u/Illumination-Round

No, I'm not linking to the piece, though you can obviously Google it and find it.

Anyways, the guy says that the song "ruins the flow of the entire Blood on the Tracks album, and it would've been better if a song like 'Call Letter Blues' would've been on there instead, keeping the theme intact."

Furthermore, he even says he doesn't understand the lyrics of "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts," and says "does ANYONE? How do all those disparate elements and people actually come together?"

It's not that hard to figure out. The way Bob wrote it, it lends itself in a way that you'd think a Coen Brothers or Wes Anderson movie would be filmed, especially in cutting back and forth between these different people and events, and then seeing how it all finally joins together.

Furthermore, Bob clearly didn't want the album to be too nakedly autobiographical, hence why he did the Minneapolis rerecordings, and the like. (Of course, Bob isn't fooling anybody by claiming the songs have NOTHING to do with his life at all, but the fact that there's a lot more artistic rendering and changing things makes it work better). Plus, while the themes about the breakdown of a relationship and marriage are incredibly powerful, they can also be depressing.

"Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" gives a welcome reprieve from all that, especially at the Sound 80 tempo and without that one verse, and delivers a pure character piece, stuffed with creativity. It definitely is up there among the best songs he ever wrote.

The myth of Layne's final interview, supposedly months before his death, is obviously one that will never truly go away. But though it's doubted, has it ever been conclusively proven as fake?

If it is a fake, it's certainly a very detailed and convincing one with regards to how junkies operate. If the interview is fabricated, Rubio must've heard about or seen or knew junkies living the way she ascribes to Layne. After all, all she had to do was transplant all of that and project onto Layne.

When you've been in a debilitating addiction like heroin for many years, your body definitely starts failing the way the quote ascribed to Layne describes. And when you're so lost down that path, you shut out as many people as you can from the outside world, and Layne was spending most of the time holed up in his condo.

I know people, especially from his family, say Layne was appearing positive in spite of his health, but I think that was a performance for their sake. When he would do things like hold his newborn nephew, he was putting on act to make it seem like he still had lots of living planned out. In truth, ever since Demri died and after the Music Box/The Faculty recordings, Layne just completely retreated and probably didn't see any reason to hang around anymore.

He wasn't actively deciding to die, but he sure as hell wasn't deciding to live. He probably looked at it as, "Whatever is meant to happen will happen. If I'm going to die, so be it." He certainly wasn't reaching out to the active AIC members at all, especially Jerry, who was still fighting his own demons, and wasn't fully clean yet by the time Degradation Trip came out.

Of course, that wouldn't change the sleazy nature of Rubio's way to promote her book, and that it was far easier to get away with that shit back then, because Googling things to determine how true something was was something still in its infancy, so it couldn't be prevented from coming out.

"The Invisible Man" is a song where there's a lot to like about both the final mix and demo versions.

I'd especially like if there was a mix that combined Roger's live drums from the early version (and the second guitar solo from that version as well) with the vocals, bass and guitar from the final mix.

With the news of the ReLoad box set coming out, and with Hardwired... and 72 Seasons being too recent for that treatment, there are only four potential box sets left to be released at this point: sets for Garage Inc., S&M (possibly), St. Anger and Death Magnetic.

What are the odds that these will happen, and what would they be like?