Blood on the Tracks (9) is the fifteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in January 1975 by Columbia Records. The album marked Dylan’s return to Columbia after a two-album stint with Asylum Records. Dylan began recording the album in New York City in September 1974. In December, shortly before Columbia was due to release the album, Dylan abruptly re-recorded much of the material in a studio in Minneapolis. The final album contains five tracks recorded in New York and five from Minneapolis.
Dylan commenced recording at A&R Recording Studios. Bernstein has stated “the theme of returning ran through the sessions”, so “it made a lot of sense to do it at A&R”. A&R Studios was the former Columbia Recording Studio A, 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, Phil Ramone, 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.
Blood on the Tracks initially received mixed reviews, but has subsequently been acclaimed as one of Dylan’s greatest albums by both critics and fans. In Salon.com, 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 Rick Moddy called it “the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape”
The songs have been linked to tensions in Dylan’s personal life, including his estrangement from his then-wife Sara. One of their children, Jakob Dylan, has described the songs as “my parents talking”. 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 Mary Travers 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”. However, on the live At Budokan album, Dylan seems to acknowledge the autobiographical nature of the song “Simple Twist of Fate” by introducing it as “Here’s a simple love story. Happened to me.”
The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts and No. 4 on the Uk Albums Chart, with the single “Tangled Up in Blue” peaking at No. 31 on the Billboard singles chart. The album remains one of Dylan’s best-selling studio releases, with a double platinum U.S. certification by the RIAA. In 2015, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2003, the album was ranked No. 16 on RollingStone’s list of The Greatest Albums of All Time, rising to the No. 9 spot in the 2020 revision of that same list. In 2004, it was placed at No. 5 on Pitchfork’s list of the top 100 albums of the 1970s.
