In the wake of Bob Dylan’s divorce he almost immediately went into the studio to purge his bitterness. The eventual result is Blood on the Tracks. This is Dylan’s only overtly autobiographical record, with the possible exception of his gospel period a few years later. While he’s denied it and said that the songs are all adaptations of short stories he was reading at the time, you get the feeling he’s just trying to distance himself from the sentiment. That or it’s so his other wives would let him play Idiot Wind live.
It’s still not Dylan’s most depressive album, that would go to The Times They Are A-Changin’, but while that album had a bright spark with When The Ship Comes In, the most upbeat tracks on this album are all in a hindsight, like the moment’s gone and it was good, but all he has is the memory. The album feels like a case study. The emotions are sort of all over the place, sometimes he goes a bit too far lyrically; “you hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies, one day you’ll be in the ditch, flies buzzin’ around your eyes”. But this is how people act in this situation. They seesaw from relief to depression and back through gentle nostalgia by way of anger.
Unfortunately there aren’t any decent videos on YouTube, all you really need to listen to is Idiot Wind to get the gist of the album. I haven’t heard the remaster yet, but the original sounds pretty good as it is, probably the best of all the original Bob Dylan CDs pressed in the late 80’s.
It’s still not Dylan’s most depressive album, that would go to The Times They Are A-Changin’, but while that album had a bright spark with When The Ship Comes In, the most upbeat tracks on this album are all in a hindsight, like the moment’s gone and it was good, but all he has is the memory. The album feels like a case study. The emotions are sort of all over the place, sometimes he goes a bit too far lyrically; “you hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies, one day you’ll be in the ditch, flies buzzin’ around your eyes”. But this is how people act in this situation. They seesaw from relief to depression and back through gentle nostalgia by way of anger.
Unfortunately there aren’t any decent videos on YouTube, all you really need to listen to is Idiot Wind to get the gist of the album. I haven’t heard the remaster yet, but the original sounds pretty good as it is, probably the best of all the original Bob Dylan CDs pressed in the late 80’s.
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