Bob Dylan – Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks (2 Nov 2018)*

Interesting point. Perhaps a reach, perhaps not.

 

I think we're talking about two different things. I was speaking about rhyming couplets having an "important" word and a "necessary" one simply to complete a rhyme. That might be how I'd write a song, but I'm guessing Bob Dylan works in slightly more complex and mysterious ways (except of course when he is coming up with different rhymes to go with a repeated phrase, such as "up to me").

I agree that "Big Girl" does in fact follow the pattern you suggest in regards to the cliched/general coupling with the unique/personal.

 

Darn, Amazon sent me a defective boxed set! Those lyrics aren't on my version. :-(

 

MT is L&T part 2 same line of thinking on both

 

Well, you should just cancel the order then because it also contains the spookiest organ ever. They are pulling the wool over your eyes, man. Or maybe that is just what they wantcha to believe.

Best regards,

HTRL

 

MT are more relateable to BotT, I'd say. Maybe noT a river of claret but at least a sprinkling of red mist. L&T is lust and danger. Like Desire with a grey moustache.

Best regards,

HTRL

 

No but I heard one singing a song for me

 

For those concerned about completeness and truth in advertising, here's some not so good news.

"The 6CD full-length deluxe version of Bob Dylan – More Blood, More Tracks – The Bootleg Series Vol. 14 includes the complete New York sessions in chronological order including outtakes, false starts and studio banter."

I guess it really depends on how you define "complete".

Here's what Heylin has to say about Track 1, "If You See Her, Say Hello" (Take 1), which runs 3:58 on the box.

"On the very first take of "If You See Her, Say Hello" - a marathon effort and stellar performance - he is already striving for the voice within … Five and a half minutes long, it is punctuated by no fewer than four harmonica breaks."

The version on the box has two harmonica breaks.

So two harmonica breaks running about 90 seconds total have been jettisoned from the "complete New York Sessions" box. :-(

Just my own opinion - this is a perfectly acceptable practice for the single disc version, but is a disappointing choice for the deluxe set.

Reading further in Heylin's description of the solo portion of the 9/16/74 session, it appears that a false start of "Up To Me" that occurred before Take 3 of "You're a Big Girl Now" (clearly extant, since Heylin heard it) didn't make the cut for the box. Yes, a false start, a minor issue, I know. But who would it have hurt to leave the false start (the first recorded evidence of "Up To Me") in place on a disc with 20 minutes of open space?

 

Further proof that the editing decisions on this box set should have been "up to" someone else.

 

they also started banning people altogether from buying if they return too many items, regardless the reason.....I guess people were abusing the system.

 

Another "minor" issue but I would have loved to have heard the "was that sincere enough?" comment after Idiot Wind especially when studio banter itself was highlighted as a selling point

 

Yes me too. But I believe the quote was "Was that dramatic enough?"

 

I'm about half way through and my takeaway, so far, is the harmonica playing.....unbelievable....every single song. I guess I'm not too shocked but his playing is so emotive and unique on each take.
This set is so essential to anyone who even remotely likes this album - it adds so much context to the whole affair.
If you're on the fence on the big box - get it. Christmas is right around the corner If you're reading this thread you like the album, so fairly safe to say you will be blown away by this material.
Easy to find some faults with omissions, but so much more to treasure.
I'm probably in the minority that likes the official version better than the NY Sessions test pressing (with some exceptions).
I would have included "Up To Me" instead of "Meet Me In The Morning", and I would have picked a different take of "If You See Her, Say Hello" - but I like the song choices he made to add the band. "You're A Big Girl Now" I love both ways but I, actually, slightly like the Minnesota version better.
I've really been enjoying reading everyone's opinions (and I've learned a lot of detail I didn't know).

 

According to Heylin, neither comment is found on the tapes he heard. At the end of Take 4, Remake, Dylan just asks "Did you like it?"

