The one 1975 album Bob Dylan knew everyone got wrong: “You can’t help where it falls”
There’s always been a certain mystique that permeates everything that Bob Dylan ever played.
Even though he liked the idea of making cut-and-dry tunes that told simple stories from time to time, there was a common understanding among the press that Dylan was never going to let his guard down and show everyone the actual person behind those dark sunglasses every single time he sang. He wanted the world to decide what he was for themselves whenever he sang, but there were some moments where he felt like he could be a bit more honest when he worked on one of his records.
After all, songs can be like confessionals for some of the greatest musicians in the world, and Dylan wasn’t shy about putting a lot of emotion behind anything he touched. A lot of the vitriol in his voice during the early years of his career does sound like someone who is deeply hurt by the ongoing problems with the world, and you can feel that through the speaker as he’s singing tunes like ‘Masters of War’.
He wanted to show people about the true injustices that everyone should stand for, but some of the most underrated pieces of his catalogue came from his love songs. Dylan didn’t always need to be one of the most romantic singers of all time, but you can tell that he’s going for genuine sincerity when singing tunes like ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright’ or even later in his career, devoting himself to his other half on tunes like ‘To Make You Feel My Love’.
So if he held those love songs so close to the chest, it was all going to come crashing down when his marriage fell apart in the 1970s. Dylan had already reached the end of the line with his wife, Sara, during the past few years, but when they finally called everything off, Blood on the Tracks was his chance to lay all his cards on the table. And when people heard it for the first time, he wasn’t exactly singing through gnashed teeth whenever he talked about his inner turmoil.
He points the finger in several directions throughout the record, and you can hear him trying his best to keep a level head at times. ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ is practically the entire story of the album put together in one song, but there are moments where he lashes out at both himself and his ex on ‘Idiot Wind’ and eventually lets his heartbreak come to rest on ‘You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go’.
And after years removed from the album’s release, Dylan still considered the record to be a little bit too personal than it should have been, saying, “I didn’t really think I was giving away too much; I thought that it seemed so personal that people would think it was about so-and-so who was close to me. It wasn’t. But you can put all these words together and that’s where it falls. You can’t help where it falls. I didn’t feel that one was too personal, but I felt it seemed too personal.”
But even if Dylan was trying to remove himself from his songs, it’s not like he needed to completely detach himself, either. If anything, ‘Buckets of Rain’ works a lot better if you think about how it pertains to Dylan during this part of his career. He had cried so many tears throughout the course of the record, and this was the moment where he could let that sadness go and move on to bigger things.
So while the personal angle didn’t sit well for Dylan, Blood on the Tracks did at least help humanise him in a certain way. He seemed like this otherworldly wordsmith whenever he sang one of his tunes, but after going through his fair share of emotional low points, knowing that he had a heart that could be broken just like the rest of us did was a lot more reassuring for most of his fans.
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