"Tangled Up in Blue" is a song by American singer-songwriter

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...

, which was released as the opening track on his 15th studio album ''

Blood on the Tracks ''Blood on the Tracks'' is the fifteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on January 20, 1975, by Columbia Records. The album marked Dylan's return to Columbia Records after a two-album stint with Asylum Records. Dy ...

'' (1975). The song was written by Dylan and produced by David Zimmerman, Dylan's brother. Released as a single, it reached No. 31 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. The song concerns relationships and contains different narrative perspectives. Dylan has altered the lyrics in subsequent performances, changing the point of view and details in the song. The track was initially recorded in September 1974, but later re-recorded on 30 December of that year at

Sound 80 Sound 80 is a recording studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States founded by engineer Tom Jung and composer/musician Herb Pilhofer in 1969. Largely involved with local artists, the studio is best known for recording portions of Bob Dylan' ...

Minneapolis, Minnesota Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

. The latter version was released on ''Blood on the Tracks'' on 20 January 1975. The song received widespread acclaim from

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...

, with particular praise for the lyrics. ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'' ranked it No. 68 on their list of the

500 Greatest Songs of All Time "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" is a recurring survey compiled by the American magazine ''Rolling Stone''. It is based on weighted votes from selected musicians, critics, and industry figures. The first list was published in December 2004 in ...

. A number of alternate versions have been released, including multiple studio out-takes on '' The Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks'' (2014). Dylan has performed the song live over 1,600 times.

Background and recording

The song was written in the summer of 1974, after Dylan's comeback tour with The Band that year and his separation from

Sara Dylan Sara Dylan (born Shirley Marlin Noznisky; October 28, 1939) is an American former actress and model who was the first wife of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In 1959, Noznisky was wed to magazine photographer Hans Lownds, during which time she was ...

, whom he had married in 1965. Dylan had moved to a farm in Minnesota with his brother, David Zimmerman, and there started to write the songs that were recorded for his album ''

''. In the spring of 1974, Dylan had taken art classes at

Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...

and was influenced by his tutor

Norman Raeben Norman Raeben (1901 – 12 December 1978) was an American painter. Life He was born in the Russian Empire, the youngest of the six children, four girls and two boys, of Yiddish author Sholom Aleichem. Aleichem's most famous character, Tevye the M ...

, and in particular Raeben's view of

time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

, when writing the lyrics. In a 1978 interview Dylan explained this style of songwriting: "What's different about it is that there's a code in the lyrics, and there's also no sense of time. There's no respect for it. You've got yesterday, today, and tomorrow all in the same room, and there's very little you can't imagine not happening".

Richard F. Thomas Richard F. Thomas (born September 26, 1950) is the George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. His scholarship has focused on various critical approaches, metrics and prose stylistics (particularly Tacitus), genre studies, ...

, Professor of the

Classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, has written that Dylan has been "characteristically vague" on the use of any specific painting techniques emulated while he was writing the words for the songs on ''Blood On The Tracks''. According to novelist

Ron Rosenbaum Ronald Rosenbaum (born November 27, 1946) is an American literary journalist, literary critic, and novelist. Life and career Rosenbaum was born into a Jewish family in New York City, New York and grew up in Bay Shore, New York. He graduated fr ...

, Dylan told him that he'd written "Tangled Up in Blue" after spending a weekend listening to

Joni Mitchell Roberta Joan "Joni" Mitchell ( Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian-American musician, producer, and painter. Among the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitchell became known for her sta ...

's 1971 album ''

Blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when obs ...

''. Dylan first recorded "Tangled Up in Blue" in New York City on 16 September 1974 during the initial ''Blood on the Tracks'' sessions at A&R Studios. Eight takes were recorded in New York from 16 to 19 September, mostly featuring Tony Brown on bass alongside Dylan on guitar and harmonica, and containing some minor variations in lyrics, as well as differences in vocal delivery, and

tempo In musical terminology, tempo (Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often ...

. Two of the versions later released on ''The Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks (Deluxe edition)'' also include Paul Griffin on organ. That December, working from a suggestion from his brother that the album should have a more commercial sound, Dylan re-recorded half the songs on ''Blood on the Tracks'', including "Tangled Up in Blue" on 30 December at

. David Zimmerman was the producer for the Minneapolis ''Blood on the Tracks'' recordings, but was not credited on the album. The re-recorded versions were radical departures from the original recordings, and each new recording included changes to the lyrics from the earlier versions. This recording featured a full band: Kevin Odegard (guitar), Chris Weber (guitar) Gregg Inhofer (keyboards),

Billy Peterson Billy Peterson (born as Willard Peterson, in Minnesota) is an American bass player, songwriter, composer, session musician and producer. Growing up in a family of professional musicians, Peterson started with music at a very young age. Billy is b ...

