Blood On The Tracks New York Sessions Rarest
Bob Dylan sessions. (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991; New York home recordings, part 3. Blood on the Tracks sessions. Find a Bob Dylan - New York Sessions Blood On The Tracks first pressing or reissue. Complete your Bob Dylan collection. Shop Vinyl and CDs. 16 Responses to “Bob Dylan: Blood On The Tracks – The New York Sessions” This is great, thanks. Great explanation of Dylan’s process. I love listening to.
They don’t agree on much, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a fanatic out there who doesn’t place Blood on the Tracks somewhere in the upper echelons of the songwriter’s finest works. Terni Rifle Serial Numbers. Released 40 years ago this month, Blood’s 10 tunes ache with regret and longing, rendering the tangled twists and turns of a love affair with a keen eye for detail and some of Dylan’s most memorable melodies. As far as breakup albums go, there are few better.
What the fanatics might not agree on is just what the definitive version of Blood on the Tracks really is. It’s a situation that’s positively, well, Dylanesque. Dylan recorded the original Blood on the Tracks in September of 1974 in the comfortable confines of Columbia Records’ A&R Studios in New York City, where he had recorded his first six albums, from his self titled 1962 debut to 1965’s epochal Highway 61 Revisited. Working with a small group of backing musicians, the sound Dylan achieved was spare, intimate and direct—a perfect match for the strikingly personal lyrics scrawled in his notebook. Happy with the results, he signed off on the album and delivered it to Columbia.
The label scheduled it for release in January of 1975. But in the intervening months, Dylan began having second thoughts. While spending the holidays in Minnesota, he played the album for his younger brother, who thought the stark nature of the recordings might hurt its commercial prospects. So the songwriter booked studio time, brought in a handful of local musicians and re-cut half of Blood's songs: 'Tangled Up in Blue', 'You're a Big Girl Now', 'Idiot Wind', 'Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts', and 'If You See Her, Say Hello'.
Dylan sent the revised Blood on the Tracks to Columbia, and the label was somehow able to still make its planned deadline—the album was in stores on January 20. But with promotional and test copies of the original version already pressed, it was only a matter of time before the bootleggers sprang. Within weeks of the album’s release, fans were comparing and contrasting the official version with the 'New York' version. And they’ve been doing so ever since. While several New York session outtakes have appeared on various Bootleg Series', soundtracks and compilations, Blood on the Tracks as its author originally intended it has never been given a proper outing.
But hearing it is an essential experience for anyone interested in Dylan’s art, and one quite different from the one available for purchase at record stores and on iTunes. Arrangements are radically changed, lyrical perspectives switched up, vocal inflections vary wildly.
The overall mood is just different. Listen to the reflective strum and easy pace of the album’s iconic opener from the New York sessions, with Dylan's voice and open-tuned guitar accompanied only by a simple bass line.
Then check out, with its energetic vocal and infectious acoustic chime—certainly more FM radio friendly, but perhaps lacking the earlier recording’s subtle charm. The Minnesota suffers mightily when it goes up against its (which saw the light of day on the mid-'80s Biograph compilation), thanks to the latter’s utterly heartbreaking vocal, perhaps one of Dylan’s finest performances on record. It’s a toss-up between the full band and stripped down takes of 'Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts' but let’s face it, that epic shaggy dog love triangle has never been anyone’s favorite Blood on the Tracks tune. The ultimate—and still unreleased—outtake is, featuring a world weary Dylan duetting beautifully with organist Paul Griffin’s ghostly lines. Where and subsequent live outings play up the viciousness of the lyrics, the New York take is a more subdued and complex performance. The righteous anger is still there, but it’s less accusatory, less raging.