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Blood on the Tracks by ReleasedJanuary 20, 1975RecordedSeptember 16–19, 1974, at  in , and December 27–30, 1974, at  in , Length51:42 chronology
(1974)Blood on the Tracks
(1975)
(1975) from Blood on the Tracks "" / ""
Released: January 17, 1975

Blood on the Tracks is the 15th studio album by American singer-songwriter , released on January 20, 1975 by . The album marked Dylan's return to  after a two-album stint with . Dylan commenced recording the album in  in September 1974. In December, shortly before Columbia was due to release the record, Dylan abruptly re-recorded much of the material in a studio in . The final album contains five tracks from New York and five from Minneapolis.

Blood on the Tracks was initially received with mixed reviews, but has subsequently been acclaimed as one of Dylan's greatest albums by critics and fans. The songs have been linked to tensions in Dylan's personal life, including estrangement from his then-wife . One of their children, , has described the songs as "my parents talking". The album has been viewed as an outstanding example of the confessional singer-songwriter's craft, and it has been called "the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape". In interviews, Dylan has denied that the songs on the album are autobiographical. In 2003, the album was ranked  No.  16 on 's list of , and in 2004, it was placed at  No.  5 on 's list of the top 100 albums of the 1970s.

The album reached  No.  1 on the  charts and  No.  4 on the . The single "" peaked at  No.  31 on the  singles chart. The album remains one of Dylan's best-selling studio releases, with a  U.S. certification by the  (RIAA). In 2015, it was inducted into the .

Recording Pre-production

At the conclusion of his , Dylan began a relationship with a Columbia Records employee, Ellen Bernstein, which Dylan biographer  has described as the beginning of the end of Dylan's marriage to his wife . In spring 1974, Dylan was in New York for several weeks while he attended art classes with the painter . Dylan subsequently gave Raeben credit in interviews for transforming his understanding of time, and during the summer of 1974 Dylan began to write a series of songs in a red notebook which utilised his new knowledge:

[Raeben] taught me how to see ... in a way that allowed me to do consciously what I unconsciously felt ... when I started doing it, the first album I made was Blood on the Tracks. Everybody agrees that was pretty different, and what's different about it is there's a code in the lyrics, and also there's no sense of time.

Dylan subsequently spent time with Bernstein on his farm in Minnesota and there he completed the 17 songs from which Blood on the Tracks was formed—songs which Heylin has described as "perhaps the finest collection of love songs of the twentieth century, songs filled with the full spectrum of emotions a marriage on the rocks can engender".

Prior to recording, Dylan previewed the songs that would constitute Blood on the Tracks for a number of friends in the music world, including , , ,  and . Nash recalled that Stills disliked Dylan's private performance of his new songs; immediately after Dylan left the room, Stills remarked to Nash, "He's a good songwriter ... but he's no musician."

Initially, Dylan considered recording Blood on the Tracks with an electric backing group, and contacted  who had played lead guitar on Dylan's  album. When the two met, Dylan ran through the songs he was planning to record, but he played them too quickly for Bloomfield to learn. Bloomfield later recalled the experience: "They all began to sound the same to me; they were all in the same ; they were all long. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life. He was sort of pissed off that I didn't pick it up." In the end, Dylan rejected the idea of recording the album with a band, and instead substituted stripped-down acoustic arrangements for all of his songs. On August 2, 1974, Dylan signed a contract with . After releasing his two previous albums,  and , on , Dylan decided his new album would benefit from the commercial muscle of the record label that had made him famous, and his new contract gave him increased control over his own masters.

Recording sessions

Dylan commenced recording at  in New York City on September 16, 1974. Bernstein has stated "the theme of returning ran through the sessions", so "it made a lot of sense to do it at A&R".  was the former , where Dylan had recorded six albums in the 1960s. The musicians quickly realized that Dylan was taking a "spontaneous" approach to recording. The session engineer, , later said that Dylan transitioned from one song to another as if they were part of a medley. Ramone noted:

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.

 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  Tony Brown from the band, and soon added   (who had also worked on Highway 61 Revisited) and  . After ten days and four sessions with the current lineup, Dylan had finished recording and mixing, and, by November, had cut a  on the album. Columbia began to prepare to release the album before Christmas.

Dylan played the test pressing for his brother, David Zimmerman, who persuaded Dylan the album would not sell because the overall sound was too stark.  also heard the early version of the album and called it "a sellout to the memory of Dylan's pre-electric period". At his brother's urging, Dylan agreed to re-record five of the album's songs in  in , with backing musicians recruited by David. The new takes were accomplished in two days at the end of December 1974. Blood on the Tracks was released into stores on January 20, 1975.

