A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks

I agree with you Chris about the transcendent nature of the record, and about it's musical accompaniment (I actually MUCH prefer it to any other Dylan record - I love the anonymity, the looseness, the spirit...) It's definitely in my top 20.

so this record basically sucks except for "you're a big girl now"??

no

wrongo

hate this record other than that song. tangled up in blue, for instance, lasts like fifteen minutes. just sing two verses and then stfu bobby

ha, well, okayyyy.
weirdly, a friend just gave this book to me... i read it when it came out, but don't remember too much about it.
BOTT needs a deluxe edition box set thing in a bad way.

no shit, i'd love to hear the complete minneapolis sessions, i've driven by the building where it was recorded before

it's interesting, there are rumored to be three or four unreleased songs from the BOTT sessions that Dylan has never (at least as far as anyone knows) returned to. might just be a rumor. think there's also supposed to be a guest spot from mick jagger!

Side 1 is a perfect sequence. Second side loses that intensity somewhat.

I'd love for the New York Sessions to get a proper release. I never put on the "proper album" anymore if I'm in a BOTT mood.

And I promise never to use "proper" back-to-back again like I did there. Too damn early for me to be up and typing.

Never one of my favorite Dylan albums, mainly because the band sounds sloppy at times.

Me too, so go i to the NY sessions for their energy. Haven't listened to the "proper" release in 7 years; it's always the "BOT Tapes" bootleg.

a few of the album cuts are better than the boot, & vice versa obviously. idiot wind on the record's better (though there's something alluring about the other take for how defeated rather than enraged it sounds), & the one take of if you see her with 'kiss her for the kid' on the bootleg just slays. though it's still great on the record.

can't get with the band sounds sloppy, but that's maybe just me; it's perfect to me, just right & gives dylan room to breathe (or holla, really; i always loved how the link between it being his like 'painful' album was borne out by how often he just lapses into ululating at the end of lines)

one of these days I'm gonna do my big "Dylan voices" poll on here & the ululating thing you're talking about will be one option. I'd say it's also there on Planet Waves & its live album & maybe on the early Rolling Thunder tour too? gone by Desire I think, & even by the end of Rolling Thunder (e.g. by Hard Rain)---the Desire voice sticks around through Street-Legal, I think.

self portrait gonna fuck up yr poll

nah that's the Nashville Skyline voice

well...yeah, with the New Morning/JWH also, & a bit of the Planet Waves voice too

hey it's Dylan it ain't gonna be perfect

ha. no it's actually a great poll idea, just one that i will actively conspire to make too complicated to do. WHY IS THERE NO OPTION FOR JUST LAY LADY LAY.

your mentions of planet waves remind me to hit up that record again.

Never one of my favorite Dylan albums, mainly because the band sounds sloppy at times.
Ha, sloppy backing bands have never been a problem for me w/ Dylan.
As for the official release vs. the NY sessions, I go back and forth -- I think I prefer "tangled" in full band format, at least as an opener. something kind of great and cinematic about those chiming guitars at the start. but the idiot wind (w/ organ) from the NY sessions is wayyyyyy better.

yeesh, i thought this album of all dylan albums was unassailable.

the one take of if you see her with 'kiss her for the kid' on the bootleg just slays.

Agreed - not only is the performance great, that entire third verse is different lyrically, and much better.

Never one of my favorite Dylan albums, mainly because the band sounds sloppy at times.
Ha, sloppy backing bands have never been a problem for me w/ Dylan.

Ha, sloppy backing bands have never been a problem for me w/ Dylan.
Yeah,, this is almost the point, and complaining about it is like complaining about Crazy Horse backing up Neil Young.
I love sloppy when it's balls-to-the-wall rock and roll (Crazy Horse, Replacements, Faces), but not with the more delicate arrangements here. I think what I meant to say is that the musicians, for the most part, just aren't up to snuff. The Nashville guys on Blonde on Blonde may have been recording songs that Dylan just finished writing, but they nailed it because they were so fucking good. Not the case here.

it is interesting -- dylan could've hired pretty much any hotshot session player he wanted, but instead he went to minnesota and re-recorded these tunes (which he probably knew were his best in a while) with what was pretty much a pickup band. the guy believes in happenstance.

this is worth hearing, i kind of like the arrangement here.
http://www.bigozine1a.com/MPX2/BDnuggets/BDnuggets02.mp3
maybe a glimpse of what the record would sound like had dylan hired hotshot session players.

what is that? renato & clara?

it's bette midler and bob

durr
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/04/04/bob-dylan-blood-on-the-tracks-film/
figured todd haynes already did this w/ the heath ledger/charlotte gainsbourg segment of I'm Not There.

