Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
I must admit before hearing this album, I was not much of a Bob Dylan fan. Perhaps it was because I had been subject to viewing several appearances on Late Night with Letterman or Leno, where I just couldn’t wrap my head around why people liked Bob’s voice. It just was not my thing.
If there’s anything I hope my readers think about after this review is to just consider listening to this album. I think it’s worth a purchase as I added it to my collection years ago. Maybe this will change one’s mind on Bob Dylan. Perhaps some may get a feel and an appreciation for his gifted poetry.
Well, when I heard Blood On The Tracks, that all changed. Released at the beginning of 1975, it was Bob’s fifteenth studio album. Recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Dylan’s original home state) and New York City throughout 1974, this album captures Dylan’s personal confessions from his love affair with then estranged wife Sara. The very first time I acquired a copy of this album, I spent 17 consecutive nights listening on a large pair of Radio Shack headphones. I perfectly planned each night by pressing play on my Walkman when I turned off my lights to go to sleep.
Tangled Up In Blue opens the album. The listener embarks on the beginning of Dylan’s storytelling. I find this song (and album) devoid of Dylan’s whiny, difficult to understand singing. If anything, his lyrics are clear. Each song reflects Dylan’s bout with loneliness, lost love and questions about life, tied into a collection of words that fit ever so finely together like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. This is what Dylan has over other songwriters. His ability to connect every word and invoke rhyming techniques puts him at an expert level as a songwriter, which makes sense since he won The Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.
The album slows down on track 2. Simple Twist of Fate follows up an acoustic “Tangled”. “Simple Twist” is clearly a love song. Dylan eloquently paints the perfect picture. The listener can effectively imagine each character and item mentioned. The melody of this song promotes the feeling of being carefully lifted off the floor, into a cloud. Each lyric feels like your reality as Dylan takes you through a story of how fate can sometimes bring good fortune and heartbreak.
Songs like, Idiot Wind and Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts offer departures from the slow rhythmed love songs that make up the bulk the tracks on this album. Idiot Wind’s chorus is anthem like. As Dylan sings, “Idiot wind,…blowing every time you move your mouth” and “You’re an idiot, babe…It’s a wonder that you still know how…” one can only imagine how distant Dylan felt from the one he calls “babe”. Likely his estranged wife, Sara.
Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts is a well needed, upbeat country swing. It is difficult not to tap your foot to the faster tempo. Bob was likely channeling his inner Willie Nelson during this eight-minute, fifty-three second track. It doesn’t feel that long. Yet another example of a song that is over before you know it on this record.
You’re a Big Girl Now, If you See Her Say Hello and Meet Me in the Morning also have a slight country feel, but the tempo is slowed down on these three numbers. These are some of Dylan’s successful attempts to offer some diversity on the album.
Three of my favorite tracks on Blood on the Tracks include You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go, Shelter From the Storm and the gut wrenching Buckets Of Rain.
These three tracks take you back to Dylan’s winding journey of rhyming and perfecting the placement of words that normally would not fit together. After hearing Dylan call his love an “idiot”, “Lonesome”, “Shelter” and “Buckets” almost seem like an apology. They represent his need to almost say, “Wait! I’m sorry babe. Please don’t leave…..”
Buckets of Rain brought me to tears the first time I heard it. I’m being serious. Have you ever fell asleep listening to an album, then woke up five, ten or twenty minutes later and became almost paralyzed to something beautiful playing in your ears? In one’s post slumber confusion, many may not be able to resist the urge to get up and gather their thoughts. This happened to me, only I just surrendered to Dylan’s lyrics. His reality became my reality for three minutes and twenty-six seconds. Lyrics such as “I like the way you love me strong and slow” and “I’m taking you with me, honey baby where I go”, fit nicely on top of Dylan’s tinny, acoustic guitar and Tony Brown’s soft bass lines.
Blood On the Tracks reached number 1 on the Billboard 200 charts and number 4 on the UK Albums chart. Tangled Up in Blue reached number 31 on the top singles chart. The album remains one of Bob Dylan’s best-selling studio releases, reaching Double Platinum in the United States and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.
Again, for any individual who has struggled with Bob Dylan’s post 1990s stage voice, I get it. But this album changed the way I looked at and listened to music. It is truly a classic.
Already own Blood On the Tracks? You cannot go wrong with Dylan’s famous live concert recording, The Bootleg Series , Vol 4: 1966 The Royal Albert Hall.
Or pick up some Dylan merchandise for you and your friends!