(bass), and Bill Berg (

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

), with Dylan singing, and on guitar and harmonica. These musicians were based locally and had arrived at Zimmerman's invitation, and Dylan had not met them before they started working together on 27 December. The Minneapolis version was included as the opening track on ''Blood on the Tracks'', released on 20 January 1975, and in February as a single backed with " If You See Her, Say Hello". The single reached number 31 on the

Hot 100 The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming ...

chart. Outtakes of "Tangled Up in Blue" from the New York sessions were released in 1991 on ''

The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991 ''The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3'' is a box set by Bob Dylan issued on Columbia Records. It is the first installment in Dylan's Bootleg Series, comprising material spanning the first three decades of his career, from 1961 to 1989. It has been c ...

'' and in 2018 on the single-CD and 2-LP versions of '' The Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks'', while the complete New York sessions were released on the deluxe edition of the latter album. The deluxe version of ''The Bootleg Series Vol. 14'' also included a remix of the December 1974 master issued on ''Blood on the Tracks''.

Composition and lyrical interpretation

With "Tangled Up in Blue", Dylan used shifting perspectives of time, influenced by his recent studies under Raeben. Michael Gray describes the structure of "Tangled Up in Blue's" lyrics as the story of a love affair and career and how the "past upon present, public upon privacy, distance upon friendship, nddisintegration upon love" transform and are complicated over time. Timothy Hampton, Professor of

Comparative Literature Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study ...

and French at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, has described the structure of the lyrics as a set of

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...

s, with seven

stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian language, Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or Indentation (typesetting), indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme scheme, rhyme and ...

s each of 14 lines, each with a volta after line eight. Dylan continually re-worked the lyrics and arrangement even after the album was released. During his 1978 World Tour, the line starting "She opened up a book of poems" became "She opened up the Bible and started quotin' it to me", becoming one of the first public indicators of Dylan's conversion to Christianity. The version released on ''

Real Live Real may refer to: Currencies * Brazilian real (R$) * Central American Republic real * Mexican real * Portuguese real * Spanish real * Spanish colonial real Music Albums * ''Real'' (L'Arc-en-Ciel album) (2000) * ''Real'' (Bright album) (2010) ...

'', as performed throughout his 1984 Europe tour, has a radically different structure and lyrics to earlier versions, with a more cynical view of romance. Dylan said in 1985 that he was more satisfied with the implementation of multiple viewpoints in the song than he had been with the original. Dylan has often stated that the song took "ten years to live and two years to write". In a 1985 interview with Bill Flanagan, Dylan said that although many people thought that the album ''Blood on the Tracks'' was autobiographical, "It didn't pertain to me. It was just a concept of putting in images that defy time – yesterday, today and tomorrow. I wanted to make them all connect in some kind of a strange way." In his 2004 memoir '' Chronicles: Volume One'', Dylan claimed that ''Blood on the Tracks'' was "an entire album based on

Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...

short stories. Critics thought it was autobiographical – that was fine."

Critical reception

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' regarded "Tangled Up in Blue" as Dylan's most powerful and most commercial single in a long time, saying that Dylan's voice and the "strong acoustic background" instrumentals were reminiscent of Dylan's early songs. ''

Cash Box ''Cashbox'', also known as ''Cash Box'', was an American music industry trade magazine, originally published weekly from July 1942 to November 1996. Ten years after its dissolution, it was revived and continues as ''Cashbox Magazine'', an online ...

'' said that it is a "great tune...with lyrics pouring forth in profusion and with Bob's voice in excellent shape." Jon Landau in ''

'' praised Dylan's lyrics and delivery of the song, but was unimpressed by the accompanying musicians and the production of the album, while Jonathan Cott, in the same issue of the magazine, called the track "brilliant and haunted." Cott likened the effect of the album's lyrics to those of the Italian 13th century poem referred to in the song, quoting from the song: Some commentators have taken the reference in "Tangled Up in Blue" to the "Italian poet/From the thirteenth century" as a reference to

Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...

. Matthew Collins of Harvard, noting that Dylan may not have been precise with dates, argues that there are similarities between elements of the lyrics of "Tangled up in Blue" and the fifth

canto The canto () is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long poetry. Etymology and equivalent terms The word ''canto'' is derived from the Italian word for "song" or "singing", which comes from the Latin ''cantus'', "song", from the ...

of Dante's 14th Century''

Inferno Inferno may refer to: * Hell, an afterlife place of suffering * Conflagration, a large uncontrolled fire Film * ''L'Inferno'', a 1911 Italian film * Inferno (1953 film), ''Inferno'' (1953 film), a film noir by Roy Ward Baker * Inferno (1973 fi ...

