The classic rock band Bob Dylan believed belonged to hell: “Way down to the pit!”
Bob Dylan‘s career can be compartmentalised into a series of defining moments which spawned eras. While each of these is significant, none is more iconic than when Dylan turned his back on his acoustic roots by going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
The famous performance at the festival brought the first chapter of his career to a close. In his mind, Dylan no longer wanted to be the kid who arrived in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s from Minnesota with a dream and a mysterious newly adopted musical alias. However, like all of the greats, Dylan continued to embrace evolution both in a musical and spiritual sense. His love affair with rock ‘n’ roll didn’t last forever, though, as other factors gained priority in his life, and by the end of the next decade, it was something of a source of hatred for the singer-songwriter.
In the late 1970s, Dylan’s priorities monumentally shifted as he became a born-again Christian. Before this moment, Dylan was Jewish and grew up surrounded by the faith in both a cultural and religious setting. However, his values changed, and the singer-songwriter’s new perspective on life famously manifested itself within his music.
Like most personal aspects of his existence, Dylan announced his awakening to Christianity through his music with Slow Train Coming in 1979. The two years that followed the LP are the most beguiling of his career, albeit not from an artistic perspective. His religious experience began in 1978 after a fan threw a cross onto the stage in San Diego, which Dylan placed in his pocket. After the next show, he returned to his hotel room in Tuscon and claimed to have had a vision of Christ.
“Jesus did appear to me as King of Kings, and Lord of Lords,” he later claimed. “There was a presence in the room that couldn’t have been anybody but Jesus … Jesus put his hand on me. It was a physical thing. I felt it. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble. The glory of the Lord knocked me down and picked me up.”
This incident made Dylan reevaluate his life, and while on tour, he adapted songs to fit his newfound faith. Notably, the old favourite, ‘Tangled Up In Blue’, was changed to include verses from the Bible. Just like when he went electric for the first time in 1965, his legion of fans were baffled. Upon leaving the venue after seeing him during this period, many claim to have felt utter bewilderment at his preaching. Furthermore, they weren’t afraid to let the singer-songwriter know their feelings of discontent during shows.
For example, when he stopped by Tempe, Arizona, on November 29th, 1979. In the middle of the performance, Dylan got into a heated argument with an audience member who demanded “rock ‘n’ roll!” which allegedly elicited the following remark: “If you want rock ‘n’ roll, you go down and rock ‘n’ roll. You can go and see Kiss, and you can rock ‘n’ roll all the way down to the pit!”
Before his religious awakening, which made him believe they belonged in hell, Dylan was a fan of Kiss and had even watched the heavy rock group perform. Furthermore, according to Kiss singer Gene Simmons, Dylan was inspired to wear white make-up on his Rolling Thunder Revue tour because of his band.
Dylan was in attendance during a Kiss show in Queens because his violinist Scarlet Rivera, who was accompanying him on tour, was in a relationship with Simmons. That evening, he was transfixed by their make-up, which is why he started replicating the aesthetic element of their stage act.
However, during his religious experience, Dylan felt Kiss embodied everything wrong with music and poisoned the soul of their devoted fanbase. In comparison, he aimed to achieve a more profound emotion within his music and plotted for his fans to see the light rather than the darkness.
By 1981, Dylan’s intense adoption of Christianity and hard feelings towards Kiss were over. Despite his on-stage rant in Arizona, Kiss didn’t take the remarks personally, and Simmons even invited Dylan to collaborate with him in the 1990s, which he duly accepted. Together, they made ‘Waiting For The Morning Light’, which was eventually released years later.
In those two years of his born-again period, Dylan’s outlook on the world changed entirely, and religion became a burning obsession, fuelling his perspective on all things. Furthermore, his later collaboration with Simmons shows Dylan didn’t hate Kiss deep down in his heart, but his Christianity temporarily clouded his opinion of the group.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.