The track initially was recorded in September 1974, but later re-recorded on 30 December that year at Sound 80 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

A number of alternate versions have been released, including multiple studio out-takes on The Bootleg Series Vol.

Dylan had moved to a farm in Minnesota with his brother, David Zimmerman, and there started to write the songs that were recorded for his album Blood on the Tracks.

[6] Richard F. Thomas, Professor of the Classics at Harvard University, has written that Dylan has been "characteristically vague" on the use of any specific painting techniques emulated while he was writing the words for the songs on Blood On The Tracks.

[8] Dylan first recorded "Tangled Up in Blue" in New York City on 16 September 1974 during the initial Blood on the Tracks sessions at A&R Studios.

[9] Eight takes were recorded in New York from 16 to 19 September, mostly featuring Tony Brown on bass alongside Dylan on guitar and harmonica,[10] and containing some minor variations in lyrics, as well as differences in vocal delivery, and tempo.

[9] These musicians were based locally and had arrived at Zimmerman's invitation, and Dylan had not met them before they started working together on 27 December.

[25] In a 1985 interview with Bill Flanagan, Dylan said that although many people thought that the album Blood on the Tracks was autobiographical, "It didn't pertain to me.

"[26] In his 2004 memoir Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan claimed that Blood on the Tracks was "an entire album based on Chekhov short stories.

[22] Cash Box said that it is a "great tune...with lyrics pouring forth in profusion and with Bob's voice in excellent shape.

"[27] Jon Landau in Rolling Stone praised Dylan's lyrics and delivery of the song, but was unimpressed by the accompanying musicians and the production of the album,[28] while Jonathan Cott, in the same issue of the magazine, called the track "brilliant and haunted."

[24] Both Collins and Hampton note that in a 1978 interview, in reference to "Tangled Up in Blue", Dylan was asked who the poet was and replied "Plutarch.

"[34] Neil McCormick remarked in 2003 that the song is "A truly extraordinary epic of the personal, an unreliable narrative carved out of shifting memories like a five-and-a-half-minute musical Proust.

"[35] The Daily Telegraph has described the song as "The most dazzling lyric ever written, an abstract narrative of relationships told in an amorphous blend of first and third person, rolling past, present and future together, spilling out in tripping cadences and audacious internal rhymes, ripe with sharply turned images and observations and filled with a painfully desperate longing.

[30][45] On the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue, in 1976, the song was performed with a full band in what Clinton Heylin has called a "gear-crunching heavy-metal" arrangement.

[2] Musicians Technical The song has been covered by various artists, including Barb Jungr, Jerry Garcia, Half Japanese, Robyn Hitchcock, the Indigo Girls, Kim Larsen, T-Bone Burnett,[46] Great White, Joan Baez, Ani Difranco, KT Tunstall, The Whitlams,[47] and The String Cheese Incident.

[48] Mary Lee's Corvette covered the entire Blood on The Tracks album in 2002, including "Tangled Up in Blue".