Dylan Song by Song: "Tangled Up in Blue" Quiz

Answer: Blood on the Tracks

The song was first recorded on Bob Dylan's 15th studio album, "Blood on the Tracks," which was released in 1975 and reached number one on the U.S. Billboard 200. The major single from the album was "Tangled Up in Blue," which spent seven weeks on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 31.

Rolling Stone magazine ranked "Tangled Up in Blue" number 68 on its 2004 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time."

Answer: Joni Mitchell

Ron Rosenbaum makes this claim in his article "The Best Joni Mitchell Song Ever," which was published in Slate on December 14, 2007. He wrote, "Bob Dylan once told me that he'd written 'Tangled up in Blue' . . . after spending a weekend immersed in JM's 'Blue'."

"Blue" is Joni Mitchell's fourth studio album and contains complex and haunting relationship songs such as "The Flight Tonight" and "A Case of You."

Answer: Red

"Early one mornin' the sun was shinin'
I was layin' in bed
Wondrin' if she'd changed at all
If her hair was still red."

While the version of "Tangled Up in Blue" recorded on "Blood on the Tracks" was written in first person, Dylan has sometimes changed to third-person narration when performing the song live. For example, in his July 7, 1984 performance (available on "Real Live - 1984"), Dylan begins by saying "he was laying in bed" rather than "I was lying in bed" and says "he was standing by the side of the road / rain falling on his shoes" instead of "I was standing by the side of the road / rain falling on my shoes."

Answer: Married, soon to be divorced

"She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced.
I helped her out of a jam I guess,
But I used a little too much force."

Versions of the song have appeared on "Real Live" (1984 live), "Biograph" (1985), "The Bootleg Series" (Volumes 1-3, 5, and 14), "Greatest Hits Volume 3" (1994), "The Best of Bob Dylan" (1995), "Dylan" (2007), and "The Rolling Thunder Revue" (1975 live recordings released in 2019).

Answer: Dress

"Her folks they said our lives together
Sure was gonna be rough
They never did like
Mama's homemade dress
Papa's bank book wasn't big enough.
And I was standin' on the side of the road
Rain fallin' on my shoes
Heading out for the east coast
Lord knows I've paid some dues
Gettin' through
Tangled up in blue."

We start in the past but soon jump around in time. In a November 16, 1978 interview with Jonathan Colt in Rolling Stone, Dylan said that there was "no sense of time" in the lyrics: "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."

Answer: Cook

"I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the axe just fell."

The rhyme scheme of this song is ABCB. In his blog "Untold Dylan," Tony Atwood describes "the integration of Dylan's singing mixed with occasional declamation" and concludes, "Never has the effect been more controlled or more effective - because this is what the song is; the story of a collapsing glissando."

Answer: Delacroix

In some live versions of the song, Dylan sings, "where I was lucky to be employed" rather than "was looking for to be employed." The lyrics on the "Real Live" album are quite different here, changing the entire stanza to:

"And he headed down to New Orleans,
where they treated him like a boy.
He nearly went mad in Baton Rouge,
he nearly drowned in Delacroix."

Bob Dylan has said the "Real Live" version is the best version of the song (according to Toby Creswell in his book "1001 Songs").

Answer: A topless place

"She was workin' in a topless place
And I stopped in for a beer
I just kept lookin' at the side of her face
In the spotlight so clear
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?
I muttered somethin' under my breath
She studied the lines on my face
I must admit I felt a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces
Of my shoe."


"Now he finds her again," Tony Atwood writes of these lines on his "Untold Dylan" blog. "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?"

Answer: Italian

In an interview with Craig McGregor at Brisbane Festival Hall in Australia on March 12, 1978, Dylan said the poet in question was "Plutarch. Is that his name?" Plutarch was a first and second century Greek philosopher and writer. Dylan may have meant Petrarch, who was a 14th century Italian poet (having lived in the 1300s).

At a live performance in Jacksonville on December 13, 1978, Dylan sang these lines as follows:

"Then she opened up the Bible
And she started quotin' it to me
Jeremiah, chapters 10 & 20,
Verses 21 & 33."

In a November 23, 1978 show in Oklahoma, he sang it:
"It was either written by Charles Baudelaire
Or some Italian poem from the 13th century."

Answer: Revolution

"Then he started into dealing with slaves," the song continues, "And something inside of him died. / She had to sell everything she owned / and froze up inside."

In an August 3, 2001 article in "The Texas Observer," Rosemary Hutzler argues that these lines are a reference to the French poet Arthur Rimbaud: "When Arthur Rimbaud became a slave trader, and his life clashed with the ideals he had held as a poet, he stopped writing poetry. At least this was an honest way out." Dylan, she writes, "immortalized" Rimbaud's fall in this song: "Poetry and the slave trade represent, for both men, opposite poles of human possibility."

Dylan mentions Rimbaud explicitly in "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," another song on "Blood on the Tracks," when he sings:

"Relationships have all been bad
Mine have been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud."

Answer: Mathematicians

"So now I'm goin' back again
I got to get to her somehow
All the people we used to know
They're an illusion to me now
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenters' wives
Don't know how it all got started
I don't know what they're doin' with their lives."

In some live versions of the song, Dylan sings "doctors' wives" instead of "carpenters' wives."

Hugo award winning author Joan D. Vinge borrowed the title of this song, "Tangled Up in Blue," as the title for her fourth novel in her "Snow Queen" series.

Answer: pipe

According to Rolling Stone magazine, when Dylan introduced this song onstage in 1978, he described it as a song that took him "ten years to live and two years to write." In creating the song, Rolling Stone says, "Dylan takes inspiration from classic country singers. . . in a tale of a drifting heart on the road."

Answer: False

According to the Official Bob Dylan website, Dylan first played the song live on November 13, 1975 and has played it live over 1,680 times since. It is one of his most frequently played songs, with a live performance at least as recently as August 28, 2018.

Answer: Hootie & the Blowfish

"Only Wanna Be With You" was released by Hootie & The Blowfish in July of 1995. Darius Rucker sings lead vocals on the song, which hit number one on the U.S. Mainstream Top 40 Billboard. Rucker sings that he "put on a little Dylan sitting on a fence" and also quotes from Dylan's "Idiot Wind": "I shot a man named Gray, took his wife to Italy / She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me. / I can't help it if I'm lucky."

The song was meant as a tribute, but Dylan's lawyers sued Darius Rucker over this liberal use of his lyrics. According to Billy Dukes in a July 6, 2013 article in "Taste of Country," Rucker said it was doubtful whether Dylan even knew about the lawsuit. Originally, Rucker claims, Dylan's management was aware of the use and had no issues with it, but when the song became a hit, they objected.

Answer: The Indigo Girls

The song was performed on August 24, 1992 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, California. "1200 Curfews" was released in 1995.

"Tangled Up in Blue" has also been covered by the Jerry Garcia Band, Great White, Half Japanese, and The String Cheese Incident, among numerous other musicians.