I did just that and almost by return was offered three places (by Liverpool, Bradford and Dundee) with no questions asked, and an interview (Kings College, London, which predictably my 18-year-old self screwed up) who were a little more circumspect. It helped that unfilled places didn’t earn universities government money, so to get the full whack of public gelt all places had to be and were filled, one by me. I accepted Dundee’s offer merely because it was the first to arrive.
Nominally, I was there to study philosophy (which I did eventually, though the first year consisted of studying five subjects). Actually, I was there to — in no particular order — grow my hair as long as possible, smoke dope (which in those days was still cannabis not heroin) and lose my cherry. Did I succeed? I wonder.
Folk of my age will remember that the later years of the 1960s (the fabled ‘Sixties’ didn’t really start until 1964) did have a feel of innovation about them, especially in music, but by 1968, Bob Dylan, one of the early innovations, was already a fixture of the music scene with eight albums under his belt and — quite typically — several changes of direction.
What I like about Dylan (and Miles Davis) is that they never choose (or chose in Davis’s case) to stand still and bask in it all. They please themselves first and foremost, and move on in whatever direction they want to, and if the public comes with them, so much the better.
By 1968 Dylan the ‘folk singer’ and ‘the voice of protest/a generation’ — and, to my mind as honest as they day is long so he was never comfortable with that label and never played up to it — had ditched acoustic folk for electric guitars (which he never played at all well). Then, with Blonde On Blonde again changed direction, and soon once more with John Wesley Harding. His career then slightly went on hold until he brought out the album I am featuring today and his career took off again. That pattern has recurred again and again in his life.
Blood On The Tracks is another of those rare albums which are, in their own way and context, almost perfect. There is, though, an extraordinary bum note on one song: it’s 30 seconds into Meet Me In The Morning, and inexplicably it was left it. I can’t for the life of me think it wasn’t noticed at the time if I noticed it, but as this was still late 1974, recording was all on tape, correcting such mistakes was not easy and Dylan (who acted as his own producer) might have thought ‘what the hell’. Who knows? Who cares?
I can’t for the life of me remember how or when I first heard Blood On The Tracks or when I bought it, but I did buy it and have loved it ever since.
There is something obscurely different about this album, and while ‘researching’ on the net for this short blurb, I read that just before beginning to write the songs for what became Blood On The Tracks, Dylan had been taking art lessons and says his art tutor helped him towards a ‘new understanding of time’ which are reflected in the songs. Well, I don’t quite know how, so I can’t help you out on that score, but on, for example, Tangled Up In Blue, the ‘sequence’ of what happens does stand out. Maybe that’s what he means.
The track I have chosen to highlight is not that one, though (and Tangled Up In Blue is usually the one played on the radio if one is ever played), and it has been difficult to pick one out. But I have plumped for Shelter From The Storm which is a beautiful song (Cassandra Wilson does a lovely version, and Manfred Mann’s Earthbound do a god-awful ponderous version).
Shelter From The Storm reminds me of the woman I’ve always loved but who I’ve never met and of experiences I’ve never had. Odd, but true. But then I suppose that’s what makes a good song.
Dylan might not have had the best voice (but like Ray Davies’s and Donald Fagen’s voices I love it), but here he is right on top of his game, and his voice and singing weren’t to got to pot for many more years. Yet despite of late his voice going to pot, even the past few albums are, if you like Dylan, and I do, better than a lot of what is being put out. OK, if you are into Ed Sheeran and Billie Eilish, you’ll be thinking ‘the hell they are’, but . . .
Incidentally, my theory about why he took so long to acknowledge and accept the ‘Nobel Prize for Literature’ is that he thought being awarded that particular prize was simply ludicrous (as do I). Dylan has never made any bones about the fact that at heart he is ‘a song and dance man’, and there’s bugger all wrong with that. So why the ‘Nobel Prize for Literature’? Yes, he does write great lyrics, but dragging ‘literature’ into it is more than bizarre. As a rule lyrics never hold up out of context, even the best.
The Nobel Prize, I believe, is simply another instance of ‘the Establishment’ trying their old trick of neutralising ‘the opposition’ and looking cool into the bargain. And I don’t doubt Dylan thought the same (just listen to Day Of The Locusts from New Morning, all about his discomfort about getting an honorary degree from Princeton and it’s not complimentary). But what was he to do? A hell of a quandary.
Turning it down would look terrible: ‘Dylan thinks he’s too good for Nobel Prize’ the headlines might read and who would want that. Accepting it — and he most probably didn’t want to — also went against the grain. So he bided his time and, on balance, realised accepting it was what he would have to do, like it or not.
He finally did so, but typically in his own sweet time, in a letter written some time later; and he did not attend a bunfight in Stockholm with loads of toffs of every stripe wanting in on the act. That’s why I like Dylan over and above all his music and songs and (his extraordinary gift for turning a horribly banal and corny rhyme into a telling lyric). Truly a one-off.
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