Bob Dylan All the Songs
Page 62
For this new album, the songwriter was surrounded by a strong team. First, he engaged Jerry Wexler to produce his upcoming album. Wexler’s name was associated with the giants of African-American music, including Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, the Drifters, and Wilson Pickett. It was Pickett who led Dylan to one of the best studios in the United States, Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield, Alabama, where he presided over a group of four excellent musicians. Among them was the co-owner of the studio, Barry Beckett (keyboard), and the Muscle Shoals Horns. Barry Beckett also co-produced the work. Wexler recruited bassist Tim Drummond (sideman for J. J. Cale, Neil Young, and Crosby, Stills & Nash) and recommended Mark Knopfler, a brilliant guitarist and lead vocalist of the British rock band Dire Straits. The band had just produced their second album Communiqué, recorded late in 1978 and released in June 1979. In March 1979, Dylan went to listen to Dire Straits at the Roxy in West Hollywood and was very impressed with the band’s performance. He immediately gave his consent to Wexler to ask Knopfler to participate on his next album. Knopfler then recommended his friend Pick Withers, the first Dire Straits drummer, even though Jerry Wexler wanted to hire Roger Hawkins, one of the best drummers at the time and co-owner of the studio.
Dylan’s Christian Trilogy
Slow Train Coming is the first act of Dylan’s Christian trilogy. All the lyrics are heavily inspired by biblical texts, whether the book of Genesis, the book of Joshua, or the Gospels according to John and Matthew. Dylan expresses his hopes and fears and sings of the struggle between good and evil, the apocalypse, and redemption. From a musical point of view, the excellent sidemen that Wexler brought in all understand the message: they play deeply, influenced by gospel music, with backup vocals similar to those heard in Baptist churches. Solemnity on one side, sensuality on the other. However, secular music, which has been called “devil’s music,” retains its place throughout Slow Train Coming, to the point that “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking” could have been recorded a few years earlier by the Rolling Stones for Sticky Fingers. Finally, there is Dylan’s voice. Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone wrote, “His resonance and feeling are beyond those of any of his contemporaries. More than his ability with words, and more than his insight, his voice is God’s greatest gift to him.”121 Slow Train Coming was released on August 20, 1979, and rock critics responded with vitriol and bitter criticism. In New West, Greil Marcus accused Dylan of trying “to sell a prepackaged doctrine he’s received from someone else,” while New Musical Express snidely titled its review “Dylan and God—It’s Official.” There were some enthusiastic reviews, like Wenner’s in Rolling Stone (“One of the finest records Dylan has ever made”), but mostly it was the public reaction that counted. After Dylan played “Gotta Serve Somebody,” “I Believe in You,” and “When You Gonna Wake Up” during his appearance on the TV show Saturday Night Live on October 20, 1979, his nineteenth studio album peaked at the top of the charts in the United States. It went platinum and reached number 3 on the Billboard charts. In the United Kingdom there was similar success with a second place in the rankings, as there was in France, where 430,000 copies were sold.
The Cover Art
Columbia Records opened a competition to find a suitable cover, but Dylan rejected all the proposals. Columbia finally contacted a young freelance illustrator from Malibu, California, Catherine Kanner, to execute Dylan’s concept: “A locomotive train coming down tracks that were being laid by a crew, and there was to be a man in the foreground holding a pickax. The axe was meant to be a symbol of the Cross… I recall my friend insisting that I extend the top of the axe so that it more resembled a cross.” Her artwork was in pen and ink on a sepia-tone background. Dylan accepted her sketch without any changes. The photo on the back is credited to Nick Saxton, future video director for Michael Jackson. The interior photographs are by Morgan Renard, whose other images appear on many of Dylan’s records, including Biograph (1985) and The Complete Album Collection (2013).
