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Amazon.co.uk Review
Inevitably, when critics praise a new Dylan album, they label it the "best since Blood on the Tracks," and with good reason. Inspired by a crumbled marriage, and recorded after a tour with The Band had apparently re-ignited his creativity, Blood is among Dylan's masterpieces. The album's epic songs are well known, but its real high points are the shorter numbers--"You're a Big Girl Now", the flawless blues "Meet Me in the Morning", and the sweetly devastating "Buckets of Rain". These are songs of "images and distorted facts," each expressed through tangled points of view, and all of them blue. --David Cantwell
Review
Bob Dylan as an artist had a tough early 70s. By 1974 our Bob was in the strange position of being still regarded as the next Messiah while seeming bored with himself. This was, remember, the era of Planet Waves and Self Portrait – not his brightest moments - while his tour the previous year with the Band was also fairly iconoclastic. In the end two factors got Dylan back on (hem hem) track: painting and a very messy breakdown of his marriage.
In fact, one seemed to lead to the other. Dylan had spent two months in the spring of 1974, studying painting under Norman Raeben in New York. Afterwards he claimed: ‘It changed me. I went home after that and my wife never did understand me ever since that day’. While the album has a confessional sense of hurt Dylan’s always denied the connection but still admits that there’s a lot of pain on the album.
Initially sessions were held in familiar surroundings in New York. What’s more he was back with his old record company following an unsatisfactory sojourn with David Geffen’s Asylum label. Bob used Eric Weissberg’s band, Deliverance, to rush through the recording process and have the album finished in one week. In typical Bob form he showed scant regard for polish, leaving the sounds of his buttons and nails rattling against the guitar strings on many tracks. All was set for an Autumn release until, back in Minnesota, he played an acetate to his brother who suggested that it did need a more commercial sheen. Hastily assembling a cast of local musicians, Dylan re-recorded about half of the album and from these two halves this masterpiece was born.
From the opening track, “Tangled Up In Blue”, Dylan embarked on a whole new era in his work. Seemingly autobiographical, these tales of a lover relating a series of unrelated events all set in a mythical America used the impressionist method that he’d learned from Raeben: ‘I wanted to defy time, so that the story took place in the present and the past at the same time. When you look at a painting, you can see any part of it, or see all of it together. I wanted that song to be like a painting.‘ The same trick is pulled on the gorgeous “Simple Twist Of Fate.”
Over ten songs Dylan alludes to heartache, deception, angry name-calling and poignant regret and loneliness. While on the searing “Idiot Wind” he seems to have no mercy for his ex (‘It’s a wonder you can even feed yourself’ on “You’re A Big Girl Now” he pleads with her : ’I can change I SWEAR’. It’s different from his previous work because suddenly he’s singing about things that don’t pertain to youth anymore. Gone is the clever, sneering tone of the mid-60s or the haranguing of his protest years. It’s a world-weary, nostalgic and ultimately more poetic Dylan we hear, and that is what makes Blood… a timeless record. --Chris Jones
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
73 of 74 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Some personal stuff first: hearing Tangled Up In Blue under the bedclothes on late night radio, when I should have been revising for O' Levels, first turned me on to this album - and to the power of poetry and the blues. Until punk came along and shifted my musical axis, this album was rarely off my turntable...ultimately the turntable broke and got replaced by a CD player, so that it has been twenty years since I listened to this album. I finally got around to buying it on CD 6 months ago - and it sounds as great and moving as it first did to the callow teenager under the bedclothes.
There's never been a doubt about Dylan's lyrical ability, but the poetry, combined with narrative flow, of Tangled Up in Blue, Simple Twist of Fate and Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts turn them into real "tours de force". The emotional connection that You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go, If You See Her, Say Hello and Shelter From the Storm make - and the sweet bitterness of Idiot Wind and Buckets of Rain - really hit the spot. Oh - and the melodies are strong too. These are Dylan tunes you can hum along too, if you're so inclined.
