A Simple Twist of Fate

"In 1974 Bob Dylan wrote, recorded, reconsidered, and then re-recorded one of the best-selling studio albums of his entire career. It was called Blood on the Tracks, and to this day few who hear it can avoid being transformed by its emotional power. Often referred to as "the greatest break-up album of all time," Blood on the Tracks was written as Dylan's own twelve-year marriage began to unravel. Songs like "Tangled Up in Blue," "Idiot Wind," and "Shelter from the Storm" have become templates for multidimensional adult songs of love, longing, and loss.". "Yet the story behind the creation of this album has never been fully told; even the credits on the present-day album sleeve are inaccurate. Dylan recorded the album twice - once in New York City, and again at the eleventh hour in Minneapolis with a rag-tag gang of local musicians, quickly rewriting many of the songs in the process. A Simple Twist of Fate is the story of one man's creative renaissance. With the help of a mysterious painting teacher who was rumored to be the son of Sholem Aleichem, Dylan emerged from a creatively fallow period in which he, as he put if, "had to learn to do consciously what I used to do unconsciously."". "For a Simple Twist of Fate, acclaimed music journalist Andy Gill and musician Kevin Odegard, who played guitar on the Minneapolis sessions, have drawn upon first-hand information and interviews with the musicians and producers, with industry insiders, and with Dylan's friends, associates, and relatives. What results is a unique and utterly engaging chronicle of how one musician channeled his personal pain and confusion into great art."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.