 

Just my opinion, but I wouldn't let any of the anomalies and/or unpopular choices stop someone from buying this box. I'm personally incapable of passive listening, and having a long history with doing research related to classic rock I really have a need to know what I'm hearing and why I'm hearing it. That doesn't mean I don't love owning this box and haven't been listening to it for hours on end for the past week. The (almost) complete sessions for my favorite album of all time, in pristine sound quality … a dream come true, warts and all.

 

BILL FLANAGAN: You’ve changed the lyrics to "Tangled Up in Blue" since you first recorded it on "Blood on the Tracks".

BOB DYLAN: That was a peculiar record. I always wanted it to be the way I recorded it on "Real Live", but there was no particular reason for it to be that way, because I’d already made the record. That was another one of those things where I was trying to do something that I didn’t think had ever been done before. In terms of trying to tell a story and be a present character in it without it being some kind of fake, sappy attempted tearjerker. I was trying to be somebody in the present time while conjuring up a lot of past images. I was trying to do it in a conscious way. I used to be able to do it in an unconscious way, but I wasn’t into it that way anymore. That particular song was built like that, and it was always open to be cut better. But I had no particular reason to do it because I’d already made the record.

BILL FLANAGAN: One immediate difference is that it’s no longer clear if it’s only one guy telling the story. It now starts off in the second person, and goes into the first person when he meets the woman in the bar. The earlier section is now isolated, and the events it described may have happened to someone else.

BOB DYLAN: Yeah, exactly. See, what I was trying to do had nothing to do with the characters or what was going on. 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.

BILL FLANAGAN: Have you ever put something in a song that was too personal? Ever had it come out and then said, "Hmm, gave away too much of myself there"?

BOB DYLAN: I came pretty close with that song "Idiot Wind." That was a song I wanted to make as a painting. A lot of people thought that song, that album "Blood on the Tracks", pertained to me. Because it seemed to at the time. It didn’t pertain to me. It was just a concept of putting in images that defy time - yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I wanted to make them all connect in some kind of a strange way. I've read that that album had to do with my divorce. Well, I didn’t get divorced till four years after that. I thought I might have gone a little bit too far with "Idiot Wind." I might have changed some of it. I didn’t really think I was giving away too much; I thought that it *seemed* so personal that people would think it was about so-and-so who was close to me. It wasn’t. But you can put all these words together and that’s where it falls. You can’t help where it falls. I didn’t feel that one was too personal, but I felt it *seemed* too personal. Which might be the same thing, I don’t know. But it never was *painful*. 'Cause usually with those kinds of things, if you think you’re too close to something, you’re giving away too much of your feelings, well, your feelings are going to change a month later and you’re going to look back and say, "What did I do that for?"

BILL FLANAGAN: But for all the power of "Idiot Wind," there’s part of it that always cracked me up. You talk about being accused of shooting a man, running off with his wife, she inherits a million bucks, she dies, and the money goes to you. Then you say, "I can’t help it if I’m lucky." (Laughter.)

BOB DYLAN: Yeah, right. With that particular set-up in the front I thought I could say *anything* after that. If it did seem personal I probably made it overly so - because I said too much in the front and still made it come out like, "Well, so what?" I didn’t really think it was too personal. I’ve never really said anything where I thought I was giving away too much. I mean, I give it all away, but I’m not really giving away any secrets. I don’t have that many secrets. I don’t find myself in that position.

BILL FLANAGAN: Now, you *had* temporarily split with your wife before "Blood on the Tracks". That album must be at least somewhat about that.

BOB DYLAN: Yeah. Somewhat about that. But I’m not going to make an album and lean on a marriage relationship. There’s no way I would do that, any more than I would write an album about some lawyers’ battles that I had. There are certain subjects that don’t interest me to exploit. And I wouldn’t really exploit a relationship with somebody. Whereas in "Ballad in Plain D," I did. Not knowing that I did it. At that time my audience was very small. It overtook my mind so I wrote it. Maybe I shouldn’t have used that. I had other songs at the time. It was based on an old folk song. But I know what you mean. If you’re going through some relationship and it’s not working out well and that’s the way you feel, no matter what else you see or what else you do you keep getting back to that: "Oh, I feel lousy." So you try to take it out and write a song about it. A lot of people can’t do that. They have nobody to sing it to. So a person in my position says, "Well, I got this available information, this is the way I really feel; I think I’ll write it and say how I feel."

