Tangled Up in Blue (1975) – Bob Dylan

It is a love song (Tangled Up In Blue), and a song about how it feels to have a personal history.. it is also a great road song, filled with the essential energy of the American highway. The Minnesota musicians Dylan performs with here achieve an unforgettable groove, bass and drums and acoustic guitars (one a twelve-string, it sounds almost like a harpsichord at times) totally blended into a new and different wild mercury sound.
– Paul Williams (Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, Vol 2: The Middle Years 1974-1986)

In 2012, I conducted a survey on the Expecting Rain Bob Dylan discussion forum for participants to list their 10 favourite Bob Dylan songs. 58 submissions of 10 favourite songs were received with a total of 147 Bob Dylan songs voted. Today’s featured song Tangled Up in Blue came in at No.2 such is its regard amongst Dylanholics. You can view the rest of the results here.

Tangled Up in Blue is one of five songs on Blood on the Tracks that Dylan initially recorded in New York City in September 1974 and then re-recorded in Minneapolis in December that year; the later recording became the album track and single. It reached No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 68 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Dylan had moved to a farm in Minnesota with his brother, David Zimmerman, and there started to write the songs that were recorded for his album Blood on the Tracks. David Zimmerman was the producer for the Minneapolis Blood on the Tracks recordings, but was not credited on the album.
In the spring of 1974, Dylan had taken art classes at Carnegie Hall and was influenced by his tutor Norman Raeben, and in particular Raeben’s view of time, when writing the lyrics.

I was trying to do something that I don’t know if I was prepared to do. I wanted to defy time, so that the story took place in the present and past at the same time. When you look at a painting, you can see any part of it or see all of it together. I wanted that song to be like a painting.

– Bob Dylan (to Bill Flanagan, March 1985)

Tangled Up in Blue and the album as a whole represented a return of the great Bob Dylan from his glory days of the trilogy Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde. The song has a most dazzling lyric. It’s said Dylan continuously reworked the lyrics during the recordings, mostly telling the story in the third person singular, probably to signify that the narrator was a witness, not an actor. In the official version, however, he sings in the first person singular, as if he wants to indicate a personal involvement.

“[This song] took me 10 years to live, and two years to write,” Dylan often said before playing Tangled Up in Blue in concert. His marriage to Sara Lowndes was crumbling in 1974 around the time he wrote this and some even suggested the songs were wrung from an anguished Dylan which is probably an over-simplification. Jakob Dylan, the third child Dylan had with Lowndes, described the song lyrics as “my parents talking.” But Dylan denied any autobiographical connections. “It didn’t pertain to me,” he said during a 1985 interview.

[Verse 1]
Early one morning the sun was shining
I was laying in bed
Wondering if she’d changed at all
If her hair was still red
Her folks they said our lives together
Sure was going to be rough
They never did like Mama’s homemade dress
Papa’s bankbook wasn’t big enough
And I was standing on the side of the road
Rain falling on my shoes
Heading out for the East Coast
Lord knows I’ve paid some dues
Getting through
Tangled up in blue

[Verse 2]
She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam, I guess
But I used a little too much force
We drove that car as far as we could
Abandoned it out west
Split up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best
She turned around to look at me
As I was walking away
I heard her say over my shoulder
“We’ll meet again someday
On the avenue”
Tangled up in blue

[Verse 3]
I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell
So I drifted down to New Orleans
Where I lucky was to be employed
Working for a while on a fishing boat
Right outside of Delacroix
But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind
And I just grew
Tangled up in blue

[Verse 4]
She was working in a topless place
And I stopped in for a beer
I just kept looking at the side of her face
In the spotlight, so clear
And later on, when the crowd thinned out
I was just about to do the same
She was standing there, in back of my chair
Said, “Tell me, don’t I know your name?”
I muttered something underneath my breath
She studied the lines on my face
I must admit, I felt a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces
Of my shoe
Tangled up in blue

[Verse 5]
She lit a burner on the stove
And offered me a pipe
“I thought you’d never say hello,” she said
“You look like the silent type”
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burning coal
Pouring off of every page
Like it was written in my soul
From me to you
Tangled up in blue

[Verse 6]
I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs
There was music in the cafes at night
And revolution in the air
Then he started into dealing with slaves
And something inside of him died
She had to sell everything she owned
And froze up inside
And when it finally, the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keeping on
Like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue

[Verse 7]
So now I’m going back again
I got to get to her somehow
All the people we used to know
They’re an illusion to me now
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter’s wives
Don’t know how it all got started
I don’t know what they’re doing with their lives
But me, I’m still on the road
A-heading for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point
Of view
Tangled up in blue

References:
1. Tangled Up in Blue – Wikipedia