The Never Ending Pool

Courtesy of expectingrain.com:


the spectator
The Best Joni Mitchell Song Ever
An ode to obsessive listening.
By Ron Rosenbaum
Posted Friday, Dec. 14, 2007, at 10:56 AM ET

[What follows is an excerpt from Rosenbaum's article.]

I have to play it over and over again for hours on end. I can't get enough of it. It's not just a love song: It's a road song, it's a motel song, it's a Southwestern desert song, it's a disappearance and death song. It's a Joni Mitchell song. It's "Amelia."

People get that way about Joni Mitchell songs. Bob Dylan once told me that he'd written "Tangled up in Blue," the opening song of the much-celebrated Blood on the Tracks, after spending a weekend immersed in JM's Blue (although I think he may have been talking about the whole album, not just the song).

I'm subject to similar bouts of musical addiction, periods when I get tangled up in a song like "Amelia" and play it over and over again for hours, sometimes days at a time.

It's not just Joni Mitchell, not just a certain type of female singer-songwriter I have an obsession with. (Although I do revere Rickie Lee Jones and Rosanne Cash.) It's a certain kind of song, one that seems to activate some sort of hard-wired emotional cell cluster in my brain, I'm (unscientifically) convinced. Songs that do for me what crack does for other people.

http://www.slate.com/id/2180012/

i've read the same in some biography, can't remember where though...

i think we all know that tangled up in blue is not about the joni mitchels Blue. I think it's quite obvious that tangled up in blue is about his divorce from sarah. A story about why they can no longer be together, forgiving and understanding.

Actually, Bobby did say that to Ron Rosenbaum in the interview. You do know how Dylan can be, don't you?

There is, however, someone who told me what she calls the "backstory" to that song.

Just to clarify to "admin" - Warren wasn't saying it was "about" Joni Mitchell at all. Just pointing out that Bobby said he had been "immersed" in listening to her Blue album. It is quite a fine album.

I'd also like to mention, since Rosanne Cash's name appears in the excerpt from Ron Rosenbaum - that she is doing well after succesful brain surgery to remove a benign malformation.

So now Whetstraw is going to claim to have stories about him and Rosanne Cash, I presume.

Admin, I think it's generally known that Blood on The Tracks is about a whole lot more than just Bob and Sara Dylan. It is a terrible oversimplification to state that the album is about Bob and Sara Dylan's divorce, and does a great injustice to the album. I do realize, however, that English is not your main language, so it might be difficult for you to understand many things about Dylan's lyrics except at the most superficial level, and there's no shame in that at all.

QUOTE:
It is a terrible oversimplification to state that the album is about Bob and Sara Dylan's divorce, and does a great injustice to the album.

Yes.

that album is actually about the relationship that my wife and i have had over the years.

a general influence perhaps ?
"Blue" has a very atmospheric but direct style, and a lot of the songs are about relationships of one kind or another, so it maybe inspired Bob to try a similar thing with BOTT ?

it's all a big lie. bobby would never listen to joni mitchell cuz he knows many of his most ardent fans loathe her

it seems much ado to me.

correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't this the point in history where divorce got to be real popular among the original free-lovin', wife-swappin' hippies?

Yes. Dylan however wasn't part of that uh, mentality. That was more for John Sebastian. No, I'm not saying Bobby's approach was any better, or mine for that matter.

The fatuousness of this thread title is doing my head in almost as much as the Spice Girls banner on a Bob Dylan site.

Bob was listening to Joni's "Blue" a lot at the time he wrote the songs on "Blood on the Tracks." So that makes "Tangled Up in Blue" about Joni Mitchell? (What happened to the equally stupid theory that it was "about" David Blue?)

Bob's also said that he was thinking about Buddy Holly a lot at the time of TOOM, so I suppose "Love Sick" is about Buddy. After all, Buddy wrote several songs with "love" in the title as well...

so bob made a bundle marketing divorce to a newly created market segment. is that what you're saying?

'I used a little too much force'--that's an obvious line.