The one album Bob Dylan never enjoyed making
Bob Dylan is not the kind that should ever be rushed to make a new record.
He had the potential of making true classics every single time he walked into the studio, but if Self Portrait taught his fans anything, it was that he would gladly shoot himself in the foot if it meant getting away from the stress of being a musical god. But even if he could write a timeless tune in the time it takes most of us to fix dinner, Dylan was the first to say that he didn’t enjoy what he was writing.
Then again, it’s hard to take him at his word half the time. Throughout his career, Dylan has almost made it a habit of talking out of both sides of his mouth, and while he may be proud of one of his songs at one moment, he could easily be a bit more reserved when talking about his craft later down the line. Even if he doesn’t have the highest opinion of some of his records, that doesn’t make them any less vital to rock and roll history.
Highway 61 Revisited was a watershed record that blended folk and rock perfectly, and even when Dylan made a turn towards making more downtempo records like Nashville Skyline, there was still a subtle hint of that kid who had first lit a fire in everyone when he first wrote ‘Masters of War’ or ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’. All throughout his time in the spotlight, though, he was always looking for answers, and he seemed to finally find something once he reached the 1980s and turned towards making gospel records.
While his religious period is far from the most popular piece of his career, it’s not like he didn’t have the chops for it. His colleagues like Pete Seeger were known to lead congregations of people when the folk revolution started, so it’s not that hard for someone to take that same mentality and translate it to being about a higher power rather than the pressing issues going on in the world.
But for all of the passion that Dylan had back in the day, he admitted that a record like Slow Train Coming wasn’t exactly the most fun for him to make, saying, “I wrote those songs. I didn’t plan to write them, but I wrote them anyway. I didn’t like writing them, I didn’t want to write them. I didn’t figure … I just didn’t want to write them songs at that period of time. But I found myself writing these songs and after I had a certain amount of them, I thought I didn’t want to sing them.”
At the same time, there’s a certain passion in Dylan’s voice that couldn’t have been replicated had he given the tunes away to another singer. No one might be dissecting the lyrical flourishes in a song like ‘Man Gave Names to All the Animals’, but in a tune like ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’, you can tell that he at least feels like he can find some answers to his problems by strengthening his relationship with God.
And it’s not like the rest of the band isn’t pulling their weight, either. There are plenty of opportunities where a record like this could have turned into a corny praise-and-worship record, but by having someone like Mark Knopfler on guitar, the whole thing sounds like a classic Dylan album that just happens to be talking about religious teachings rather than the corruption in the world.
That was the Dylan of old, and while most people didn’t want to be tricked into hearing a sermon whenever they turned on the stereo, it was better for Dylan to follow his heart than try to rehash his old hits. He was always going to play what felt right to him, and even if they weren’t imaginative tunes of all time, the reason why it works so well is because you can feel that he believes every single word he sings.
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