Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’ Was Pretty Jewish Behind The Scenes
Bob Dylan in 1974. Image by Getty Images/Images Press/Contributor
By PJ Grisar October 31, 2018
More like “Tangled Up in Jew.” In an October 31, 2018 piece for the New Yorker music journalist Jeff Slate revealed the early recording history of Bob Dylan’s 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks” and its little known Jewish connections.
Slate, who wrote the liner notes for “More Blood, More Tracks,” the latest in Dylan’s “Bootleg Series” which commits previously unreleased demos to record-form, wastes no time getting into it. The sessions for “Blood on the Tracks” started on September 16, 1974, or, as Slate notes, Rosh Hashanah.
Come for the insights into Dylan’s prolific, 36-track-recording-day, stay for the aside connecting him to another master Jewish storyteller. “While he was writing the songs for ‘Blood on the Tracks,’ Dylan had taken up painting classes with the New York artist Norman Raeben,” Slate writes. “By all accounts, Raeben was a taskmaster, but he imparted in his students a sense both that life itself was the art, with their creations being merely the by-product of that experience, and, significantly for Dylan, that past, present, and future could all coexist in their work.”
Raeben, as the son of Sholem Aleichem, no doubt learned from the best.
But what most surprised Slate after listening to the full session recordings was the counter-narrative they presented. Perhaps derived from the zen piece of mind offered up by Raeben’s classes, Dylan was not, as was widely reported by those in the studio, a poor collaborator speeding through production. Slate believes Dylan had complete focus and a commitment to return to basics. If he fired the session players, it was only because the stripped down formula he wanted to capture demanded it.
“In the era of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and so many others unjustly or unfortunately dubbed ‘the New Dylan,’ and after a clutch of albums that fans had found less than satisfying, Dylan was throwing down the gauntlet, showing himself once again to be the master singer-songwriter and performer,” Slate wrote. With a return to “aching” renditions of some of his most “intimate” songs, maybe Dylan was getting an early start on his Jewish New Year’s resolution.
PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected].
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
