On This Day in 1974, Bob Dylan Recorded This Classic Track That’s Always Being Re-Written (And Might Have Been Inspired By Joni Mitchell)

Bob Dylan is, among many things, the kind of artist who celebrates the living, flexible nature of any good piece of work, which is why “Tangled Up in Blue”, a song he recorded at Sound 80 in Minneapolis on December 30, 1974, has taken on countless forms since that fateful day. In fact, that day wasn’t even the song’s first form. The post-Christmas session was a redo of a previous batch of takes that Dylan recorded in New York City in September of that year.

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Dylan chipped away at the song session by session, later introducing it as a song that “took [him] ten years to live and two years to write,” per Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan. But he didn’t spend all that time racking up autobiographical material, despite what the song’s roaming narrative might suggest. Dylan sings the story of the unnamed narrator and the red-haired woman with whom he “split up on a dark sad night both agreeing it was best” with all the wistful remorse, callous rationale, and nervous heartache of someone who actually lived those experiences.

However, Dylan revealed in his memoir, Chronicles, that the entirety of Blood on the Tracks, including “Tangled Up in Blue”, was inspired by Chekhov’s short stories. “Critics thought it was autobiographical,” Dylan wrote (via The Guardian). “That was fine.” In other interviews, Dylan attributed the titular color of this classic track to Joni Mitchell’s album, Blue, which came out as he was writing Blood on the Tracks.

Bob Dylan Has Changed “Tangled up in Blue” Countless Times

Bob Dylan released “Tangled Up in Blue” on Blood on the Tracks on January 20, 1975, less than one month after recording it for the final time. In the months and years that followed, the song took on new meanings and adopted new lyrics. Perhaps the most notable modification came in the late 1970s, which many historians cite as one of the first whispers of Bob Dylan’s conversion to Christianity. In 1978, Dylan began replacing the line, “She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me,” with, “She opened up the Bible and started quotin’ it to me / Jeremiah Chapter 31, verses 9 to 33.”

By the mid-1980s, “Tangled Up in Blue” underwent yet another change—this time, an even less romantic one. In the final verse, Dylan originally sings, “So, now I’m goin’ back again, I got to get to her somehow / All the people we used to know, they’re an illusion to me now.” In 1984, Dylan began singing, “So, now I’m going on back again to that forbidden zone / I got to find someone among the women and men whose destiny is unknown.” Instead of being “headed for another joint,” Dylan is “trying to stay out of the joints.”

The ever-evolving nature of “Tangled Up in Blue” is a testament to this particular track being among the best of Dylan’s songwriting. According to Dylan himself, the song was reflective of his burgeoning interest in painting. He called “Tangled Up in Blue” and the rest of Blood on the Tracks his “painting period.” “It’s like they are paintings, those songs, or they appeared to be. They’re more like a painter would paint a song as [opposed] to compose it,” per Still on the Road.

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