I don’t do that. I don’t like feeling those kinds of feelings. I’ve got to think I can do better than that. It’s not going to positively help anybody to hear about my sadness. Just another hard luck story.

BILL FLANAGAN: "Blood on the Tracks" was such a powerful work that it’s amazing that you followed it with an album, "Desire", on which you collaborated with a second lyricist, Jacques Levy. Why didn’t you try to sustain what you’d tapped into with "Blood on the Tracks?" Why not try to keep it going?

BOB DYLAN: I guess I never intended to keep that going. It was an experiment that came off. I had a few weeks in the summer when I wrote the songs. I wrote all the songs for "Blood on the tracks" in about a month and then I recorded them and stepped back out of that place where I was when I wrote them and went back to whatever I was doing before. Sometimes you’ll get what you can out of these things, but you can’t stay there.

 

listened to the vinyl tonight while coming down from 150mcg of L. it was so beautiful. felt like we were and always had been soulmates in the hivemind.

 

Genius songwriter, great singer, and first class bull**** artist . Yeah, "Call Letter Blues" is fiction. Just happens to be about a guy whose wife leaves and he's stuck back home with the kids. Must have come to him in a dream.

 

Crush87, where's this interview from? I can't remember where I've seen it before. Thanks for posting.

 

March 1985 for Bill's book "Written In My Soul"
Bill Flanagan interviewed Bob Dylan in New York in March 1985 for his 1985 book "Written In My Soul."

 

I was driving home from a work function tonight, definitely a little pissed about being at a work event on a Friday night, especially after the joy of last Friday night and More Blood More Tracks. I put on the studio release of BOTT and skipped to Idiot Wind. I just can’t believe how amazing these lyrics are. I’ve connected with almost every line but tonight, driving down the highway, I hear (and I mean really hear):

I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I’m finally free
I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me

And I just yell out, “MOTHERF****!!!” I’m shaking as I’m driving. It’s overwhelming. I just want to cry.

 

Thanks for your kind words. This release has really opened the lid on this album for me, no doubt about that!

Michael Gray (if I remember correctly, in The Art of Bob Dylan) misheard that line as "I like the smile in your fingertips." Which would have been a nice image, but, unfortunately, not what he sings. There is certainly a tactile nature to a lot of the imagery, which I think is evoked here in "fingertips."

On the subject of mishearing, I think (unfortunately?) all the prototype and alternative "Tangleds" indicate that Dylan did indeed sing "on a dark sad night" not the "docks that night" line that so many of us hear. At least to my ears . . .

 

Thanks, Richard! Under the Red Sky might be considered the "lunar" album given the number of references to that particular satellite. But that's another story!
Paul

 

And, speaking of the association between that particular singing bird and Dylan (or the song's narrator), there is the yet another one of those nifty contrasts (new to my ears, at least) between singing for free, at "his own expense" (replicated in the last lines of "Up To Me"), with "the price I have to pay," (presumably) being extracted by the subject's (ie Big Girl's) lack of fidelity!

 

I've always heard it that way too! I'm not sure what "combat bells" are exactly, but they make some sense in terms of the "empty shells" (double-meaning: sea-shells or combat-shells) that come before. The "tone"/"toll" I'll concede, but not quite ready to give up "combat" yet though!

Perhaps our ears are ringing!

I'm reaching here . . .

but I wonder if there might also be an added sinister connotation to the "mother took a trip" line, echoed in the "slip" that occurs in the following lines. A "trip" could indicate a literal slip, like the "blood on the saddle" ditch, or more of a "fall" (from grace) . . . which might also be implied at the start of "Lily, Rosemary, and the J of H."

Anyway, both "Meet Me in the Morning" and "Call Letter Blues" sound more "complete" and satisfying to me this time around.

P.S. Does the phrase "call letter" have a military association? Until now, I never really noticed the title, just associated it unconsciously with the "call girls."