'', but finds it unlikely that Dylan will ever confirm who the reference in the song is to. Hampton, however, believes that the reference is more likely to

Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited w ...

. Both Collins and Hampton note that in a 1978 interview, in reference to "Tangled Up in Blue", Dylan was asked who the poet was and replied "

Plutarch Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''P ...

. Is that his name?" Don Stanley in ''

The Vancouver Sun The ''Vancouver Sun'', also known as the ''Sun'', is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The newspaper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network. Published si ...

'' said that the song "succeeds on the strength of its metaphors." An opposing view was expressed by Al Rudis, in ''

The Pittsburgh Press ''The Pittsburgh Press'' (formerly ''The Pittsburg Press'' and originally ''The Evening Penny Press'') was a major afternoon daily newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1884 to 1992. At one time, the ''Press'' was the second larg ...

'', who was unimpressed by the song's lyrics, calling the track "a long lurching song ut withno build-up of cumulative power" and stating that it contains "seemingly meaningless images." Neil McCormick remarked in 2003 that the song is "A truly extraordinary epic of the personal, an unreliable narrative carved out of shifting memories like a five-and-a-half-minute musical

Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...

." ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'' has described the song as "The most dazzling lyric ever written, an abstract narrative of relationships told in an amorphous blend of first and third person, rolling past, present and future together, spilling out in tripping cadences and audacious internal rhymes, ripe with sharply turned images and observations and filled with a painfully desperate longing." Jim Beviglia ranks "Tangled Up in Blue" 14th in his 2013 assessment of the 100 best Dylan songs, saying that "this masterful song doesn't skimp on the pain." In a 2020 article for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'',

Alexis Petridis Alexis Petridis ( el, Αλέξης Πετρίδης; born 13 September 1971) is a British journalist, head rock and pop critic for the UK newspaper ''The Guardian'', as well as a regular contributor to the magazine '' GQ''. In addition to his mus ...

ranked it the twelfth-greatest of Dylan's songs. The track was ranked 3rd on ''Rolling Stone'' 2016 ranking of the 100 greatest Dylan songs, with the staff describing it as "where emotional truths meet the everlasting comfort of the American folk song." ''

'' ranked it No. 68 on their 2011 list of the

, and re-ranked it at No. 67 in 2021. A 2021 ''Guardian'' article included it on a list of "80 Bob Dylan songs everyone should know".

Live performances

Dylan has performed the song live 1,685 times up to August 2018. The first was on 13 November 1975 at Veterans Memorial Coliseum,

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

. The most recent live performance as of October 2020 was on 28 August 2018 at

Horncastle Arena Christchurch Arena is an indoor arena in Christchurch, New Zealand. It is located in the suburb of Addington. It has gone through a series of name changes, the most recent of which prior to its current name having been Horncastle Arena. D ...

, Christchurch, New Zealand. Dylan played the song solo on acoustic guitar during the first leg of the

Rolling Thunder Revue The Rolling Thunder Revue was a 1975–1976 concert tour by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan with numerous musicians and collaborators. The purpose of the tour was to allow Dylan, who had now become a major recording artist and concert perfor ...

tour in 1975, a performance of which is featured in Dylan's 1978 film ''

Renaldo and Clara ''Renaldo and Clara'' is a 1978 American film directed by Bob Dylan and starring Bob Dylan, Sara Dylan and Joan Baez. Written by Dylan and Sam Shepard, the film incorporates three distinct film genres: concert footage, documentary interviews, and ...

'' and which later became the song's official music video. On the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue, in 1976, the song was performed with a full band in what

Clinton Heylin Clinton Heylin (born 8 April 1960) is an English author who has written extensively about popular music and the work of Bob Dylan. Education Heylin attended Manchester Grammar School. He read history at Bedford College, University of London, ...

has called a "gear-crunching heavy-metal" arrangement. The 1978 World Tour performances were slower, with a

big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s an ...

. After 1978, the next live performances were in

1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast A ...

, again solo on acoustic guitar but this time with radically reworked lyrics. Versions performed after 1984 have been closer to the original.

Credits and personnel

Credits for the ''Blood on the Tracks'' and single release, adapted from the ''Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track'' book. Musicians *

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...

