McCartney Times

Two iconic albums came out on January 20:  Meet The Beatles! in 1964 and Bob Dylan’s 1975 masterpiece Blood On The Tracks.

For The Beatles, Meet The Beatles! was their second album to land stateside but their first release under Capitol Records.  It featured the classics “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” “I Saw Her Standing There and “All My Loving.”

Meet The Beatles! has sold over five million copies to date.  As for what happened next for those four lads from Liverpool, well…if you don’t know, then clearly you have been living under a rock for the past five decades.

Eleven years after America met The Beatles, they stared down Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks, which is now one of Dylan’s most celebrated albums, but upon its release, that wasn’t the case.

Critical response to Dylan’s predominantly acoustic albumfrom Rolling Stone was mixed.  Many believe the album is largely about his marriage to wife, Sara, falling apart, even though the Dylan said in his 2004 memoir Chronicles, Vol. 1 that the album was inspired by Anton Chekhov’s short stories.

Regardless of your interpretation, Blood On The Tracks, more importantly, gave us “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” “Simple Twist of Fate” and “Tangled Up In Blue,” proving that sometimes, simply having certain songs is more important than any back story.

Erica Banas is rock/classic rock news blogger that loves the smell of old vinyl in the morning.

Source: January 20: America “Meets The Beatles,” Dylan Gets “Tangled Up In Blue”