Blood On The Tracks

It was an average LA fall day. Not too hot. Not too cold. I was driving nowhere particularly glamorous, just running some errands. I turned a corner and found myself on the one street where the leaves on the trees had started to turn. Suddenly, ‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts’ started to play. I had to pull over and take in what had just happened. The autumnal scenery, the song. It was all too serendipitous and beautiful. Bob Dylan can make me feel feelings I didn’t know I could feel. With tears in my eyes, I listened to it in its entirety. I had forgotten how good that song was. This was the song that had inspired Joan Baez to write ‘Diamonds and Rust’. Immediately, I knew the next Music Monday had to be “Blood On the Tracks”.

The album was the fifteenth from Dylan, released in 1975 by Columbia Records, marking the folk singer’s return to Columbia after a two-album stint with Asylum. “Blood On The Tracks” opens with my personal favorite ‘Tangled up in Blue’, a song that hits the listener immediately with, what I’d argue, the most beautiful attempt at storytelling from any songwriter. With the imagery that Dylan invokes, I can picture every scene he is singing about. Researching this album and its history, I found myself not wanting to know any documented interpretation of these songs. I have my own. So does every other listener. That’s the magic of Dylan and his talents. Many critics have speculated “Blood On The Tracks” to have an autobiographical interpretation. Dylan has denied these claims. Sure, listeners can piece together what they hear and make connections between Dylan’s life and his writing. But the fun in a song is how it can personally affect the listener. I am reminded of Taylor Swift telling an interviewer that she did not want to name the inspiration behind one of her songs. She claimed she wanted her fans to picture their ex-boyfriends and not hers. Speaking of ex-boyfriends…

Dylan was the inspiration for Joan Baez’s famous song ‘Diamonds And Rust’. To me, that inspiration was pretty obvious upon my first listen. Again, everything is up to interpretation, but Baez herself has stated it is about Dylan. Who else could be the “original vagabond” who called her poetry lousy? ‘Diamonds and Rust’ started as another song entirely until Dylan called Baez from a phone booth in the Midwest and read her the lyrics to ‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts’. The rest was history.

The “Diamonds & Rust” album also includes a “Blood On The Tracks” cover. Baez sings ‘Simple Twist of Fate’, the second track from Dylan’s album. In live performances, Dylan has reportedly revised the lyrics over the decades. I can verify this is true, as I have seen Dylan live three times. The most recent time, he revised ‘Tangled up in Blue’ as well. I think that’s Dylan’s way of trying to fuck with audience members who think they’re so cool to have memorized his difficult lyrics. As for ‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts’ it has been reported that Dylan has only played the song live once in 1976.

At the end of the day, all I have is my memories, my feelings, my relationships, with these songs. And they could be very different from the true meaning or what they mean to someone else. So I ask, what do they mean to you?

Favorite song on the album: Tangled up in Blue

Favorite lyric: “There was music in the cafés at night and revolution in the air”