Dylanology 19 (Nov 2022): Tangled Up In Blue II – The First Versions

Three plus one things changed radically between the New York and the Minnesota versions of “Tangled up in Blue” – and none of them are the lyrics

My initial plan for this issue was to bring the story of “Tangled Up In Blue” to its conclusion. Then I got a bout of Covid and couldn’t make it anyway, and then I discovered a completely new material that had been hiding right before my eyes. This has led me to split the chapter into two. In the first, I will look closely at the two studio versions from 1974, to see what such a close reading may reveal about Dylan’s original ideas about the song, his working methods, and why the New York version was scrapped. The survey of the ongoing life of the song during the Never Ending Tour will come as a Christmas present in the next issue.

Christmas in Minnesota

It’s both a very simple a completely unanswerable question: when Bob Dylan arrived for Christmas in Minnesota in December 1974, he brought with him what he then must have considered to be a masterpiece version of “Tangled Up In Blue”. When he left some days later, he had exchanged it for a freshly recorded take with a group of so-called local musicians.

What was it that made him prefer the new version? What had changed?

There are some obvious answers: the Minnesota version has a lot more musicians, against Tony Brown’s solitary bass from New York. Speaking of the bass, the Minnesota bass is much more active, not to mention the drums, which play no little part in creating the overall character of the track. The pace and mood of the two versions are like night and day, and then there are the lyric changes.

But there may be other changes, too, that are just as substantial. In the previous issue, I emphasised three essential building blocks in “Tangled up in Blue”:

• the TUIB motif at the end of the verse, including the T–SS figure;

• the first half of the verse, which stays in the T/S area;

• and the second, more expansive half, exploring the dominant direction.

In addition, there are some other elements that are worth having a look at, not only for the comparison between the early studio versions, but also for the evaluation of the song in all its live incarnations through the years.

First, the intro, which also serves as an interlude. Secondly, the chord family that is used, i.e. the tuning, the capo position, the “shape family”. Are we playing with A chords, like on the album, with G chords as during the Rolling Thunder Revue, or with some of the other possible alternatives? In some cases, the transition between the elements may vary, and as a more elusive criterion, the song’s development also highlights the relationship between harmonic sequence and pace.

The NY Version: The Discarded Gem

When Dylan entered the A&R studio on 52nd Street in New York in September 1974, he brought with him two items of huge importance: the Little Red Notebook with all the new lyrics, and a new-found love for the open E tuning and a specific set of chord shapes to go with it.

At that point, there really wasn’t any of the legendary chaos in the studio that we know of from other recording sessions, with Dylan scribbling down new verses with a mini pencil while the musicians are waiting, and the “let’s change things completely” attitude. The songs were finished, well-rehearsed and actually recorded before the musicians even turned up, as has convincingly been argued by Jeff Slate, who wrote the liner notes for More Blood, More Tracks. This is how Dylan wanted the songs to be. That also means that deviations from this “master copy” in later versions will probably be rewarding objects of study.

The Tuning

So what is distinctive about this version? First of all, it is impossible to separate the album from that tuning and those chords that he had picked up from Joni Mitchell. In general the way Dylan plays open E on Blood on the Tracks is characterized by two things: the descending E–B/d#–A/c# figure 054000 042000 020100 that occurs in just about every song on the album:

and the xx212x shape that he moves up and down in various ways (most peculiarly to 005450 on “Idiot Wind”):

“Tangled up in Blue” is no exception. The descending figure ends both the first and the second half of the verse, and the xx212x figure defines the refrain line – to the extent that there is actually no TUIB motif at all in the first incarnation of the song! So that must have materialized later. This is actually perhaps the biggest difference between the two versions.