It may be one of the greatest albums of all time but Blood on the Tracks left a lot of its session musicians unhappy. The Bob Dylan classic released in 1975 and found Dylan scrambling to make sense of his floundering marriage to Sara Lownds. Dylan would record the album in New York and later in Minneapolis, but the musicians in the studio with him claim they did not receive a proper credit when the album released.
Tensions within the studio were already clear but the snubbing of some instrumentalists left some “unhappy” with the end result. While the New York sessions were crucial to the album’s development, the musicians who performed with Dylan during those recordings found they were not credited on the final release. Neither were the Minneapolis musicians, who found their work was not credited under their name on the album’s initial release.
Assistant engineer Glenn Berger would go on to share why this was the case. He told Uncut Magazine: “Most of the New York musicians ended up not on the record, and the Minneapolis guys were never credited on it. So there were a lot of unhappy people. I’m a psychiatrist and have analysed what makes artists great, and part of it is shamelessness – not to care about how you treat people, to get what you’re looking for. Sometimes it works. Dylan’s walking on the tightrope, and we’re not.”
Despite the lack of credit, the album’s context clearly differed between those “darker” New York sessions and the brevity found in Minneapolis. Keyboardist Gregg Inhofer explained: “The New York sessions were a lot darker. New York seems to me, ‘Here I am in despair of a breakup.’ Minneapolis was, ‘I just broke up, but I’m going to move on.’ I think there was more warmth for him in Minnesota in general.”
Dylan would be prompted to re-record Blood on the Tracks with a lighter tone by his brother, David Zimmerman. The early version of the album did little for critics who heard it at the time. Zimmerman warned his brother that it wouldn’t sell well in that state, while journalist Robert Christgau called it a “sellout” of Dylan’s electric period.
There were problems brewing in the studio before the sessions had concluded, too. Glenn Berger, a studio assistant to engineer Phil Ramone, noted the tense environment that affected the recording process. Bass player Tony Brown found himself following along to Dylan’s playing by looking at the All Along the Watchtower hitmaker’s hands while the rest of the band found it difficult to connect with Dylan, according to Berger.
He said: “Tony was just staring at Dylan’s hands, trying to figure out the next chord and keep up. There was no warmth or camaraderie. That may have contributed to the intensity of the experience, that those were not happy sessions. Certainly, with the record’s content and Dylan’s marriage breakdown, there were a lot of dark feelings in the room.
“Bob didn’t know the guys from the band; he didn’t ask for them. But Paul Griffin was his idea. He was an older, straight-ahead jazz guy. He came in with a big smile on his face, and there was no direction, consistent with everything else. It didn’t work, and he walked out with the smile still on his face.”
Discover more from Cult Following
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
