Ten years on from the seismic shock of appearing on stage at the Newport Folk Festival playing an electric guitar (gasp!) Bob returned to playing mostly acoustic for this album. This is the classic Dylan sound of guitar, harmonica and those familiar vocals, plus a comparatively restrained backing band.
Dylan always denied that any of the lyrics were autobiographical but given that he was in the middle of a marriage breakdown at the time it’s hard not to speculate about some of them. As always, they are complex with multiple layers of meaning and literary allusions, especially on Tangled Up In Blue that explores different interpretations of the title phrase and casually name drops “some poet from the 13th century” set on top of a simple repeated guitar riff.
I wonder if those outraged folkies ever returned to this album and asked themselves what they were so upset about back in 65?
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