A line from "Simple Twist Of Fate" seemed appropriate recently, and it gave me the incentive to listen to parts of* Blood On The Tracks again, after a long time. My old favourites remain, but I have been happy to find that I enjoy the other tracks more than I thought I did. Songs I remembered as sad, gloomy, and painful, but powerful, turned out to be anything but - well, sad and powerful, sure, but not without some cool sense of beauty. I don't know if that made much sense, but 'tis best not to try and analyze these things too much (especially when you can't write...!).

Incidentally, I don't know why "Lily, Rosemary & The Jack Of Hearts" is so maligned. I loved the song from my first listen! Repetitive in some sense, yes, but it is a lyrics song to me - "Desolation Row" could also be seen as repetitive, but I don't think too many people complain about the lyrics there. So I guess people don't like the narrative? Ah well.

Dylan seems to have sent shockwaves through his fanbase in Chronicles, where he claimed that one of his albums was based on short stories on Chekhov, while critics thought it was autobiographical. Naturally, the most obvious candidate for this album would be BOTT, which has always been taken to be about his marriage. Some people seem to feel that this means a lot of what has been written about the album is now wrong, but I don't think this is necessarily true. While I initially felt that this was a big development, on reconsideration I think it is more an interesting backstory. I don't know if I ever felt that the songs were explicitly about his marriage, in an autobiographical sense - as in, I don't think I thought, for instance, that the story of "Tangled Up In Blue" was based on what happened to him. But I did think, and still do think, that the underlying material itself was forged from what was happening in his personal life. For starters, it surely isn't a coincidence that he chose to write an album almost entirely about loss (loosely speaking) when his own marriage was dissolving? Even if they were based on Chekhov stories, the particular stories he chose seem to have a thread that is surely the influence of marriage! Or do I just not know my Chekhov...!?! :)

I guess what I am arguing is that even if, say, "Idiot Wind" doesn't necessarily imply that he was angry at Sara at the time, it doesn't make it any less of a powerful song (which I think most people would agree with), and it doesn't make it any less of a personal song (in a different sense, of course).

* I don't know if I have it in me, just yet, to listen to any of my old Dylan albums in their entirety, for some strange reason.