Dylan made this rare introspective album in the wake of his divorce from his first wife Sara (Noznisky) Dylan, who almost as much as a mysterious enigma, as Dylan himself.
The narrative of Tangled Up In Blue does roughly follow Dylan's early wanderings before eventually ending up in New York in 1961. From around age 17 to 20 Dylan was indeed traveling around the Midwest and South and working menial jobs prior to surfacing in Green Village and nearly instant stardom. Dylan did indeed live in an apartment on Montague St. in the East Village when revolution was in the air, as he sings in the song.
The Tangled Up In Blue narrative seems follow Dylan's hitch-hiking expeditions that led him to finally settling in New York and meeting Sara Nozinsky who was,as the song goes, was a topless dancer but she was also a Playboy model and aspiring actress. As the song goes, Sara was married at the time to Hans Lownds who was a character on the fringes of the cafe scene in Greenwich Village.
It wouldn't surprise me if Dylan had worked as a cook in Minnesota's Great North Woods when he just out of high school or during his short lived year or so at University of Minnesota. We know during this period he auditioned to play in Bobby Vee's band under a false name, he met blues musician Jesse Fuller while travelling in Denver and tried unsuccessfully to meet Fats Domino in New Orleans. Did he work on a fishing boat in Delacroix? Who knows... Dylan doesn't talk about the past.
Bob and Sara Dylan's son Jakob comments on Blood on the Tracks: "The songs are my parents talking" Apparently Dylan wrote another album's worth of music about his separation with Sara but he refused to record the songs. Dylan's friends who heard the unrecorded songs said they were even better than the ones on Blood on the Tracks.
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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt
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