Too 'Tangled up in Blues': A Look Inside Bob Dylan's 1974 Notebooks
- Feb 22
- 1 min read
Updated: Apr 22
By Jason Miller
From The Dylan Review
Over twenty pages of Dylan’s handwritten lyrics to “Tangled Up in Blue” (1974) are now available for study at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. These lyrics are located in two small 5 in. x 3 in. spiral notebooks from 1974. All forty-five pages of each notebook are filled, and one contains personal notes commingled with revised song lyrics to what would become the iconic 1975 album Blood on the Tracks. The album chronicles Dylan working through a painful separation on the way to being divorced, and references to his family are central throughout one of these notebooks.
The cover of one of Dylan’s two notebooks advertises its cost: “19.” Opening it up reveals the most minuscule letters I have ever encountered in over twenty years of conducting archival research. I needed a magnifying glass to read Dylan’s handwriting. Dylan’s practice of writing out a full stanza on the left, using the right side across from the spiral wire for revisions, meant I had to scan left to right (rather than up and down) to track his complex process. It was no small challenge to untangle the lyrics in notebooks now finally available to scholars.
