Tag Archives: Blood On The Tracks

September 16: Bob Dylan “Blood On The Tracks” first recording session 1974

blood-on-the-tracks-album-cover

Bob Dylan started recording Blood On The Tracks September 16, 1974.

Here are some quotes, facts & music….

When Dylan began work at A&R one Monday afternoon in September he seemed unusually keen to get on with the recording process. The songs themselves were no more than 2 months old, and he was still excited by the new approach to language he had uncovered.
Even behind closed studio doors he was determined to get the songs out of his system as quickly, and with as much impact, as possible
~Clinton Heylin (The Recording Sessions)

From Wikipedia:

Dylan arrived at Columbia Records’ A&R Recording Studios in New York City on September 16, 1974, where it was soon realized that he was taking a “spontaneous” approach to recording. The session engineer at the time, Phil Ramone, later said that he would “go from one song to another like a medley. Sometimes he will have several bars, and in the next version, he will change his mind about how many bars there should be in between a verse. Or eliminate a verse. Or add a chorus when you don’t expect”. Eric Weissberg and his band, Deliverance, originally recruited as session men, were rejected after two days of recording because they could not keep up with Dylan’s pace. Dylan retained bassist Tony Brown from the band, and soon added organist Paul Griffin (who had also worked on Highway 61 Revisited) and steel guitarist Buddy Cage. After ten days and four sessions with the current lineup, Dylan had finished recording and mixing, and, by November, had cut a test pressing on the album. Columbia soon began to prepare for the album’s imminent release, but, three months later, just before the scheduled launch, Dylan re-recorded several songs at the last minute, in Minneapolis’ Sound 80 Studios, utilizing local musicians organized by his brother, David Zimmerman. Even with this setback, Columbia managed to release Blood on the Tracks by January 17, 1975.

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Bob Dylan’s best songs: Simple Twist Of Fate

bob dylan 1974

[Simple Twist Of Fate]  conjures the smell of the air on an early spring morning…  Dylan on this album has become a master of textures. “Simple Twist of Fate” unmistakably creates the time, holds it, breathes it in, and stops it; the tools it uses to accomplish this arc storytelling, imagery, phrasing, timing, vocal texture, rhyme, melody, and ensemble sound. The bass playing (content, timing, attack) is revelatory. The harmonica solos sum up the song’s essence and push it out to the furthest corners of the universe.
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, Vol 2: The Middle Years 1974-1986)

As ‘Girl From The North Country’ had been triggered by the breakup with Suze Rotolo, casting him back to an older affair, so ‘Simple Twist Of Fate’ set him reflecting not on Sara, but on Suze – hence the song’s subtitle in the notebook, ‘4th Street Affair’.
~Clinton Heylin (Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan Vol. 2, . 1974-2008)

bob dylan & suze rotolo

@ #49 on my list of Bob Dylan’s 200 best songs.

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Bob Dylan: 30 best songs from the 1970s (poll)



bob dylan
Photo credit: Keith Baugh (keithbaugh.com)

I still write songs the same way I always did: I get a first line, the words and the tune together, and then I work out the rest wherever I happen to be, whenever I have time. If it’s really important, I’ll just make the time and try to finish it.
~To John Rockwell, Jan 1974

The saddest thing about songwriting is when you get something really good and you put it down for a while, and you take for granted that you’ll be able to get back to it with whatever inspired you to do it in the first place – well, whatever inspired you to do it in the first place is never there anymore. So then you’ve got to consciously stir up the inspiration to figure what it was about. Usually you get one good part and one not-sogood part, and the not-so-good wipes out the good part.
~To Bill Flanagan March 1985

 

This decade that gave us “Blood On The Tracks“, “Desire“, “Planet Waves“, “Street-Legal”, “New Morning“, “Slow Train Coming“, “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid” & “Self Portrait”.

Continue reading Bob Dylan: 30 best songs from the 1970s (poll)

Dec 27: Bob Dylan Blood On The Tracks, 5th recording session in 1974


blood-on-the-tracks-album-cover

By November 1974 Dylan had cut a test pressing of “Blood On The Tracks” based on his 4 recording sessions in New York (in September), and Columbia was aiming for a pre-christmas release.

Our earlier posts on the “New York Sessions”:

But after “sleeping on it” & getting advice from his brother David Zimmerman, he decided to re-record several songs @ Minneapolis’ Sound 80 Studios.

Unfortunately, one of the people Dylan had played his test pressing to, his younger brother David, told him that it would never sell, presumably based on the sheer starkness of the sound, rather than the nakedness of his brother’s soul, and convinced him to rerecord half a dozen of the songs in Minneapolis, with a set of local musicians that he would assemble at a studio he knew well, Sound 8o, making himself producer..
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited)

Sound 80 Studio
Minneapolis, Minnesota
27 December 1974
Produced by David Zimmerman

Continue reading Dec 27: Bob Dylan Blood On The Tracks, 5th recording session in 1974

Bob Dylan’s best songs: Call Letter Blues

Bob Dylan call letter blues

The children cry for mother
I tell ’em, “Mother took a trip.”
Well, the children cry for mother
I tell ’em, “Mother took a trip.”
Well, I walk on pins and needles
I hope my tongue don’t slip.
~Bob Dylan (Call Letter Blues)

Such self-consciously autobiographical imagery probably told for it in the end. I just can’t imagine Dylan releasing the line ‘Children ask for mother, I tell ’em mother took a trip’ into the world back in 1974. But at least he got as far recording this one with Weissberg’s band on that first night, cutting it in three takes, before deciding that he would rather replace it with an entirely fanciful morning blues, a.k.a. ‘Meet Me In The Morning’. The tune, he kept. Literally. As the 1991 release of ‘Call Letter Blues’ fully revealed.
~Clinton Heylin (Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan Vol. 2, . 1974-2008)

Grooveshark:
Call Letter Blues by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

Spotify:

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