Quentin Tarantino Called This Bob Dylan Album a ‘Masterpiece’
Quentin Tarantino has made many film masterpieces of his own, and his films are often accompanied by fantastic soundtracks. The Pulp Fiction director often includes classic rock music in his films and publicly expresses his admiration for Bob Dylan. Tarantino does have a favorite of Dylan’s albums, and he believes it is Dylan’s “masterpiece.”
Quentin Tarantino calls ‘Blood on the Tracks’ by Bob Dylan a ‘masterpiece’
Blood on the Tracks is the 15th studio album from Bob Dylan, released in 1975. The album reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and No. 4 on the U.K. charts. While the album initially opened to mixed reviews, it is now regarded as one of his best albums by critics and audiences. One of those fans is Quentin Tarantino, who said it’s his favorite album and is a “masterpiece.”
“This is my favourite album ever. I spent the end of my teenage years and my early twenties listening to old music – rockabilly music, stuff like that,” Tarantino told journalist Michael Bonner. “Then I discovered folk music when I was 25, and that led me to Dylan. He totally blew me away with this. It’s like the great album from the second period, y’know? He did that first run of albums in the Sixties, then he started doing his less troublesome albums – and out of that comes Blood On The Tracks. It’s his masterpiece.”
Tarantino’s favorite song comes from the same album
“Tangled Up in Blue” is the opening track from Blood on the Tracks and was released as a single in 1975. The track reached No. 31 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. Many critics called it one of Dylan’s most powerful songs due to its lyrics and his vocal performance. Quentin Tarantino delivers the same acclaim for this Bob Dylan song and says it’s his “all-time favorite song.”
“I know this is off Blood On The Tracks, but it’s my all-time favorite song. It’s one of those songs where the lyrics are ambiguous you can actually write the song yourself. That’s a lot of fun – it’s like Dylan fooling around with the listener, playing on the way he or she interprets the lyrics. “It’s very hard to take individual songs off Blood On the Tracks, because it works so well as an entire album. I used to think ‘If You See Her, Say Hello’ was a more powerful song than ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ but, over the years I’ve kinda realized ‘Tangled…’ has the edge, just for the fun you can have with it.”
Tarantino sent Dylan a copy of the ‘Death Proof’ script
Quentin Tarantino is a massive fan of Bob Dylan, and he once gave the “Like a Rolling Stone” singer an early preview for one of his scripts. 2007’s Death Proof is the sixth film from Tarantino and stars Kurt Russell as a stuntman who murders young women with his car. The film flopped at the box office, but it does have a passionate fanbase. Before the film’s release, Tarantino sent Dylan a copy of the script, believing he would “get a kick” out of it.
“I just thought he’d get a kick out of the dialogue. I’ve always been a big fan of him, and I know him a little bit,” Tarantino said via Far Out. “I just thought he would think the wordplay — the structure of the words in it and the different voices for the dialogue — I just thought he would appreciate it.”
Unfortunately, Dylan never responded to the director, so we may never know what he thought of Tarantino’s violent car-murder movie.
