Dylan’s Gospel Revisited

Trouble No More makes it clear that the years from 1979 through 1981 were not by any means the lost years.

In 1979, Bob Dylan did what a lot of his fans had been hoping he’d do for years and returned to playing full blown, blues-based electric rock and roll, with a few acoustic guitar-based ballads thrown in for good measure. Many of the songs seemed to deal with contemporary issues and a couple almost sounded like protest songs. However this time, there was no great search for what the songs meant or were about. The message couldn’t have been more clear and direct: salvation by believing in Jesus Christ. Dylan fans used to questioning and pondering were left to dwell on one question, why did this happen at this time? Many fans dropped him then and there. Eventually many came back, some never did.

I’d been tipped off this was going to happen several months before Slow Train Coming was released by a singer-songwriter buddy of mine, and I wasn’t that surprised. I’d been expecting it since John Wesley Harding, a feeling that was reinforced when I managed to get a reel-to-reel copy of what would eventually be known as The Basement Tapes at the end of 1968.

When Slow Train Coming came out in August 1979, I bought it immediately and despite having qualms about some of the lyrics, I thought it was one of Dylan’s best albums. Producer Jerry Wexler captured the right sound at the right time and I dug certain cool touches only he would’ve done like the subtle horns on “Precious Angel.”

The drawing on the cover of the workers with a pick axe (signifying a cross) laying down the rails while the train comes up behind reminded me of something you might find on a Folkways Records album cover of labor songs. But what made the album great along with the production and superb musicians like the then new guitar genius Mark Knopfler was Dylan’s singing. It was as intense, passionate and committed as he could get and it really didn’t matter whether I or anyone else disagreed with or had questions about this particular message.

Thirty-eight years later, my feelings about that album haven’t changed one bit. When Dylan sang the lines (on “Precious Angel”) Can they imagine the darkness that will fall from on high/When men will beg God to kill them and they won’t be able to die, it was enough to scare the shit out of you.

That said, there are several lines on the song “Slow Train Coming,” and on other songs like “Change My Way Of Thinking” and “When You Gonna Wake Up” that are downright infuriating, and to be clear there are great lines on all those songs as well. Why Dylan chose to embrace a form of Christianity that seemed to encompass the right-wing born again movement occurring at the time is anyone’s guess.

On Christmas Eve 1968, I was living in New York City, and was visiting one of my closest friends in Philly. At the time, he was a film student and suggested we go see Pasolini’s The Gospel According To Saint Matthew at a repertory theater. Shot in grainy black and white, it is a straightforward depiction of that Gospel with music that included Bach, the African Mass, “The Missa Luba,” spirituals by Odetta and the blues of Blind Willie Johnson. In addition to being a filmmaker, Pasolini was a writer, a poet, an intellectual, gay and a communist. Christ is portrayed as a radical peasant. He’s tough, doesn’t suffer fools and you see the divinity in his eyes when he encounters children or a leper. It’s a powerful film, not at all a Hollywood depiction of Christ. When they roll away the stone at the end, it’s almost enough to make you believe right there.

The point to telling this story is I knew there could be another version of Christ than the one Dylan portrayed, which is mostly about belief without question, hellfire damnation and most of all, apocalypse. On the other hand, Bob Dylan’s been singing about the end of the world pretty much since he started recording.

This still controversial period of Dylan’s career has now been revisited with Trouble No More, The Bootleg Series Volume 13/1979-1981 (Columbia Legacy) a mammoth eight-disc and (finally) one DVD set that includes 101 songs on the audio portion including two complete concerts from 1980 and 1981.Unlike the last Bootleg Series, The Cutting Edge, the producersdidn’t provide every take from every session, instead selecting tracks from concerts, studio outtakes and rehearsals covering a three-year period, making for a more pleasurable and varied listening experience. As usual Dylan fans are already quibbling about the selections. And I have a couple of quibbles myself about a couple of live tracks where there’s lyric flubs. But like any serious Dylan fan, I have other versions I can listen to.

The liner notes are comprised of four articles. The introduction by Ben Rollins goes into what the producers were hoping to accomplish with this set, explaining the sources of the recordings and stressing that they were going for performance above everything else. He also makes it quite clear that in compiling this box, the producers were aware this was and potentially still is controversial. The second set of notes, “Fire In My Bones,” by Amanda Pertrusich deals with the societal and political implications of Dylan’s conversion and the effect it had on his followers.

