I am a dyed-in-the-wool hard-core don't-get-me-started Dylan fan. Have been since I bought my first two Dylan albums in 1965 (Freewheelin' and Bringing It All Back Home). So I think I've shown great self-control to wait until now to review anything by Bob.
I could have chosen any one of his releases and been happy but I picked BOTT because it is perhaps one of his more accessible albums for casual fans. Some of his songs get more airplay, others have more cover versions, others still made it higher in the charts, but most of the tracks on BOTT are consistently known and are familiar.
'Tangled Up In Blue', 'Simple Twist of Fate', 'Idiot Wind', 'Shelter From the Storm' .. just about everybody knows all or some of those songs. The adventurous among you may have tried to interpret almost 9 minutes of 'Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts', trying to figure out who killed Big Jim with a penknife in the back. Some may have come across 'Buckets of Rain' when Bette Midler joined with Bob and did a version called 'Nuggets of Rain'.
The thing is, the album that everybody bought back in '75 was NOT the album that Bob first recorded.
The whole album was put together in New York in September 1974. A very limited amount of test pressings of these NY sessions were circulated. The official album was due for release in January 1975 but just a few weeks before that in Dec '74 Dylan decided to head down to Minneapolis to re-record half of the songs. The end result is what everybody bought when BOTT was put out for sale.
For many years me and other Dylan fans hunted down those elusive original NY recordings. As is the nature of these things, the limited test pressing version was bootlegged and if you were clever and knew where to look and who to talk to you could get your hands on a copy.
I got my hands on a copy.
Over the years some of the NY Session songs were released when Bob authorised 'The Bootleg Series' and started releasing his own out-takes and alternate recordings officially. These releases did not include the actual tracks that were on those early test pressings though, just alternate takes. They were still the stuff of myth and legend.
Then, on Saturday 13 April 2019 for Record Store Day, 7500 exact duplicates of that limited test pressing were produced and released on vinyl to a hungry horde of Dylan disciples. To some it was like finding the holy grail.
The album has always been thought to be very personal to Dylan's life at the time, a reflection and narration of what he was going through with family and relationships. Dylan has often denied that, but at other times has almost admitted to it. His son Jakob was being interviewed and when asked about his father's music he is quoted as saying "When I’m listening to ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues,’ I’m grooving along just like you. But when I’m listening to Blood on the Tracks, that’s about my parents."
In 1994 Hootie and the Blowfish went a bit overboard in their adoration of this album and their tribute to Dylan. In their song 'Only Wanna Be With You' they not only mention him by name twice ('Put on a little Dylan' - 'Ain't Bobby so cool') and drop in the song title 'Tangled Up In Blue' but they take almost the full first verse of 'Idiot Wind' and make it word for word the bulk of the third verse of their song.
"Said, I shot a man named Gray, took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can't help it if I'm lucky"
Rumour has it that Bob didn't mind but his company did and got a tidy out of court settlement.
Dylan is known for his mastery of language, his poetry, the stories he weaves and the images he creates, but in the case of BOTT the words were not only on the record. They were also on the liner notes, but these were not Dylans words. NY journalist and novelist Pete Hamill wrote an essay for the back cover of the album and it was so good, so well received and so acclaimed that it won Mr. Hamill a Grammy.
Perhaps my favourite line from the essay ...
"He was not the only one, of course; he is not the only one now. But of all the poets, Dylan is the one who has most clearly taken the rolled sea and put it in a glass." Sadly Pete Hamill passed away in August 2020.
'Blood on the Tracks' isn't my favourite Dylan album. I don't know if I could pick one.
'Tangled Up In Blue' isn't my favourite Dylan song. I don't know if I could pick one.
At last count I have 184 Dylan album titles, many of them digital and many containing multiple discs totaling 4589 tracks. It's hard to pick favourites.
In the meantime I'll revisit BOTT, both NY and commercial versions and once again try to figure out what happened when "The door to the dressing room burst open and a cold revolver clicked"
Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
No comments:
Post a Comment