would soon follow it.

And then there was another side, and another side, and another side — until finally there was no Bob Dylan at all . . . just the work.