Today is the last day of our Bob Dylan week, and (not wholly coincidentally) Bob Dylan's 70th birthday. Something special is needed - I can't really post just another random Dylan song from somewhere in his back catalogue, it has to be one of his very best songs. However, I have to continue on the no-official-studio-album-releases train. Therefore, the best unreleased (indeed, arguably the best full stop) version of one of my favourite Dylan songs.
Tangled Up In Blue is one of the most dissected works of Dylan's career, so I won't really bother to try and match up to other, better, critiques (like this one here). It's ostensibly a fairly basic story song, yet manages to fit a massive amount of imagery in. It feels like one of Dylan's broadest, grandest works, yet feels like it lasts a fraction of its 7-minute running time.
This version is a lot less instantly catchy than the original, with a lot less strident guitar and more of a focus on the voice. He's also played around with personal pronouns a lot, bending the narrative of the story considerably. It's just a lot more personal. It's a stupendous performance, but you can definitely tell why this recording was discarded for the more polished officially released version, which went on to be one of the best-known songs of his later career, attracting more people to the genius that is Blood On The Tracks than would have heard it otherwise. Oh well. Dylan never was the greatest self-editor. There were plenty of other things he could do that would make up for it.
Happy birthday, Bob!
Bob Dylan - Tangled Up In Blue (New York version)
(one last thing - well done me. I got through a whole week of Dylan retrospection without using the phrase 'He was so much younger then'! I'm proud of myself.)
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