It was on the 3XY album show late on a Sunday night when I first heard "Idiot Wind" and was instantly glued to the speaker. Couldn't believe how good the song was. Especially since I'd kind of written Dylan off after Blonde on Blonde. It took me a while to buy the album though but when I saw it at the record stall at Burwood Teachers College and read the blurb on the back cover I thought it sounded like a good album by the way the author spoke of the work. When I got it home and started playing it I was just mesmerized. it was so cohesive it was like he wrote one song and just made variations on it. But it worked so well. It was like jumping on a roundabout.
I would take the album over to my girlfriend Leonie's house in Balwyn North and we would listen to it obsessively. Later when I moved to Oakleigh to a share house it was one of those 2am albums we'd sit and listen to after being out to gigs. It would also inform my first attempts at songwriting as I would make use of Dylan's chord progressions.
And the words. So many just hit home. Heartache, anger and loneliness indeed. Easily one of his best albums. It got me back on the Dylan kick searching down the albums I hadn't bought yet from before Blonde on Blonde. A year later he would follow it with another great album in Desire but it lacked the impact of the previous album. We thought Dylan was finished and irrelevant but Blood on The Tracks blew all those thoughts away. He would continue to surprise us for years to come.
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