Golden Loom
Bob Dylan / 4:27
Musicians: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica; Emmylou Harris: harmony vocals; Scarlet Rivera: violin; Rob Stoner: bass; Howard Wyeth: drums; Sheena Seidenberg: congas / Recording Studio: Columbia Recording Studios / Studio E, New York: July 30, 1975 / Producer: Don DeVito / Sound Engineer: Don Meehan / Set Box: The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3: Rare & Unreleased, 1961–1991 (CD 3) / Date of Release: March 26, 1991
“Golden Loom” is Bob Dylan’s composition. This probably explains why the song was excluded from the final track listing of Desire, which is mostly a collaborative album. The song reflects an impressionist dream sequence, akin to the story of Penelope (and the canvas she can never finish) and Ulysses (who took part in the Trojan War). At its climax, the narrator, about to kiss the heroine’s lips as he lifts her veil, discovers that she is gone. All that remains is the smell of perfume and her golden loom.
“Golden Loom” was recorded during the session on July 30. The song is a kind of Cajun rock with a moderate tempo, accompanied by excellent musicians. Drums, bass, congas, and violin offer Dylan a great base for his vocals, backed by Emmylou Harris’s harmony vocals. Four takes were recorded. Sixteen years later, the second take was selected for The Bootleg Series. Dylan has never performed it onstage. However, Roger McGuinn recorded a cover for his fifth studio album, Thunderbyrd, in 1977 on the Columbia label. He has since performed the song frequently.
Rita May
Lyrics: Jacques Levy and Bob Dylan / Music: Bob Dylan / 3:13
SINGLE
DATE OF RELEASE
Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again / Rita May
November 1976
on Columbia Records
(REFERENCE COLUMBIA 3-10454)
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Emmylou Harris: harmony vocals
Scarlet Rivera: violin
Rob Stoner: bass
Howard Wyeth: drums
Sheena Seidenberg: congas
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio E, New York: July 30, 1975
Technical Team
Producer: Don DeVito
Sound Engineer: Don Meehan
Genesis and Lyrics
After defending the boxer Hurricane Carter and turning to Joey Gallo as a kind of poet of the New York Mafia, Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy seemed to be interested in another personality who regularly made headlines at the time: Rita Mae Brown, a pacifist and feminist intellectual who was at the forefront of the gay liberation movement. She is best known for her first novel Rubyfruit Jungle, published in 1973, in which she portrayed and exalted lesbian sexuality. She co-founded The Furies, a lesbian feminist newspaper in Washington, DC, which held heterosexuality to be the root of all oppression. “If I hang around with you / Then I’ll go blind / But I know that when you hold me / That there really must be somethin’ / On your mind,” goes the third verse.
Production
The first session for the album Desire on July 14, 1975, was devoted to “Rita May” (“Rita Mae” on the studio records) and “Joey.” After seven unsuccessful cuts with Dave Mason and his dozen musicians, Dylan gave it another try on July 30 with a smaller group. The second of four takes became the single. “Rita May” is great blues-rock song, served by an excellent rhythm section and outstanding violin accompaniment. Dylan, with Emmylou Harris performing harmony vocals, is very convincing and delivers an inspired solo harmonica part (in G). It is curious that the song was only released as the B-side of a single. The live version of “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” (recorded during a Rolling Thunder Revue show on May 16, 1976, in Fort Worth, Texas) was the A-side. The single was released in November 1976. It was issued to promote the live album Hard Rain (available in stores on September 13, 1976). The single did not make it onto the charts. “Rita May” also appears in the triple album Masterpieces, released in March 1978 in Japan, New Zealand, and Australia in anticipation of Dylan’s 1978 tour.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Jerry Lee Lewis, the pioneer of rock and roll, covered “Rita May” on his album Jerry Lee Lewis (1979).