The Recording
After rehearsing in Santa Monica, Bob Dylan and his band began recording sessions at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio on April 30, 1979. They recorded a dozen songs through May 11. First, there were five recording sessions to lay down the foundations of the songs: April 30, then May 1, 2, 3, and 4. Following those days, five dates were reserved for overdubs: May 5, 6, 7, 10, and 11. Contrary to Dylan’s usual practice of recording, Wexler first recorded a rhythm track before recording Dylan’s vocal. On the first day, April 30, Dylan wanted to participate actively in the recording and played and sang at every moment, disrupting Wexler’s work. The result was terrible. After some clarification, the following day the producer succeeded in gathering all the musicians around the songwriter, so that they were close to each other and could develop a comaraderie. As soon as they started playing, the groove was immediate. However, the take, recorded in mono, was unusable because of leakage. Wexler repositioned all the musicians, using acoustic panels to isolate them and to re-diffuse the mono take via headphones. It worked! When the arrangements were set, Dylan could record his vocal. All sessions followed this procedure, despite the songwriter’s probable lack of enthusiasm to conform. Wexler did not necessarily want Dylan to play guitar for each title. For Dylan, to have faith is also to question oneself.
Technical Details
When Dylan arrived in 1979, the studios at 3614 Jackson Highway, in Sheffield, were relocated to a larger venue on Alabama Avenue on the banks of the Tennessee. The sound engineer, Gregg Hamm, had also worked with Bob Seger, Dire Straits, and other musicians in Dylan’s orbit, including Levon Helm, Roger McGuinn, and Joan Baez. Hamm used an MCI JH-114 twenty-four-track recorder and the extraordinary 1978 Neve 8068 MkI board, a Lexicon “Prime Time” digital delay processor, and a UREI 1176 and DBX 160 compressor/limiter to record Slow Train Coming.
The Instruments
Dylan essentially used the same guitars as for the previous album, with the addition of a black Gibson Les Paul. However, he played almost no guitar on this record, leaving that task to Mark Knopfler. Knopfler chose to rehearse on Dylan’s Stratocaster and obviously played his own guitars in the studio, including his famous red Fender Stratocaster as well as a Telecaster Custom, a National, and either an Ovation or a Gibson ES 335.
THE ORIGINS OF MUSCLE SHOALS SOUND STUDIO
In the late 1950s, the legendary producer Rick Hall founded FAME Studios, in Florence, Alabama, then later in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. With his in-house band, known as the Swampers, he recorded artists such as Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, and Aretha Franklin. In 1969, the Swampers, consisting of Barry Beckett, Jimmy Johnson, Roger Hawkins, and David Hood, decided to start their own recording studio with Jerry Wexler in Sheffield, Alabama. The Muscle Shoals Sound Studio quickly gained a reputation for recording artists such as the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, and many others.
Gotta Serve Somebody
Bob Dylan / 5:25
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals
Mark Knopfler: guitar
Barry Beckett: electric piano, organ
Tim Drummond: bass
Pick Withers: drums
Carolyn Dennis, Helena Springs, and Regina Havis: backup vocals
Recording Studio
Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Sheffield, Alabama: May 4, 1979 (Overdubs May 4 and 11, 1979)
Technical Team
Producers: Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett
Sound Engineer: Gregg Hamm
B-SIDE ONLY
“Trouble in My Mind” is another religious song by Dylan selected as the B-side for the single “Gotta Serve Somebody.” However, “Trouble in My Mind” appears on no other compilation.
Genesis and Lyrics
“Gotta Serve Somebody” is the first song recorded for the album that testifies to Dylan’s conversion to Christianity. The songwriter was inspired by both the Old and New Testaments. In the book of Joshua, it is written: “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the lord, choose you this day whom ye will ser
ve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (24:15). And in the Gospel of Matthew, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (6:24). In the Bible, mammon is the symbol of material wealth and greed. Therefore, Dylan leads his crusade against the possession of wealth as the goal of life on earth. Whoever you may be—ambassador, gambler, heavyweight champion, socialist, businessman, high-class thief, preacher, rich, poor, blind, or lame—who cares! We all must serve God. Although this message is universal, it is intended primarily for Dylan himself. Thus when he sings, “You might be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage / You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage,” the lines are about his elevated status as an idol since the early 1960s. All that is called into question. For now, the times have changed again. During an interview with a radio broadcaster in December 1979, Dylan said, “I don’t sing any song which hasn’t been given to me by the Lord to sing.”
