Blood on the Tracks

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Title: Blood on the Tracks
By: Dylan, Bob
Released by: Columbia
Released on: 1974
Rating (out of 10): 10
Date: 07/18/2001

Life Is Sad; Life Is a Bust.

I've been dreading writing this review. Feels like no matter what I could say, it wouldn't do Blood on the Tracks justice. Everything punk rock taught me about D.I.Y., three chords and the truth, and learning your craft as you go along, is pulverized by Bob Dylan's music. Whenever you're feeling cocky about what you do, listen to Dylan. He will cut you down to size.

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I'm sitting here, a couple of candles going, a plummy Spanish red at my side, listening to "You're a Big Girl Now." As the wine makes itself known on my cheeks ("Hiya doin', Jode?", it asks in a diabolically sarcastic tone), I'm sucked into all the bitter memories I've ever had, all those times I've slammed the door, fired up the turntable, and shouted along with Bob's pained "OHHHHHHHH" prechorus.

I'm going out of my mind with a pain that stops and starts
Like a corkscrew in my heart
Ever since we've been apart.

"Idiot Wind" makes me giddy, with that demented carnival organ, and Bob's delicious delivery. Here he stretches out every known vowel from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol, making every word about five syllables longer than it needs to be, trying to shove as many words into each verse as he possibly can.

He been done wrong, and he's got a tempest of pain to knock down the foul wind of his former love. This is his declaration of independence.

I kissed goodbye the howling beast
On the borderline which separated you from me.

Allen Ginsberg called "Idiot Wind" "a great statement of attainment of powers."

"If You See Her, Say Hello" is the flipside of that emotional detox; it's a calm, thoughtful meditation on lost love.

That bitter taste still lingers on
From the night I tried to make her stay.

He knows his girl is gone, daddy, gone, but he still carries a slow-burning torch for her.

"Shelter From the Storm" deepens the memory, crawls further inside, goes back to the halcyon beginnings of the relationship ("'twas in another lifetime," he sings). It works as a subtle, resigned form of protest folk, cataloguing all the world's crime, hatred, and pain (the storm) from which this woman gives him shelter.

Dylan returns to the present tense for "Buckets of Rain," a fine thematic link from "Shelter From the Storm." He realizes that the shelter of love is flimsy, talks about all the friends that have disappeared from his life, and offers himself up to his love as something permanent. "Buckets of Rain" might be Dylan as an old blues alter ego, trying to tidy up his life before he goes.

Life is sad
Life is a bust
All you can do
Is do what you must.

Blood on the Tracks explains people as they are, as they live and desire and loathe and regret. It's Dylan's poetic shining hour, I think, more consistent than Blonde on Blonde, more personal than Highway 61 Revisited, less obtuse than The Basement Tapes.

It goes there, and it stays there, and it invites us along. It views love as a deeply political animal, one that wounds with words, one whose reverberations can be felt and heard in foreign lands and ancient times.

© Copyright CultureDose.com 07/18/2001

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