Don DeVito:
A Man Devoted to the Music
Born on September 6, 1939, in Brooklyn, New York, Don DeVito was only eighteen years old when he became the guitarist for the legendary Al Kooper of the Royal Teens. He later formed his own band, the Sabres. The band broke up while touring, leaving DeVito stranded in Fort Smith, Arkansas. But, fortuitously, he met Johnny Cash. Thanks to a coincidental meeting with the “Man in Black,” DeVito joined CBS in 1967. He first worked in the sports division and later transferred to CBS Records (soon after renamed Columbia Records). Cash also introduced him to Bob Dylan.
In New York City, he was taken under the wing of Columbia Records president Clive Davis, who asked him to assist artists and studio producers. He spent countless hours learning from producers such as Bob Johnston, James Guercio, Jimmy Ienner, and Phil Ramone. With his knowledge of music and his studio experience, he moved quickly to a high position in the A&R department at Columbia.
DeVito started a fruitful collaboration with Dylan soon after Dylan’s return to Columbia, beginning with the production of Desire. He produced Street Legal, as well as the live albums Hard Rain and At Budokan. Don Meehan, the sound engineer for Desire, reported that he did not hesitate to share his CBS bonus for the album with DeVito. DeVito also worked as A&R director for other leading artists, including Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Aerosmith, and Blue Öyster Cult. He was appointed vice president of A&R for Columbia in 1976, and national vice president of A&R in 1981.
He was nominated five times for a Grammy Award and won the 1989 Grammy Award in the category of best traditional folk recording for the album Folkways: A Vision Shared—A Tribute to Woody Guthrie & Leadbelly (1988). DeVito played a major role organizing and producing The Concert for New York City, a benefit concert on October 20, 2001, at Madison Square Garden in response to the September 11 attacks. He died on November 25, 2011. He wanted to be remembered “for devotion to the music.”
Street-
Legal
Changing Of The Guards
New Pony
No Time To Think
Baby, Stop Crying
Is Your Love In Vain?
Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power)
True Love Tends To Forget
We Better Talk This Over
Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)
THE OUTTAKES
Walk Out In The Rain
Coming From The Heart (The Road Is Long)
Stop Now
DATE OF RELEASE
June 15, 1978
on Columbia Records
(REFERENCE COLUMBIA JC 35453)
Street Legal:
An Album with a Gospel Sound
The Album
As on Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan wrote the songs of Street Legal on his farm in Minnesota. On June 29, 1977, the divorce with Sara was granted after a tough legal battle for custody of the children, which influenced the album. In September, he added the final touch to Renaldo and Clara, a film he directed with Sam Shepard. It was a collection of archival images, interviews, and fictional scenes about his life and his songs. Then rehearsals began for a tour of Japan, New Zealand, and Australia (from February 20 to April 1, 1978). Recording sessions for Street Legal finally began in April.
At the end of 1977, Dylan played several of his compositions on piano for Jerry Wexler (who was then working on the Etta James album Deep in the Night at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood), no doubt with the intention of taking him on as his producer. Since Jerry Wexler had already agreed to work on another project, Don DeVito was once again hired, with Arthur Rosato as assistant and Biff Dawes as the sound engineer. The chosen location was a vast space for rehearsals in the basement of a two-story building in Santa Monica, California, which was later ironicall
y renamed Rundown Studios, since the building was located in a slum neighborhood. The musicians were mainly those who had accompanied Dylan during the tour of Japan and the South Pacific. There were, however, a few remarkable differences: the backup singer Debbie Dye, who decided to quit after the tour, was replaced by Carolyn Dennis (along with Bobbye Hall, after auditions that took place from April 19 to 21). Also, bassist Rob Stoner was replaced by the excellent musician Jerry Scheff, who had performed with Elvis Presley and participated in the sessions of L.A. Woman (1971), the last album of the Doors with Jim Morrison.
Street Legal is made up of nine songs. The lyrics include several favorite themes of the songwriter, inspired by his private life (“Baby, Stop Crying,” “Is Your Love in Vain?,” “True Love Tends to Forget”) or the nonsense of society (“No Time to Think”), as well as an apocalyptic and mystical vision of the world (“Changing of the Guards,” “Señor,” “Where Are You Tonight?”).
