People enjoying "that kind of pain" was hard to relate to, he said, ignoring an age-old truth put most succinctly by Stella Adler: "Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one."
Dylan has long claimed that the album is not a confessional piece. That claim, too, must be taken with a grain of salt. The title can only have been conjured from something stirring and real, and the songs from the storeroom of experience.
Separation from his wife of nine years, Sara, is the most present of influences on the album, but perhaps what Dylan is really saying is that his pain is no different from ours.
To place him too directly in the picture is to set aside the difficult truth that sorrow, anger, regret and resignation are nothing mysterious. We all love. We all screw up. We all bleed.
The real genius of Blood On The Tracks is its easy-listening veneer.
Dylan returns from his sortie into more strident electrified sounds by reclaiming old ground, couching his songs in the familiar style of acoustic-based folk and blues. It makes for a comfortable ride through uncomfortable territory, even as poisoned arrows of Idiot Wind fizz past.
Tangled Up In Blue captures both the intensity of first attraction and the awkwardness of estrangement, while You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go and Meet Me In The Morning speak of a whirlpool mix of hope and despair.
If You See Her, Say Hello and Shelter From The Storm come from a calmer place, from a writer with distance under his belt.
If the blood is freshest anywhere, it's on You're A Big Girl: "I'm going out of my mind, oh/With a pain that stops and starts/Like a corkscrew to my heart/Ever since we've been apart."