Cool thread. I think it was Paul Nelson who ended his review with some lines from an actual "Italian poet, in the Fifth-teenth Cen-tur-ree." Blanking on the name, but seemed, given the perceptions and tone of Nelson's response, to be written on his own divorcee soul as well. I wish the film well; meanwhile, the Maestro buys some bagpipes (to go w Hidalgo's input?)
http://music-mix.ew.com/2011/10/13/bob-dylan-bagpipes/

pretty rad alternate take of meet me in the morning released on a record store day 7 inch. mannnn they really need to just release the bott sessions box set
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufFDULU3u_0

sorry but that song has always been the one song on blood on the tracks I skip over. and that version is even worse. just horrible.

haha ok! i think it's great.

I like the song, but that version? Not so much. There's a reason it is a record store day b-side.

Meet Me In The Morning is my favourite track on Blood on the Tracks. I'd be a clown to claim that it's a better song than Idiot Wind or Tangled Up In Blue or whatever, but they're a bit heavy and overplayed, and Meet Me is just this beautiful groove with a bassline that sounds so good on vinyl (and is conveniently placed as first track on side 2). I often get the album out just to hear that song and nothing else.

But I agree that the version above is kind of weak. Interesting to hear but weak. There are much better alternate versions.

I like the playing on "Call Letter Blues" from Bootlegs Vol. 2 better than any version of "Meet Me in the Morning" I've heard, even if the latter might have a better lyric. Even that I'm not sure of, I play CLB more often.

Yes. Call Letter Blues instead of Meet Me In The Morning, and Up To Me instead of Lily Rosemary, and you'd have the ideal Blood On The Tracks.

ive a question - there's a live version of simple twist of fate on this jack white comp -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BY4LI20?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

does anyone know where that recording is from?

sounds like it's this 1975 tv performance to me:
https://youtu.be/0vBmez0Lx_Q?list=PLQ2PdG_iHc_2vAi6dxeE9NPg5SbLFR-fF
not an "official" release

what the hell is going on with this half speed master from 1981 that is pitched down approx. 2% and is allegedly "correct"?

http://www.expectingrain.com/discussions/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42949

it's available on torrent sites - to my ears the 2% speed change doesn't make too big of a difference (if you have a turntable/cd-player/mp3-software with pitch control you can slow it down yourself with p similar results) but the "remaster" (or whatever it is) itself is crystal clear and will let you hear a lot of details you probably never heard before. There's a 24 bit /SACD rip floating around too which I think gives much the same experience. It's great!

A friend of mine has a similar super audiophile expensive vinyl reissue of Bringing it All Back Home and when I heard that on his ~high-end hifi system I heard a lot of stuff I had never heard in that record before.

will be interesting when/if they get around to a blood on the tracks sessions bootleg series if they just put out everything a la the cutting edge. a bunch of alternates:
http://www.bjorner.com/DSN02710%201974%20Blood%20On%20The%20Tracks%20recording%20sessions.htm

I guess if that EU copyright law isn't changed we'll be able to hear it all in nine years

This recollection about the NY sessions by Glenn Berger is somewhat dubious, but a good read (linked on the Bootleg thread as well)
https://web.archive.org/web/20120922010109/http://www.glennberger.net/2012/01/15/bob-dylans-blood-on-the-tracks-the-untold-story/

Returned to the 2% slowed high speed master flacs last weekend, slightly intoxicated but quite impressed this time...

I guess if that EU copyright law isn't changed we'll be able to hear it all in nine years

This recollection about the NY sessions by Glenn Berger is somewhat dubious, but a good read (linked on the Bootleg thread as well)
https://web.archive.org/web/20120922010109/http://www.glennberger.net/2012/01/15/bob-dylans-blood-on-the-tracks-the-untold-story🔗/