A Mix of Gospel and FM Rock
The difference in the musical style was extraordinary. Dylan’s eighteenth studio album was the first one to be influenced to this extent by gospel music, as seen by the essential role granted to the three backup singers. “Changing of the Guards” and “Where Are You Tonight?” evoked the sensuality that characterized the Southern rhythm ’n’ blues songs of Stax Records and the sophistication of the arrangements of Motown soul music. But here these arrangements often made concessions to the popular sound of FM rock. The songs suffered for the lack of sonic identity.
Street Legal went on sale in record stores on June 15, 1978. American critics unanimously panned the album. The most acerbic of the rock critics was Greil Marcus of Rolling Stone, who said Dylan’s voice was “simply impossible to pay attention to for more than a couple of minutes at a time.” The singer was also accused of being sexist for having written “Is Your Love in Vain?” In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, journalists were more favorable toward it, such as Michael Watts of Melody Maker, who believed it was Dylan’s “best album since John Wesley Harding.” One thing was for sure: Street Legal was a commercial success. In the United States, it reached number 11 on the charts (however, it was the first album since 1964 that did not make it to the top 10) and became a gold record. In the United Kingdom, it rose to number 2, eventually going platinum. In the land of Her Majesty, it sold better than any other Dylan album!
The Album Cover
The two photos on the cover were the work of Howard Alk, who was a member of the Compass Players theater troupe and a friend of Bob Dylan’s since 1963. He had been the assistant director of Dont Look Back (1967) and the director of photography and the editor of Eat the Document (1972), Hard Rain (1976), and Renaldo and Clara. The cover shows Dylan at the bottom of the stairs of Rundown Studios, at 2501 Main Street in Santa Monica, looking left. On the back cover, he was photographed onstage, dressed all in white, during the tour in Asia. The black-and-white pictures inside the cover were taken by Joel Bernstein in a club in Melbourne. Dylan was standing near singer George Benson. As for the title of the work, Street Legal, it meant a “hot rod” or custom car that could nevertheless be driven in the city.
The Recording
After the April 13, 1978, audition, which bore no fruit, and those of April 19 to 21, which resulted in the hiring of backup singer Carolyn Dennis, a rehearsal was scheduled for April 24. Dylan wanted to record very quickly, even urgently. The studio had a twenty-four-track machine on hand, to avoid overdubs. Don DeVito’s assistant, Arthur Rosato, remembered, “On that album there’s four overdubs on the whole thing and those were guitar parts and one sax part. I called Wally Heider’s and had a truck brought in. [All] the vocalists were singing live.”89
All it took to record Street Legal were five sessions: April 25, 26, 27, 28, and May 1, 1975. Then two sessions were set aside for overdubs on May 2 and 3 (Arthur Rosato remembered four overdubs). But the production results were hardly satisfactory. Dylan seemed to have chosen Don DeVito by default, although he had not been very happy with his work on Desire. He also pushed around the technical team that struggled to set the microphones fast enough and produce correct balance. The album was mainly recorded live, and the cohesion of the whole work suffered as a result. Dylan admitted having been very impatient in the studio, although he wished to attain the best possible results. In 1978, he conceded to Jonathan Cott, “The truth of it is that I can hear the same sounds that other people like to hear, too. But I don’t like to spend the time trying to get those sounds in the studio.” Being realistic, he acknowledged nevertheless that this caused a real problem. “If you have a good song, it doesn’t matter how well or badly it’s produced. Okay, my records aren’t produced that well, I admit it.”20
Technical Details
Street Legal was recorded at Rundown Studios, which had been rented by Dylan to prepare for his European tour. The recording was done by a mobile unit belonging to the Filmways/Heider Company, which consisted of a truck full of recording equipment, namely a twenty-four-track tape recorder connected to the musicians by cables and monitors. The sound engineer Biff Dawes had established a reputation for himself by recording very disparate artists, such as Devo, Tom Waits, Motley Crüe, Jerry Lee Lewis, and even the group Yes.