Production
Bob Dylan and his musicians recorded “Gotta Serve Somebody” during the fifth session of Slow Train Coming on May 4, 1979. Four takes were recorded, the third being chosen for future overdubs. From the first notes, his direct entrance is striking, almost threatening in manner. The rhythm is heavy, maybe a bit too static. Barry Beckett on the electric piano adds blues color and spirituality to the piece. Rock journalist Phil Sutcliffe explained in Mojo magazine, “But when Jerry Weller’s co-producer, Barry Beckett, met Dylan at Muscle Shoals he searched keyboard and soul to find three glowering, angry notes bleak enough to announce ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’… That day in May, 1979, from Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler and Pick Withers to the black female back-up singers, everybody got Dylan, everybody got the song. No matter what they knew of Dylan’s recent travails—the divorce, the critical pounding he suffered over Renaldo and Clara, how unfathomably hard he took Elvis’s death—they felt to the bone marrow his terror and confusion.”122 Beckett’s excellent electric piano (added as an overdub on May 11) dominates the mix, as if trying to threaten those who do not hear Dylan’s message. And, rare in Dylan’s productions, the overall sound breathes. Even Knopfler on rhythm guitar remains in the background. After the confusion of Street Legal, this new approach allows Dylan to give his greatest studio vocal, one for which he won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance in 1979. Accompanied by superb harmony vocals from the chorus, Dylan abandons his own guitar, something extremely rare in his discography.
Yet “Gotta Serve Somebody” was almost excluded from the track listing for Slow Train Coming. When Jerry Wexler started collecting the tapes for the album, Dylan remembers, “I had to fight to get it on the album, it was ridiculous.”12
The song was released as a single on August 20, 1979 (with “Trouble in My Mind” on the B-side). The single reached number 24 on the Billboard charts in October. Since the concert at the Fox Warfield Theater in San Francisco on November 1, 1979, Dylan has sung it over four hundred times.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
In September 1980, David Sheff of Playboy asked John Lennon, “Is it distressing to you that Dylan is a born-again Christian?” Lennon replied, “For whatever reason he’s doing it, it’s personal for him and he needs to do it… If he needs it, let him do it.”123 Yet Lennon seems to make fun of Dylan in “Serve Yourself” (John Lennon Anthology, 1998), but he never mentions Dylan by name.
Precious Angel
Bob Dylan / 6:31
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Mark Knopfler: guitars
Barry Beckett: piano, keyboards
Tim Drummond: bass
Pick Withers: drums
Carolyn Dennis, Helena Springs, and Regina Havis: backup vocals
Harrison Calloway Jr.: trumpet
Ronnie Eades: baritone saxophone
Harvey Thompson: tenor saxophone
Charles Rose: trombone
Lloyd Barry: trumpet
Recording Studio
Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Sheffield, Alabama: May 1, 1979 (Overdubs May 5, 7, 10, 11, 1979)
Technical Team
Producers: Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett
Sound Engineer: Gregg Hamm
Genesis and Lyrics
The “precious angel” who leads the narrator (in this case, Bob Dylan) to Jesus Christ, and whose “forefathers were slaves” could be the African-American actress Mary Alice Artes. In addition to engaging in a brief affair with Dylan in the late 1970s, Artes played a key role in his conversion to Christianity via a religious group known as the Vineyard Fellowship.
