‘Disease of Conceit’: Is this Bob Dylan song about televangelist corruption?
Often creating music described as transcendental, it makes sense that Bob Dylan strongly connects to religion. From having Jewish heritage to his often-maligned period of contemporary gospel music and even the strange debate claiming he did a deal with the devil, Dylan, like the late Leonard Cohen, is one of the most inherently religious artists in popular music.
When speaking to the American TV Guide in 1976, he gave one of his most compelling interviews to date when he discussed his interest in all religions. At one point, he said: “I can see God in a daisy. I can see God at night in the wind and rain. I see Creation just about everywhere. The highest form of song is prayer. King David’s, Solomon’s, the wailing of a coyote, the rumble of the earth. It must be wonderful to be God. There’s so much going on out there that you can’t get to it all. It would take longer than forever.”
Steve Soles, a born-again Christian who played the guitar for Dylan on the 1976 Rolling Thunder Revue, often debated faith with the Duluth troubadour on the road, who at this point was yet to turn to God. He recalled to The Guardian that only one maxim registered with Dylan at the time: “You can’t place your faith in man. I kept telling him that I was so glad that I didn’t have to place my faith in man any longer.”
After Dylan turned to God not long after the Revue, it seems as if he too had lost some faith in man, with profoundly religious and bleak themes then appearing on his 1989 album Oh Mercy. One of the highlights of the record is the song ‘Disease of Conceit’, which ex-Velvet Underground leader Lou Reed would select as one of his favourite songs of 1989 later that year. An atmospheric, piano-driven number, it opens with the line: “There’s a whole lot of people suffering tonight from the disease of conceit/ Whole lot of people struggling tonight from the disease of conceit”.
So what is the “conceit” that Dylan mentions across the song? It has long been suggested that it refers to the many televangelist scandals of the day, with the most prominent being that of Marvin Gorman in 1986, Jim Bakker in 1987 and most famously of all, Jimmy Swaggart’s in 1988. All were popular TV preachers discovered to have morally transgressed on the sexual front, making them hypocrites on an egregious scale.
With Dylan discussing the effect the conceit has on the soul, body, mind, and the senses, as well as the self-belief that you are too good to die, it checks out that the song could be referencing the likes of Swaggart. Dylan also gives this claim more credence by mentioning a preacher’s transgressions with a sex worker on the Oh Mercy track ‘The Man with the Black Coat’.
After all, that was what led to Swaggart’s very public downfall. In that song, Dylan sings: “Preacher was talking there’s a sermon he gave/ He said every man’s conscience is vile and depraved/ You cannot depend on it to be your guide/ When it’s you who must keep it satisfied”.
Speaking in his 2004 autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan put all debate to bed when he admitted that the ‘Disease of Conceit’ came together following Swaggart’s collapse. He wrote: “The song rose up until I could read the look in its eyes. In the quiet of the evening, I didn’t have to hunt far for it.”
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.