Surely every music lover has this album already?
Dylan may not be my favourite artiste of all time - but if I could take just one album with me when I die, it would be this one.
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Listen to this loud and alone,without distractions,and have the lyric sheet near at hand.This will make you think,listen again and think some more.In possibly his greatest work Dylan expresses one or more emotions to which we can all relate somewhere or at sometime.If you want the antithesis of manufactured image driven substanceless pop you have found it.
Although there was some very good intervening material,Dylan would not produce anything of this quality again until 1997 when Grammy winner Time Out of Mind enriched our lives and on which his masterpiece Not Dark Yet appears.
One of these two is his best and which may depend on your mood when you listen.
Blood On The Tracks best track? That is a very difficult question and in many ways it only exists as a whole work but,if pressed, Shelter From The Storm. Pure Genius
Although there was some very good intervening material,Dylan would not produce anything of this quality again until 1997 when Grammy winner Time Out of Mind enriched our lives and on which his masterpiece Not Dark Yet appears.
One of these two is his best and which may depend on your mood when you listen.
Blood On The Tracks best track? That is a very difficult question and in many ways it only exists as a whole work but,if pressed, Shelter From The Storm. Pure Genius
63 of 65 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Bob Dylan's 'Blood on the Tracks' is one of the most talked about albums of all time and having recently discovered it's contents I can now understand why.
To me Bob Dylan was the whining voice that played incessantly in my frequent visits to hippy run record shops in my punk days of youth. An endless drone that seemed directionless and empty.
Now, at the grand old age of 37, I decided it was about time that I investigated the work of the great man and what a work this is.
Essentially folk / blues in it's make up, this is a collection of songs of intense quality and breathtaking emotion. Dylan is on spectacular form and delivers each track with the depth of feeling that suggests he was personally involved with the story line of each one.
This is one of the finest albums I have ever heard and has been played to death since I bought it. I defy anyone not to connect with one or two of the songs and would describe it as educational and essential for any music lovers collection.
Wonderful
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Pointless Review.
Reviewing 'Blood on the Tracks' is absolutely pointless by now, it is a work of genius, the world knows it, it is potentially THE zenith of 20th century music. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Trompe Le Monde
One of the best
Blood on the tracks is one of my favourite albums ever. i have always been a bob dylan fan and this is rightly regarded as one of his best albums. Read more
Published 3 months ago by adamf
This has to be up there
As a fan of Bob Dylan since virtualy the begining, it is strange that despite buying most of his albums, through to those of 2000+, I never bought Blood on the Tracks. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Wheel man
Buckets of Pain - Dylanesque 20th Century Masterpiece
Dylan's vocal ability has been questioned by some over the years, but the lyrical and poetic majesty that is Bob Dylan and had and has never been equalled in popular music was... Read more
Published 5 months ago by tony severyns
real music
absolutely fantastic album, buckets of rain needs to be herd at least ten times for the lyrics to sink in. idiot wind , simple twist of fate, i could go on and on. Read more
Published 7 months ago by mr hepti
Divorce, betrayal and re-birth
Dylan reconnected with his darker muses and his public with this album after a period of emotional trauma and creative freewheeling. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Mr. Stuart Morton
Album title meaning?
In this perfect song-cycle ('Blood on the Tracks') Dylan articulates what most of us can only vaguely feel. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Jack Oliver
Genius
There is so much great music and so many wonderful albums and Blood on the Tracks is both great and wonderful. Read more
Published 13 months ago by kippy
Bloodied, but unbowed
I'll start by being honest; I have a love/hate relationship with this album. Sometimes I think it's pretty good and sometimes not so good. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Mr. G. O'doherty
Your hip cd collection guide. Pt.3
This album is ideal for those who want a good record collection that they will never listen to.
If you want to be hip and be admired these are the albums you should have... Read more
If you want to be hip and be admired these are the albums you should have... Read more
Published 19 months ago by I. P. J. Brayshaw
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