Dylan’s “Tangled up in blue”. The meaning of the lyrics and music of the original version

This review (updated 10 August 2017) is of the original album version of “Tangled”.  For the review of the completely revised “Real Live” version please see here

10 August 2017: link to live version video added at end of the review.

18 August 2017: link to New York Sessions recording of the song add at the end.

by Tony Attwood

“You’ve got yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room, and there’s very little you can’t imagine not happening”^.

So said Dylan of this song, and to add to the mix he has performed and recorded many different versions: this review is from the Blood on the Tracks album, although Dylan has said that others are better.

What seems so attractive to the listener hearing this as a song, rather than a poem set to music, is the integration of Dylan’s singing mixed with occasional declamation, with that trade mark last note of the line in a collapsing glissando.  Never has the effect been more controlled or more effective – because this is what the song is; the story of a collapsing glissando.

The way that Dylan conveys yesterday, today and tomorrow in the music is through the rotating two chords that open each verse and return and return and return.  Time is endlessly rotating.

In musical terms we have the tonic (I) alternating with a chord of the flattened 7th but with the tonic still in place.  We are there (the tonic) but we aren’t (flattened 7th).  Lyrics and music in total unity, while time is out of joint – a superb concept.  When he hit on that rotating alternation he must have known he had what he wanted and needed to make the song flow.

Of course in writing such a song some stability is needed to stop the whole piece unravelling, and here this is done with the last five lines of each verse, in which the percussion suddenly becomes much more dominant, and the chord changes become much more definite: V, VI, I, IV; a sequence which is repeated before the remarkable drawing together of everything with the flattened 7th, IV and I, bringing us back to base – here and now, before we go again into an uncertain future… or is it the past?

The song starts with a setting of the scene in which the singer looks back to the early days of the relationship, but also sets the pattern for the last five lines being more contemporary (sometimes!)

The singer thinks back to the family disapproval, what with the imbalance of the family fortunes, and it is suggested the woman being married, followed by the inevitable split, and the belief they would come back together.

These lines are so simple, and yet the combination of a generality (a “dark sad night”) and the specific promise of meeting again in an unknown, unpredictable future give the song a powerful drive forward.  We keep on keeping on, right from the start.

The break up happens, the singer moves on to casual work, the combination of the detail and the generality of his life carrying him, and the music forwards.  But as always our memories mutate.  We are never sure what actually happened, we just know the bits that our memory pushes forward, and from this we recreate our own story.

But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew
Tangled up in blue

What an astounding, classic Dylan two lines:

But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind

So simple, so powerful.  The past was close behind… it is always there, inside us, directing us, telling us what we have been and what we are.  There is no real escape from the past.

Now he finds her again – or is it her? – has the prediction come true? – or is it once more the night playing tricks as Johanna, Louise and Little Boy Lost found?  Is this really the same woman, with them each playing a new game?

And later on as the crowd thinned out
I’s just about to do the same
She was standing there in back of my chair
Said to me, “Don’t I know your name?”

And then the musical surprise.  Just listen to the acoustic guitar in the following verse – it is so easy to miss but hits the carefully attuned audience with…

Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century

That acoustic guitar is almost buried, but you can hear it with those lines. Yes we really are transformed into another place.

What is so tantalising in this song is that the story is incomplete.  That is what it is meant to be.  Everyone who has been a student reading all the chic books that are not on the syllabus, moving us into new worlds that have nothing to do with what we are studying…  13th century Italian poems that tell you of some mystic other world…  it is in four lines a total change of atmosphere.  In a sense this really is the Visions of Johanna approach, with a special dash of extra clarity.

At the end everything has changed, everyone has changed, but since we don’t know the start, how can we ever know the end?  Of course we can’t, because there is no end – just an accumulation of memories.  We all start from a different point of view, we are all tangled up in time, we all are muddled, but we can still have our own direction, our own lives, our own story.  Everyone has moved on, everyone is always moving on, everyone has a past but… the past is not fixed – it is entirely a matter of how we interpret it.

But me, I’m still on the road
Headin’ for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point of view
Tangled up in blue

Unusually for Dylan the harmonica solo comes after the final sung verse – normally it is between the penultimate and ultimate verse. Here it is the symbol of being back on the road, trailing the different point of view, the book of poems perhaps in his back pocket, read at night under the stars…

Yet we are not back, because through the song there is an extraordinary build up – just listen to the power of the last sung verse and then the harmonica solo and then jump back to the start.  If it takes you by surprise it is because of the way we have been so drawn into the atmosphere, we have become part of the adventure.  We lived it.

And we know for sure: it’s not the world that matters, it’s the way we see the world that affects everything.

That’s why the song is a masterpiece.  You can’t help but live it.

Tangled up in blue – the Real Live version

Below, live version closer to the original album version.

 

What is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

4:   The Discussion Group    We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.