The track by track by music journalist Rob Bowman delves deep into what Dylan and his musicians are doing musically, but also provides many of the sources of the scriptural lines in the songs. It is the best track by track since John Bauldie’s notes on the very first Bootleg Series.

In the accompanying photo book, Pressing On, Penn Jillette writes about how to be an atheist and a Dylan fan and love these songs regardless of your religious persuasion. Included in the book are typed copies of the lyrics with various changes Dylan made while working on them.

The first two discs are various live performances, the second two are rare and unreleased songs and/or performances. There are songs that no one knew existed as well as alternate takes of songs that never circulated in the underground Dylan bootleg community.

In November 1979, Dylan started touring behind Slow Train Coming opening with a 16-night stand at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater. Backing him was one of the best bands he ever put together. The basic unit of the band would stay together for the next three years. Bassist Tim Drummond and drummer Jim Keltner were generally considered one of the best rhythm sections in rock music. Fred Tackett was a seasoned session player. Spooner Oldham was a legendary Muscle Shoals keyboard player. Also on board were gospel organ player and singer, Terry Young and three backup singers, Regina McCrary, Helena Springs and Mona Lisa Young. It was the most disciplined and on target band Dylan would ever have, which is an almost heretical thing to say for a diehard Dylan and The Band fan like myself.

The controversy that ensued at the Warfield shows made the Newport debacle seem tame. Religious groups including Jews For Jesus were handing out tracts at the theater entrance. The show started with Regina McCrary telling a story about a gospel train, followed by a short set of gospel songs from the backup singers. Dylan would then take the stage, sing all the songs from Slow Train Coming and most of the songs that would appear on his next album, Saved. He did not sing any of his older songs.

As word spread, at later concerts during the Warfield stand, fans would hold up signs that said “Jesus loves your old songs too.” But you have to give him credit. On what was clearly a career killing move, he would not budge.

Writer Paul Williams details all this in his book, Dylan– What Happened? which came out early in 1980. Dylan would often preach between songs, and well, a lot of what he said was way out there, and that’s putting it mildly.

What Trouble No More makes abundantly clear is that three year period featured some of the most amazing concerts of Dylan’s entire career, equal in intensity to the shows of 1966. While (the song) “Slow Train Coming” may have annoying lines, it was one powerhouse in concert and different versions including an early rehearsal version from late in 1978 begin the first four discs.

Not all of Dylan’s songs from this period are what I consider to be gospel music in a strict musical sense. Many of the songs are for lack of a better term typical Bob Dylan songs. But several of the songs such as “Covenant Woman,” “In The Garden,” “Saving Grace” and “What Can I Do For You” show him getting more adventurous in chord progressions as well as being some of his best melodies. Also in the best melodies category is the hymn, “When He Returns.” There are four great versions on the set, a live one from Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1979, that is Dylan on guitar with Spooner Oldham on piano, an incredible outtake from the Slow Train sessions, and one on the Toronto concert. There is another one on the DVD with Dylan on piano that may or not be the same Toronto version (I haven’t compared).

Some songs I consider to be straight gospel, like “Saved,” worked far better in concert than in the studio. Several other gospel songs “Blessed Is The Name Of The Lord Forever,” “I Will Love Him,” “Jesus Is The One” and “City Of Gold,” were only done in concert, and since (apparently) they were never done in the studio, may have been written expressly for that purpose, often serving as energetic rave-ups with the backup singers playing a big part.

It is clear that Dylan was working on several levels musically at this point, and in addition to gospel was writing songs that leaned towards R&B, particularly the soul music of Memphis and Muscle Shoals (which itself came out of gospel), reggae as well as of the hardest rockers of his career. And he had the band that could pull all of it off, sometimes combining all three. “Thief On The Cross” wanders into Rolling Stones territory, and there are two other songs that are also reminiscent of the Stones.

“Yonder Comes Sin,” which was leaked on bootlegs years ago has a guitar part that echoes “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” while the chord progression on the previously unknown “Making A Liar Out Of Me” sounds suspiciously like “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” However, I always considered “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” to be Jagger and Richards writing a Dylan song (something they did more than once), so this brings it full circle. “Making A Liar Out Of Me” was recorded at a tour rehearsal in September 1980, and is one of the reasons the Bootleg Series are important and great. It has all the makings of a great Dylan song, but apparently was abandoned. These lines show that Dylan was starting to move on writing-wise:

So many things so hard to say as you stumble
To take refuge in your offices of shame
As the earth beneath my feet begins to rumble
And your young men die for nothin', not even fame