The lyrics of “Precious Angel” contain many biblical references. The chorus, “Shine your light, shine your light on me / Ya know I just couldn’t make it by myself / I’m little too blind to see” refers to a passage from the Gospel of John, in which Jesus heals a man who had been blind from birth. Dylan is the blind man to whom Jesus gave sight, the man who says, “Whereas I was blind, now I can see.” He no longer relies on false truths (“How weak was the foundation I was standing upon?”); he is the one released from yesterday’s power, the power of darkness, a reference to the Pharisees who did not want to believe the healing of the blind man. Music critic Paul Williams suggested that the references to Buddha and Muhammad in the fourth verse (“You were telling him about Buddha, you were telling him about Muhammad in the same breath / You never mentioned one time the Man who came and died a criminal’s death”) are an attack on Dylan’s ex-wife Sara for turning him away from Christianity.102 The songwriter later said about this song, “There’s too many verses and there’s not enough.”20
Production
Mark Knopfler could have sung “Precious Angel,” as the sound is close to that of Dire Straits. Knopfler’s playing is exquisite. His riffs on guitar are distinctive, and his two solos create a good vibe in the song, especially because the sound of his Stratocaster (or Telecaster?) is so rich. He also played acoustic on May 5, and probably during another recording session, unless Dylan did it. But the rhythmic precision suggests the British guitarist. The other musicians accompany Dylan’s vocals nicely: Beckett’s piano and organ (overdub on May 11), in addition to the bass, drums, and backup vocals (overdub on May 7), confer on this “Precious Angel” a very precious nature, not to mention the brass part (overdub on May 10) by the Muscle Shoals Horns. While the music does not go well with the lyrics, Dylan illuminates this piece with his talent.
I Believe In You
Bob Dylan / 5:10
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals
Mark Knopfler: guitars
Barry Beckett: electric piano, organ
Tim Drummond: bass
Pick Withers: drums
Recording Studio
Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Sheffield, Alabama: May 3, 1979 (Overdubs May 4 and 11, 1979)
Technical Team
Producers: Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett
Sound Engineer: Gregg Hamm
Genesis and Lyrics
The main character of this song is a pilgrim moving along despite serious obstacles. These are not physical obstacles, but rather incomprehension, ostracism, and also the mockery he faces. The man walks alone, far from his home, while being watched by people frowning. He is happy because he believes in Jesus Christ.
This piece is probably autobiographical, to the extent that Dylan’s conversion to Christianity surprised and provoked hostility among some of his audience. In an interview with Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times, the songwriter confided, “I did begin telling a few people [about my conversion] after a couple of months and a lot of them got angry at me.”20
Production
“I Believe in You” is a ballad, recorded in two takes on May 3, the first being selected as the basic rhythm track. The atmosphere is
intimate. The song is supported by a very precise and delicate electric piano part provided by Beckett (on a Wurlitzer?). Dylan’s vocals carry the full meaning of his words through a fragile interpretation. Instead of Dylan, Mark Knopfler plays acoustic guitar with a strong reverberation, partly overdubbed, bringing his inimitable touch on the electric guitar in very inspired passages. He also uses a guitar volume pedal, conferring this special sound effect (listen at 1:20 or 2:09). The rhythm track provides good support. Tim Drummond’s bass part was replayed or corrected on May 4. A couple of days later, on May 11, Dylan added his vocals. The fact that he was solely focused on singing probably allowed him to express himself with greater sincerity. Dylan has sung “I Believe in You” more than 250 times. He first played the tune in San Francisco, on November 1, 1979.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Before playing it in concert, Dylan performed “I Believe in You” on the NBCTV show Saturday Night Live, along with “Gotta Serve Somebody” and “When You Gonna Wake Up,” on October 20, 1979.
Slow Train
Bob Dylan / 6:03
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar (?)
Mark Knopfler: guitar
Barry Beckett: piano, organ
Tim Drummond: bass
Pick Withers: drums
Carolyn Dennis, Helena Springs, and Regina Havis: backup vocals
Harrison Calloway Jr.: trumpet