Autobiographical interpretation

The songs that constitute Blood on the Tracks have been described by many Dylan critics as stemming from his personal turmoil at the time, particularly his estrangement from his then-wife . One of Bob and Sara Dylan's children, , has said, "When I'm listening to Blood On The Tracks, that's about my parents."

Dylan has denied this autobiographical interpretation, stating in a 1985 interview with Bill Flanagan, "A lot of people thought that album pertained to me. It didn't pertain to me ... I'm not going to make an album and lean on a marriage relationship." Informed of the album's popularity, Dylan told  in a radio interview in April 1975: "A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It's hard for me to relate to that. I mean ... people enjoying that type of pain, you know?" Addressing whether the album described his own personal pain, Dylan replied that he didn't write "confessional songs".

According to Rolling Stone Magazine, in Dylan's lyric notebook, the working title of Simple Twist of Fate was 4th Street Affair; Dylan and Suze Rotolo lived at 161 W. 4th St. The narrator of the song memorializes an affair of ten years ago instead of singing about Dylan's marriage.

In his 2004 memoir, , Dylan stated that the songs have nothing to do with his own personal life, and that they were inspired by the  of .

Critical reception Professional ratingsReview scoresSourceRating5/510/105/5A

Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks initially received mixed reviews from critics. Rolling Stone published two assessments. The first, by Jonathan Cott, called it "Dylan's magnificent new album". The second reviewer, , wrote that "the record has been made with typical shoddiness." In the ,  described "the accompaniments [as] often so trashy they sound like mere practice takes", while magazine's Jim Cusimano found the instrumentation incompetent.

An influential review of the album was written by Dylan critic  for the magazine . Gray argued that it transformed the cultural perception of Dylan, and that he was no longer defined as "the major artist of the sixties. Instead, Dylan has legitimized his claim to a creative prowess as vital now as then—a power not bounded by the one decade he so affected." This view was amplified by , who wrote: "Ten years after he turned the rock & roll brand of pop into rock ... [Dylan] renewed its legitimacy as a form capable of containing the work of a mature artist." In ,  wrote that although the lyrics occasionally evoke romantic naiveté and bitterness, Blood on the Tracks is altogether Dylan's "most mature and assured record".

Since its initial reception, Blood on the Tracks has been viewed by critics as one of Dylan's best albums. In , Wyman wrote: "Blood on the Tracks is his only flawless album and his best produced; the songs, each of them, are constructed in disciplined fashion. It is his kindest album and most dismayed, and seems in hindsight to have achieved a sublime balance between the logorrhea-plagued excesses of his mid-1960s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years." Bell, in his critical biography of Dylan, wrote that Blood on the Tracks was proof that "Dylan had won the argument over his refusal to argue about politics. In this, he began to seem prescient." Bell concluded the album "might well count as one of the best things Dylan ever did". Novelist  called it "the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape".

A result of the acclaim surrounding Blood on the Tracks has been that when critics have praised one of Dylan's subsequent albums they have often described it as "his best since Blood on the Tracks". According to music journalist , Blood on the Tracks became a benchmark album for Dylan in the years that followed because it was "such a stunning comeback".

The album was also included in the book .

Track listing

All tracks written by .

Side oneNo.TitleRecordedLength1.""December 30, 1974 in Minneapolis5:422.""September 19, 1974 in New York City4:193.""December 27, 1974 in Minneapolis4:364.""December 27, 1974 in Minneapolis7:485.""September 17, 1974 in New York City2:55Side twoNo.TitleRecordedLength6.""September 16, 1974 in New York City4:227.""December 30, 1974 in Minneapolis8:518.""December 30, 1974 in Minneapolis4:499.""September 17, 1974 in New York City5:0210.""September 19, 1974 in New York City3:22Total length:51:42 Outtakes

Only one of the five New York acetate recordings that were subsequently replaced on the official album has been officially released: "", released on 1985's . Although alternate takes of "", "", and "" from those same sessions were released on , these were not the same takes that were initially slotted for inclusion on the official album. That collection also includes "Call Letter Blues", an outtake/early version of "" with alternate lyrics. "Up to Me", another outtake from these sessions, was also released on 1985's . An alternate take of the song "" is featured in the original soundtrack album for  (1996). An alternate take of "" was released on the b-side of the Record Store Day 2012 release of "." "" is the only song from the New York sessions which has not been officially released in any form. All of these, as well as more than 70 previously unreleased recordings, will be available on volume 14 of Dylan's Bootleg Series, titled .