Over the Christmas holidays in 1974, Bob Dylan was not happy. The rocker was at home in Minnesota, ostensibly to enjoy a break, but he was bothered. Acetates of his forthcoming album, Blood On The Tracks—due for release in a matter of weeks—displeased him. He’d recorded the album in New York earlier that year, but it wasn’t until he sat down to listen to it that he noticed how flat and bland it sounded. He knew what he had to do—rerecord the album. So he called up his brother David and had him to round up a handful of talented local musicians and enter the studio for a whirlwind session to fix some of the album’s weaknesses. The story has since become the thing of rock and roll lore, but that story’s never really been told, and a new book, Blood In The Tracks, finally tells that story.
What’s slightly upsetting about this story is the postscript of it all: the band that helped transform a blah, bland recording into one of Bob Dylan’s masterpieces received no credit for their work, At first the lack of credit was understandable; the album artwork was complete and there was no time to correct the credits if they wanted to make the release date. But when the artwork was updated in subsequent pressings, the names of the New York musicians were taken off, but no mention was made of the Minnesota musicians who recorded with Dylan.
Blood In The Tracks makes up for the wrongness of their being ignored, and spends a great deal of time introducing us to each of the players in the band that night, their accomplishments that led them to get the call to come in and work with Dylan, and the studio that the recordings took place. The book then tells the story of what happened to the band after the session; while none of the musicians ever took a gig as big as the one with Dylan, they all seem to have had satisfying musical and personal careers.
And as for Dylan’s reaction to his band helping to make one of his defining albums of all time? Mercurial as always, he simply moved on to the next thing. One musician ran into him some time later and Dylan didn’t remember him and only acknowledged his work with a nod. Setting aside the negative aspects of the story, Blood In The Tracks is an engaging, lively, and highly interesting insight into what can only be seen as two ships passing briefly in the night.
Purchase: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/blood-in-the-tracks
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