“People tell me it's a sin
To know and feel too much within.
I still believe she was my twin, but I lost the ring.
She was born in spring, but I was born too late
Blame it on a simple twist of fate.”—Bob Dylan, “Simple Twist of Fate”, from the Blood on the Tracks LP (1975)
In Fred Goodman’s marvelous account of the rock-music business of the 1970s, The Mansion on the Hill, there’s a priceless scene from late 1974. Bob Dylan is playing to a small group of musicians several songs from what would become Blood on the Tracks.
The room is packed, so Graham Nash has to listen just outside the door and can’t see, but he doesn’t mind a bit—Dylan’s songs are amazing.
Nash’s reverie is interrupted by another listener, Stephen Stills. The man just can’t play guitar, Stills tells his CSNY bandmate. An outraged Nash feels this criticism is utterly beside the point.
Who am I to gainsay someone of Stills’ guitar skills when it comes to assessing Dylan on this instrument? And truth be told, despite the contention of New Yorker editor David Remnick that Dylan is one of the great singers, his voice wasn’t great shakes, either—more charitably described as “expressive” than “excellent.”
But Nash was absolutely correct in how he reacted to Blood on the Tracks. It’s one of those LPs that deserve to be placed in a time capsule as representing the best of the singer-songwriter era—or, indeed, the past half-century of rock ‘n’ roll. “His poetic distillation of love, memory, coincidence and fate was as close as rock music has come to great literature,” wrote Adam Sweeting in a Guardian profile 10 years ago.
Faithful reader, I fell down on the job two weeks ago, failing to observe that January 17 marked the 35th anniversary of the release date for Dylan’s song set on fractured love. Trouble was, much of the media—at least from what I can see—did, too. Shame on us all.
When it came out, the LP was hailed as proof that “Dylan was back”—not just physically recovered from his motorcycle accident of the Sixties (he’d been back from that for awhile), but back as a songwriter who mattered. That hope proved elusive. Sure, he subsequently had another protest hit (“Hurricane”); he could still surprise (his period as a born-again Christian positively flummoxed everybody); and he could come up with isolated songs that were excellent (the Oscar-winning “Things Have Changed” from Wonder Boys), and whole albums that were good (Time Out of Mind).
But Blood on the Tracks is the last album, from first to final cut, that can be judged indisputably great.
Listeners could not help but notice the timing of the album’s release—when Dylan’s marriage to former model Sarah Lowndes was on the rocks. That perceived connection between real life and art annoyed the songwriter, who claimed that these recent songs had been inspired by his reading of Chekhov.
Wipe that smirk off your face. How much more do you want the man to say about a situation that hurt too much? Dylan was merely heeding the advice of fellow poet Emily Dickinson: “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.”
After a decade and a half of paying tribute to old musical gods, of smashing them, of experimenting, of playing with lyrics and his own image, Dylan was singing from the heart, simply and powerfully, as if sensing the whole range of emotions involved in a longtime intimate relationship with another human being was enough.
Of the thousands of cover versions of Dylan songs over the years, two artists have, I think, done the best job with their takes on Blood on the Tracks. Shawn Colvin performed a dazzling rendition of “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” from her Cover Girl CD, and Mary Lee’s Corvette did a tribute at Arlene’s Grocery in New York several years ago that won so much (justifiable) acclaim that it ended up being released as a CD.
“You’ll never know the pain I suffered nor the hurt I rise above,” Dylan sings in “Idiot Wind”—then, while we’re still absorbing this, he projects into the heart of his former lover: “And I'll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love.”
It’s an astonishing transition, one he pulled off at will, time and again, in this masterpiece that does not sound dated in the slightest, all these years later.
In Fred Goodman’s marvelous account of the rock-music business of the 1970s, The Mansion on the Hill, there’s a priceless scene from late 1974. Bob Dylan is playing to a small group of musicians several songs from what would become Blood on the Tracks.
The room is packed, so Graham Nash has to listen just outside the door and can’t see, but he doesn’t mind a bit—Dylan’s songs are amazing.
Nash’s reverie is interrupted by another listener, Stephen Stills. The man just can’t play guitar, Stills tells his CSNY bandmate. An outraged Nash feels this criticism is utterly beside the point.
Who am I to gainsay someone of Stills’ guitar skills when it comes to assessing Dylan on this instrument? And truth be told, despite the contention of New Yorker editor David Remnick that Dylan is one of the great singers, his voice wasn’t great shakes, either—more charitably described as “expressive” than “excellent.”
But Nash was absolutely correct in how he reacted to Blood on the Tracks. It’s one of those LPs that deserve to be placed in a time capsule as representing the best of the singer-songwriter era—or, indeed, the past half-century of rock ‘n’ roll. “His poetic distillation of love, memory, coincidence and fate was as close as rock music has come to great literature,” wrote Adam Sweeting in a Guardian profile 10 years ago.
Faithful reader, I fell down on the job two weeks ago, failing to observe that January 17 marked the 35th anniversary of the release date for Dylan’s song set on fractured love. Trouble was, much of the media—at least from what I can see—did, too. Shame on us all.
When it came out, the LP was hailed as proof that “Dylan was back”—not just physically recovered from his motorcycle accident of the Sixties (he’d been back from that for awhile), but back as a songwriter who mattered. That hope proved elusive. Sure, he subsequently had another protest hit (“Hurricane”); he could still surprise (his period as a born-again Christian positively flummoxed everybody); and he could come up with isolated songs that were excellent (the Oscar-winning “Things Have Changed” from Wonder Boys), and whole albums that were good (Time Out of Mind).
But Blood on the Tracks is the last album, from first to final cut, that can be judged indisputably great.
Listeners could not help but notice the timing of the album’s release—when Dylan’s marriage to former model Sarah Lowndes was on the rocks. That perceived connection between real life and art annoyed the songwriter, who claimed that these recent songs had been inspired by his reading of Chekhov.
Wipe that smirk off your face. How much more do you want the man to say about a situation that hurt too much? Dylan was merely heeding the advice of fellow poet Emily Dickinson: “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.”
After a decade and a half of paying tribute to old musical gods, of smashing them, of experimenting, of playing with lyrics and his own image, Dylan was singing from the heart, simply and powerfully, as if sensing the whole range of emotions involved in a longtime intimate relationship with another human being was enough.
Of the thousands of cover versions of Dylan songs over the years, two artists have, I think, done the best job with their takes on Blood on the Tracks. Shawn Colvin performed a dazzling rendition of “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” from her Cover Girl CD, and Mary Lee’s Corvette did a tribute at Arlene’s Grocery in New York several years ago that won so much (justifiable) acclaim that it ended up being released as a CD.
“You’ll never know the pain I suffered nor the hurt I rise above,” Dylan sings in “Idiot Wind”—then, while we’re still absorbing this, he projects into the heart of his former lover: “And I'll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love.”
It’s an astonishing transition, one he pulled off at will, time and again, in this masterpiece that does not sound dated in the slightest, all these years later.
2 comments:
Don't forget Madeline Peyroux, who entitled her second album "Careless Love" for a reason.
One of the most amazing, soulful, and slightly bitter albums of all time. Thank you.
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