, live recordings from 1979 to 1981 commonly known as Dylan’s Gospel period, albeit without agreeing with the Christian Right political views and prophetic interpretation that he adopted at this time.
This installment of
The Bootleg Series has received primarily positive reviews mainly due to the quality of the band Dylan assembled at this time. However, those
reviews almost exclusively repeat the lazy stereotype that Dylan’s “Christian trilogy” comprises three albums –
Slow Train Coming,
Saved and
Shot of Love – and that ‘by the end of 1981 the Gospel era was over: Dylan's next album, 1983's
Infidels … included no overtly religious material,’ being secular and political.
This is a stereotype for several reasons. First, the album that preceded
Slow Train Coming and which Dylan was touring when his conversion began,
Street Legal, features much Christian imagery from 'Changing of the Guards', which describes a conversion (the changing of the Guards) that could be individual or corporate, to 'Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)', where the central character experiences a new day after leaving town with Marcel and St. John, strong men belittled by doubt, while fighting with the enemy within and following a pathway that leads to the stars.
Next,
Infidels includes much overtly religious material. In the political songs on
Infidels, for example, there is a strong degree of continuity with lines from 'Slow Train'. ‘Union Sundown’ essentially expands on the Trumpean argument found in the lines: ‘All that foreign oil controlling American soil / Look around you, it’s just bound to make you embarrassed / Sheiks walkin’ around like kings / Wearing fancy jewels and nose rings / Deciding America’s future from Amsterdam and Paris.’ ‘Man of Peace’ is essentially an explication of the line ‘the enemy I see / Wears a cloak of decency.’
The period from
Shot of Love to
Infidels was an exceptional period of songwriting in Dylan's career which it is worth exploring in more depth; although many of the best songs from this period didn't make it onto the released albums. What characterised this period of Dylan's songwriting was that his faith came to inform his imagery/lyrics and was integrated into their subject matter instead of forming the subject matter as occurs in the earlier
Slow Train Coming/
Saved period when his faith was the sole content of the songs. It is a move from preaching back to poetry but this change doesn't mean that his faith is any less sure or apparent in the songs that he writes.
Throughout his career Dylan has written songs that depict the apathy of humanity in the face of the coming apocalypse. From
Slow Train Coming onwards he equates the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is 'comin' up around the bend' and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. Similarly, in ‘The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar’, he sees the apocalypse coming ('Curtain risin' on a new age') but not yet here while the Groom (Christ who awaits his bride, the Church) is still waiting at the altar. In the time that remains he again calls on human beings to arise from our slumber: 'Dead man, dead man / When will you arise? / Cobwebs in your mind / Dust upon your eyes' (‘Dead Man, Dead Man’).
In the light of this thread in Dylan's songs throughout this period, it is consistent to read ‘Jokerman’, from
Infidels as another song in this vein; as a song depicting the apathy of humanity in the face of the apocalypse and one which is shot through with apocalyptic imagery drawn from the Book of Revelation. We are the jokermen who laugh, dance and fly but only in the dark of the night (equated with sin and judgement) afraid to come into the revealing light of the Sun/Son.
‘Jokerman’, though, is a greater song that any of those mentioned previously because its depiction of humanity is more nuanced. There is much that is negative: we are born with a snake in both our fists; we rush in where angels fear to tread; our future is full of dread; we are doing no more than keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within; we are going to Sodom and Gomorrah only knowing the law of the jungle (the law of revenge from the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy - 'an eye for an eye'). But these negatives are not the whole story as we also experience freedom, dance to the nightingale tune, fly high, walk on the clouds, and are a friend to the martyr. We have an inherent dignity and beauty to which only the greatest of artists such as Michelangelo can do justice. In 'Jokerman', Dylan captures well the Biblical portrait of humanity as made in the image of God but marred by our rejection of God with our potential for beauty and compassion perverted into a selfish search for self-aggrandisement.
The final verse comes straight from the Book of Revelation and describes the birth of the AntiChrist who will deceive humanity into following him rather than Christ. The accusation and challenge that Dylan puts to us in the final lines of this final verse is that we know exactly what is happening (after all, it has all been prophesied in the Book of Revelation) but we make no response; we are apathetic in the face of the apocalypse. Our lack of response is what is fatal to us because it is only through repentance and turning to Christ that we will be saved from the coming judgement. These final lines are both an accusation and a challenge because, in line with the prophecy of Revelation, Dylan clearly believes that humanity as a whole will be apathetic and unresponsive but they must also be a challenge because, if there is no possibility that any of us will respond, why write the song at all!