The Instruments
Dylan used different guitars at this time. In concert he might have played his black Fender Stratocaster or his butterscotch blond Stratocaster, but he also played Martin, Gibson, Yamaha (L-6, L-52), and probably Washburn acoustic guitars. But it is hard to determine which ones were actually used on the album. For the first time, he did not play any harmonica.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Howard Alk, who took the two pictures on the cover of Street Legal, was found dead at Rundown Studios in January 1982, perhaps the result of a heroin overdose or perhaps because he committed suicide.
Changing Of The Guards
Bob Dylan / 7:05
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Billy Cross: guitar
David Mansfield: mandolin
Steve Douglas: alto saxophone
Alan Pasqua: organ
Jerry Scheff: bass
Ian Wallace: drums
Bobbye Hall: congas
Carolyn Dennis, Jo Ann Harris, and Helena Springs: backup vocals and tambourine
Recording Studio
Rundown Studios, Santa Monica, California: April 27, 1978
Technical Team
Producer: Don DeVito
Sound Engineer: Biff Dawes
Genesis and Lyrics
In 1978, Bob Dylan explained the amazing way the opening song of Street Legal occurred to him. “‘Changing of the Guards’ might be a song that might have been there for thousands of years, sailing around in the mist, and one day I just tuned into it.”20 But the specific origin of the creation process might go back to 1976, when Dylan wrote a long poem titled “An Observation Revisited,” which was published in the first issue of the magazine Photography under the name R. Zimmerman. The poem included these lines: “In my mind, I keep humming Tom Paxton’s / ‘Peace Will Come’ / And all sorts of images / Are flashing across the sky at once.” He reiterated this idea in the last verse of “Changing of the Guards,” however with some nuances. But this song was much more than a simple homage to Paxton. In some ways, it reconnected with the great “apocalyptic” texts he had written in the sixties. “Sixteen years / Sixteen banners united over the field.” These are the first lines of the song. Did Dylan mean he began his career sixteen years earlier and that the time had come for him to break once again with his past, as he had already done by converting to rock in 1965? With “Changing of the Guards,” a new Bob Dylan seemed to be born out of the ashes of his breakup with Sara and with the gust of wind that would soon lead him to convert to Christianity.
Production
After a first attempt on April 25 at Rundown Studios, the final version of “Changing of the Guards” was recorded on April 27. The piece, supported b
y an excellent rhythm section and rather discrete guitar work, begins with a fade-in, an effect rarely used on the records of the songwriter. David Mansfield’s mandolin brings a pleasant country or ethnic color to the song, and Steve Douglas’s sax replaces Dylan’s harmonica. “Changing of the Guards” has a good groove without ever really taking off. The great backup vocals bring a lovely gospel touch, while Dylan himself provides a good vocal part.
Coming out as a single on October 24, 1978 (with “Señor [Tales of Yankee Power]” on the B-side), “Changing of the Guards” did not enter the charts, either in the United States or in Europe.
New Pony
Bob Dylan / 4:40
Musicians: Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar; Billy Cross: guitar; Steve Douglas: tenor saxophone; Jerry Scheff: bass; Ian Wallace: drums; Bobbye Hall: tambourine; Carolyn Dennis, Jo Ann Harris, and Helena Springs: backup vocals / Recording Studio: Rundown Studios, Santa Monica, California: May 1, 1978 (Overdubs May 3, 1978) / Producer: Don DeVito / Sound Engineer: Biff Dawes
IN YOUR HEADPHONES
At 2:26 you can hear one of the backup singers begin a single syllable that is wrong, before catching herself.
Bob Dylan has always liked the blues. Although he never dedicated an entire album to this style (at least during the sixties and seventies), he sprinkled his records with blues tunes on a regular basis. Street Legal was no exception. In this blues song, the narrator has a pony that he is sad to put down. Dylan was probably inspired by “Pony Blues” by Charley Patton (1934) or “Black Pony Blues” by Arthur Crudup (1941). In 1978 he clarified one point: “The Miss X in that song is Miss X, not ex-.”20
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 60