Our February 2025 book-of-the-month is Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue by Jochen Markhorst. Our meeting host is Book Club Member Brian Walsh. Brian also serves as one of the Bob Dylan Book Club Advisors (with Christopher Vanni and Roberta Rakove—if you are interested in helping as an advisor, let me know (use the “Email Us!” button in the top banner)). We chose this book because 2025 is the 50th anniversary year of this album—Blood on the Tracks was released on January 20, 1975. The selection also connects to our December 2024 book selection, Bob Dylan in Minnesota, owing to the decision by Dylan to rerecord 5 of the album’s 10 tracks in Minnesota (see an overview HERE). Our February meeting is a good excuse to review The Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks, released on November 2, 2018 (there is a one disk and a six disk edition)—see Wikipedia for track listings and other notes. .
There is a second reason that our February 2025 book selection is of note: the author Jochen Markhorst has become a prolific Dylan author, with, by my count 18 books, each one a deep dive and mediation on an album or a song. Craig Danuloff of Dylan.FM has said that Markhorst’s books are like having a “recorded tour guide” at an art museum.
Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue. (2020)
Blonde on Blonde: Bob Dylan’s Mercurial Masterpiece. (2020)
Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s Hused-up Classic from 1978. (2020)
Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s Poetic Letter from 1965. (2020)
Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967. (2020)
Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s Midlife Masterpiece. (2020)
Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. (2021)
John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan Meets Kafka in Nashville. (2020)
Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan Lookin’ for the Fuse. (2021)
Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s Unpolished Gem from 1978. (2021)
Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2nd Big Bang. (2021)
Time Out of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master. (2022)
Crossing the Rubicon: Dylan’s Latter Day Classic. (2022)
Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s Other Type of Music. (2023)
I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip. (2023)
Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways – Side B. (2023)
Bob Dylan’s 1971.
Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charlie Patton)
AND NOW A THIRD REASON TO ATTEND OUR FEBRUARY MEETING: Markhorst has posted many essays to the UNTOLD DYLAN site, so this is your excuse to explore what Untold Dylan is up to. Click HERE for Tony Attwood’s introduction to that project.
—Peter White, February 2025
From our author: “Jochen Markhorst (1964) writes on Dylan songs. He grew up in Arnhem, The Netherlands and in Hanover, Germany, with Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde as soundtrack. Jochen bought Blood On The Tracks and Street Legal from his pocket money, studied German language at Utrecht University, translated Russian at the Military Intelligence Service, teaches language training courses at companies and lessons in schools, translates German literature, Dutch websites and English subtitles and always plays the music of Dylan in the background.
Markhorst, however, is not one of the hardliners who honour the rather narrow-minded motto Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan – Jimi Hendrix is certainly not the only one who can brush up a Dylan song. He defends this controversial opinion, among other things, in his articles for Untold Dylan (bob-dylan.org.uk) and in his posts “en Bob Dylan In Nederland” (bobdylaninnederland.blogspot.com/) and, obviously, in his fifteen (Dutch, English and German) books on Dylan songs.
Jochen has been living in Utrecht for 40 years now, is still married to the same great, attractive woman and has two sons who have left home by now, but fortunately still study, work and live in Utrecht.”
Book Club member Jesse Shanks helped to lead the discussion of the song Up to Me. His excellent essay on that song is liked HERE.
For the story of the Blood on the Tracks album cover, see Ray Padgett’s interview of the photographer Paul Till HERE.
Our discussion facilitator, Brian Walsh writes: It's alright Ma...I'm only buying another Dylan book! I have been listening to Dylan since I was a teen. As I get older the Dylan world continues to open up further. It seems endless. My Dylan explorations started with his music from early 60s, then jumped to the late 90s and 2000s, then black to the 70s, and early 80s. RARW stopped me in tracks and I’ve been listening to all the podcasts and bootlegs ever since.