In ‘Sweetheart Like You’, also from
Infidels, we see the possibility of response through a wonderfully contemporary depiction of Christ's incarnation. The song is written from the perspective of a misogynist male employee in an all-male workplace that is literally a hell of a place in which to work. To be in here requires the doing of some evil deed, having your own harem, playing till your lips bleed. There's only one step down from here and that's the ironically named 'land of permanent bliss.'
Into this perverted and prejudiced environment comes a woman, the sweetheart of the song's title. She is a Christ figure; a sinless figure entering into a world of sin and experiencing abuse and betrayal (is 'that first kiss' a Judas kiss?) from those she encounters and to whom she holds out the possibility of a different kind of existence. Dylan makes his equation of the woman with Christ explicit by quoting directly from Jesus: 'They say in your father's house, there's many mansions' (John 14: 2).
The song's narrator is confused and challenged by her appearance. He wants to dismiss her out of hand and back to his stereotypical role for her - 'You know, a woman like you should be at home / That's where you belong / Watching out for someone who loves you true / Who would never do you wrong' - but he can't simply dismiss her as she is really there in front of him and so he begins to wonder, 'What's a sweetheart like you doin' in a dump like this?' All the time he asks that question there is the possibility that he may respond to her presence without abuse or dismissal.
In ‘I and I’ Dylan gives an honest depiction of the difficulties of response (based no doubt on his own inability to keep the moral standards that he seems to have perceived God to have expected of him and which, no doubt, his church at the time expected of him). The central character in this song has taken the untrodden path where the swift don't win the race (Matthew 7: 13 & 14 - 'Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.'). He has looked into justice's beautiful face and yet as we meet him we discover that he has just slept with a strange woman (i.e. he has had sex outside of marriage).
In creation, Dylan sings, we neither honour nor forgive. Instead we take; our nature is the survival of the fittest. When we encounter God, our sinful, selfish human nature encounters the demand for pure perfection - "no man sees my face and lives." 'I and I' is about the difficulty of living between these two poles; of having started out on the untrodden path but then having slipped back. The song is an evocation of the guilt that the protagonist feels; a guilt that forces him to leave the woman, to go out for a walk into the narrow lanes, pushing himself along the darkest part of the road to get himself back on track and then hearing the accepting, forgiving words of Christ in his heart, 'I made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot.'
‘I and I’ is again set in the context of the apocalypse: 'the world could come to an end tonight.' The protagonist is responding in the face of the apocalypse. Even though he has sinned he is leaving that sin behind, pushing himself along the road and listening to Christ in his heart. Another song in which the protangonist becomes aware of the coming apocalypse while being in the wrong place is ‘Tight Connection To My Heart’ (originally recorded during the
Infidels sessions as ‘Someone's Got A Hold Of My Heart’). Here the protagonist grabs his coat because feels the breath of the storm that is the apocalypse. He is in the wrong place with the wrong person having valued the wrong things (lulled to sleep in a town without pity where the water runs deep, it's all been a charade, a big joke that he'll remember to forget) and now, when it may be too late, he is searching for his true love (his 'first love' - see Revelation 2: 4). His issue has been that he could not commit: 'Never could learn to drink that blood / And to call it wine / Never could learn to hold you, love / And to call you mine.' Like the foolish virgins, he may be left outside in the cold when the bridegroom arrives because he was not faithful to his true love at the moment of the second coming (Matthew 25: 1 - 13).
It is not possible to understand these songs without understanding the biblical material on which they draw. Without this, as is the case in much contemporary cultural comment, the work of art is actively misunderstood. This was the case with reviews of
Infidels at the time which used ‘Sweetheart Like You’ as an example of Dylan's supposed misogyny. So these reviewers were using a song that actually critiques and undercuts misogyny as an example of misogyny itself and this fundamental misunderstanding was the result of a failure to recognise and understand biblical references and imagery.
Finally, gospel songs continue to feature frequently on subsequent Dylan albums (e.g. ‘They Killed Him’ and ‘Precious Memories’ on
Knocked Out Loaded or ‘Death Is Not The End’ and ‘Rank Strangers to Me’ on
Down in the Groove) in addition to many of the later classic albums such as
Oh Mercy,
Time Out of Mind and
Tempest being Gospel albums in essence, both in style and content. The argument that Dylan leaves Gospel music and religious content behind with
Shot of Love is, therefore, fallacious.
What does this mean for Dylanologists? Firstly, that many critics fail to recognise and understand biblical references and imagery in both pre-Gospel era Dylan and post. Second, that Dylan recorded, at least, a quartet of Gospel albums, rather than a Trilogy. Third, that the questions and challenges raised by Dylan in his explicitly Gospel period remain relevant throughout his subsequent career and, in the case of
his preoccupation with the Apocalypse, throughout his entire career.
Read my co-authored book
The Secret Chord for more on this aspect of Dylan’s songwriting.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
