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

Two iconic albums came out on January 20^th:  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 a few tracks that you may have heard of like “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” “I Saw Her Standing There and “All My Loving.”  (Yes…we’re being sarcastic.)

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 Bob 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.

The press were mixed at best by Dylan’s predominantly acoustic album, which many speculate is largely about his marriage to wife, Sara, falling apart, even though the legendary singer-songwriter 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,” and simply having these tracks is more important than any back story.

Erica Banas is a rock/classic rock reporter. The first man she ever loved was Jack Daniel.  True story.