After spearheading folk’s popularity in the early 1960s, he turned his back on the genre by branching out and pursuing his earlier ambition of leading a rock ‘n’ roll band. Wherever the sonic wind blew it, the result was delivered with authenticity and proved that no matter the sonic form, people deeply craved Dylan’s artistic perspective.

A point famously summed up by Joni Mitchell, who once said: “There came a time when I heard a Dylan song called ‘Positively 4th Street’ and I thought ‘oh my God, you can write about n ‘anything in the songs’. It was like a revelation for me. Despite the poppier canvas Dylan painted this song on, his sincerity still took center stage, eliminating false preconceptions that great art can only exist with a more delicate sound.

In the early 1970s, as Mitchell sculpted his sound from the On the hillside of Laurel Canyon, Still appreciating the work of a prolific Dylan, he was back on the opposite coast, reciprocating Mitchell’s admiration.

In 1975, Dylan released his 15th studio album, Blood on the tracks, which opened with “Tangled Up In Blue”. A record that evokes love won and lost, it combined the folk sensibilities of the early ’60s, Dylan glowing in the haze of an American soundscape. Bolstered by more elaborate production that gave the record a fuller rhythmic feel, the delicacy of the song’s context is propelled forward by its performance and spits in the face of post-breakup vulnerability.

While blue is a commonly coined term in lyricism and provides an ocean of imagery into which to dive to explore feelings of despondency and abandonment, the rumor mill circulating through much of his lyrics indicates a more unusual influence for someone like Dylan. Four years earlier, Mitchell had released his seminal file Blue, which explored the conflict of his relationships with fellow musicians Graham Nash and James Taylor.

A folk songwriting powerhouse herself, Mitchell’s record cleverly depicts the conflict between romantic responsibility and independence with such nuance that it still resonates with such a deep sense of personhood today. His emotions are laid bare on a delicate bed of folk production; it is a masterclass record and is widely considered his opus. So, four years later, when pirate circulations of Dylan’s first recordings Blood on the tracks circulated, it appeared that Mitchell’s record had profoundly influenced him.

Addressing the New York Times in 2018, Mitchell said: “Joel Bernstein gave me a tape of it, and it was really good, it was really good. But people were like, “Oh, it’s like a Joni Mitchell album,” so he went and recut it with his brother in Minnesota. They massacred everything. They trampled him everywhere. But originally, the writing was different, more vulnerable and the orchestration subtle. And one night I had a party here – and Bob ruined it. And the bootleg of this first Blood on the tracks was playing. They were in the garden and someone said Bob wanted to see me. And the bootleg was still playing and I said, ‘Why didn’t you release that one?’ And he said, “Someone stole the tape.” Which wasn’t true. He chickened out.

Although Dylan’s unwavering sense of artistic resilience may have kept him from admitting his influence, he was quick to acknowledge Mitchell’s work in a 1978 interview with NME: “Joni Mitchell released an album called Blue,” he continued. “And it affected me. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It just stuck in my head.

Mitchell, of course, did not trademark “blue” as a means of artistic imagery. But his album has since been inextricably linked to the word for its profound approach to the human condition, which not only affected fans around the world but Dylan himself. And yet, despite its influence, there is no doubt that Dylan’s track has found a new blue pool to swim in and has achieved levels of narrative quality appropriate to Dylan’s on the track.

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