Bob Dylan Admitted He Went “Too Far” With This 1975 Track: “What Did I Do That For?”

Most people, even Bob Dylan’s children, associate the singer-songwriter’s 1975 album, Blood on the Tracks, with Dylan’s divorce from Sara Lownds. Songs like “Tangled Up In Blue” and “Simple Twist of Fate” paint a melancholy image of two lovers parting ways. But others, like “Idiot Wind”, seem to come from a much different, much angrier place.

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“Idiot Wind” is as scathing as it is lengthy, and many speculated the track was about his ex-wife. However, Dylan later said that he didn’t write the song about anyone in particular. “It didn’t pertain to me,” he said, per Toby Creswell’s 1001 Songs. 

“It was just a concept of putting in images that defy time—yesterday, today, and tomorrow,” he continued. “I wanted to make them all connect in some kind of a strange way. I’ve read that that album had to do with my divorce. Well, I didn’t get divorced until four years after that.”

Still, there were elements of “Idiot Wind” he later came to regret.

Bob Dylan Worried He Might Have Gone Too Far With “Idiot Wind”

In some cases, Bob Dylan has expressed regret for writing songs that are too pointedly about other people, like “Ballad In Plain D”. But “Idiot Wind” was different. Despite Dylan’s attempt to weave together a narrative of unrelated, impersonal ideas, the end result seemed too specific, too close to home, not to be about someone in particular. “I didn’t feel that one was too personal,” he explained. “But I felt it ‘seemed’ too personal. Which might be the same thing, I don’t know. But it never was ‘painful.’”

Dylan added, “If you think you’re too close to something, you’re giving away too much of your feelings, well, your feelings are going to change a month later, and you’re going to look back and say, ‘What did I do that for?’” 

As if to retroactively prove his point, Dylan rewrote the lyrics to “Idiot Wind” in the middle of recording. “If you’ve heard both versions, you realize that there could be a myriad of verses for the thing,” the songwriter said. “It doesn’t stop.” The song, Dylan argued, could seemingly go on forever, compounding and elaborating on ideas infinitely. 

“Although,” he clarified, “on saying that, let me say that my lyrics, to my way of thinking, are better for my songs than anybody else’s. There’s just something about my lyrics that just have a gallantry to them. And that might be all they have going for them. However, it’s no small thing.”

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