* Kevin Odegardguitar * Chris Weberguitar * Gregg Inhofer

keyboards Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

* Bill Berg

Technical * David Zimmerman producer (uncredited) * Paul Martinson

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

Covers and references

The song has been covered by various artists, including

Barb Jungr Barb Jungr (born 9 May 1954) is an English singer, songwriter and theatre writer, who has recorded versions of songs by Bob Dylan, Sting, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen. Career Barb Jungr was born in Rochdale, Lancashire ...

Jerry Garcia Jerome John Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995) was an American musician best known for being the principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and a vocalist with the rock band Grateful Dead, which he co-founded and which came to prominence ...

Half Japanese Half Japanese is an American art punk band formed by brothers Jad and David Fair around 1975, sometime after the family's relocation to Uniontown, Maryland. Their original instrumentation included a small drum set, which they took turns playi ...

Robyn Hitchcock Robyn Rowan Hitchcock (born 3 March 1953) is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. While primarily a vocalist and guitarist, he also plays harmonica, piano, and bass guitar. After leading the Soft Boys in the late 1970s and releasing the ...

, the

Indigo Girls Indigo Girls are an American folk rock music duo from Atlanta, Georgia, United States, consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. The two met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia, part o ...

Kim Larsen Kim Mellius Flyvholm Larsen (23 October 1945 – 30 September 2018) was a Danish rock and pop musician. He was a major selling Scandinavian act with over 5 million albums sold. Career Kim Larsen was born in Copenhagen. Inspired by The Bea ...

T-Bone Burnett Joseph Henry "T Bone" Burnett III (born January 14, 1948) is an American record producer, guitarist and songwriter. He rose to fame as a guitarist in Bob Dylan's band during the 1970s. He has received multiple Grammy awards for his work in film ...

Great White Great White is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1977. The band peaked with several albums during the mid-to-late 1980s, including the platinum-selling records '' Once Bitten'' (1987) and '' ...Twice Shy'' (1989), and those albums ...

Joan Baez Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...

Ani Difranco Angela Maria "Ani" DiFranco (; born September 23, 1970) is an American-Canadian singer-songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums. DiFranco's music has been classified as folk rock and alternative rock, although it has additional influe ...

KT Tunstall Kate Victoria "KT" Tunstall (born 23 June 1975) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician. She first gained attention with a 2004 live solo performance of her song " Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" on '' Later... with Jools Holland''. Th ...

The Whitlams The Whitlams are an Australian indie rock band formed in late 1992. The original line-up was Tim Freedman on keyboards and lead vocals, Andy Lewis on double bass and Stevie Plunder on guitar and lead vocals. Other than mainstay Freedman, the l ...

, and

The String Cheese Incident The String Cheese Incident (SCI) is an American jam band from Crested Butte and Telluride, Colorado, formed in 1993. The band is composed of Michael Kang (acoustic/electric mandolin, electric guitar, and violin), Michael Travis (drums and percus ...

. Mary Lee's Corvette covered the entire ''Blood on The Tracks'' album in 2002, including "Tangled Up in Blue". According to

Hootie & the Blowfish Hootie & the Blowfish are an American soft rock band that were formed in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1986. The band's lineup for most of its existence has been the quartet of Darius Rucker, Mark Bryan, Dean Felber, and Jim Sonefeld. The band w ...

vocalist

Darius Rucker Darius Carlos Rucker (born May 13, 1966) is an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. He first gained fame as the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of rock band Hootie & the Blowfish, which he founded in 1986 at the University of South Ca ...

, their song " Only Wanna Be with You" was written as a tribute to Dylan; it includes the phrase "Tangled Up in Blue". The song is a playable track on '' Rock Band 2'', as the most difficult song in the vocal section, and the final song for the player to complete in the "Impossible Vocal Challenge". "Tangled Up in Blue" is also published as one of two poems by Dylan in ''The Seagull Book of Poems.'' Dylan reworked the lyrics again for an artwork, consisting of handwritten lyrics and a sketch of an abandoned car, displayed at the

Halcyon Gallery Halcyon Gallery is an art gallery in London. Founded in 1982 in Birmingham, it displays work from established and emerging contemporary artists, particularly impressionism and pop art. Location The gallery is located on New Bond Street in Mayfa ...

's ''Mondo Scripto'' exhibition in 2018.

Charts (single)

Official album releases

Notes

References

External links

Lyrics
at Bob Dylan's official website {{DEFAULTSORT:Tangled Up in Blue 1975 singles 1975 songs Bob Dylan songs Columbia Records singles Songs written by Bob Dylan