Quentin Tarantino’s favourite song of all time: “He totally blew me away”
Although Quentin Tarantino is a master of cinema, his interests extend far beyond the screen. He’s also a devoted music enthusiast, though he freely admits to being a fan rather than someone with the talent to write songs at a professional level.
When Tarantino watches a movie, he often views it through the lens of a director, analysing it with the critical eye of an auteur. This makes it difficult for him to enjoy films at face value the way a typical moviegoer might. With music, however, the experience remains pure, offering him the same joy and excitement he felt as a kid.
As a filmmaker, Tarantino has expertly used music to elevate his movies. The audio accompaniment provides an extra degree of emotion, one that pictures alone are incapable of unlocking, and nobody is more aware of this asset than the director of iconic movies such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill.
Tarantino regularly uses music as escapism to get him out of a creative rut, which provides the tools required to open ideas from closeted areas of his mind. Every musical inclusion Tarantino makes is well-considered rather than a negotiable last-minute addition in the editing booth, and this level of detail has paid huge dividends.
While the director’s musical taste is varied, Bob Dylan’s early records are unparalleled in his mind. Surprisingly, despite holding him in the highest regard, the director has never found a way to shoehorn Dylan’s music into his work. However, while making Death Proof, Tarantino did successfully squeeze a reference to his hero using a close-up of the jukebox to display the Dylan song ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’. Tarantino also sent the singer an advance copy of the script because he thought he’d appreciate “the wordplay — the structure of the words in it and the different voices for the dialogue”.
Since emerging in the 1960s, Dylan has seamlessly blended the worlds of reality and fiction through his mysterious career, which Tarantino finds appealing. For him, it’s Dylan’s way of using words that the director gravitates to most, especially how the musician trusts audiences to fill in the blanks.
Not only is ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ Tarantino’s favourite song by Dylan, but he also described it as “my all-time favourite song”. The opening track featured in 1975’s Blood on the Tracks finds the singer painting a wistful picture of a past relationship, capturing Dylan at his very best. Speaking to Uncut, Tarantino remarked of the song: “I know this is off Blood on the Tracks, but it’s my all-time favourite song. It’s one of those songs where the lyrics are ambiguous you can actually write the song yourself. That’s a lot of fun – it’s like Dylan fooling around with the listener, playing on the way he or she interprets the lyrics.”
Although ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ is Tarantino’s favourite song of all time, it wasn’t always his favourite track on Blood on the Tracks. However, as he’s grown older, it has taken on a deeper, unparalleled meaning to the director. He added: “It’s very hard to take individual songs off Blood on the Tracks, because it works so well as an entire album. I used to think ‘If You See Her, Say Hello’ was a more powerful song than ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ but, over the years I’ve kinda realised ‘Tangled…’ has the edge, just for the fun you can have with it.’
Discussing the LP on the whole, Tarantino explained why he believes it to be the greatest album of all time: “This is my favourite album ever. I spent the end of my teenage years and my early 20s listening to old music–rockabilly music, stuff like that. Then I discovered folk music when I was 25, and that led me to Dylan. He totally blew me away with this. It’s like the great album from the second period, y’know? He did that first run of albums in the 1960s, then he started doing his less troublesome albums – and out of that comes Blood On The Tracks. It’s his masterpiece”.
Dylan’s work from the 1960s is perceived as his heyday. Following an unimpressive start to the ’70s with Self Portrait and New Morning, many questioned whether he was capable of recapturing those creative heights again or if he was yesterday’s news. However, with Planet Waves in 1974 and 1975’s Blood on the Tracks, Dylan showcased his evolution as a songwriter, proving his talent remained as fervent as ever.
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