Production
Uncertainties surround the production of this excellent piece. The studio record sheets mention March 27, 1981, at Rundown Studios, while the Biograph booklet states May 11 and Dylan himself indicates the possible participation of the Beatles’ drummer scheduled for May 15 at Clover Studios: “Danny [Kortchmar] played on this and maybe Ringo Starr, I can’t remember.”12 Listening to the drumming, it is certainly possible that Ringo was playing. But why was the song excluded from the album Shot of Love? Dylan at first thought it was sloppy, having more or less lost the original riff’s idea. But after listening to it again later, he found it rather good, even if it hadn’t turned out the way he wanted it to. It was Chuck Plotkin who reworked the first version, track by track, through a long and tedious process to speed up the tempos without changing the pitch of Dylan’s voice. Plotkin said, “And when it came time to discuss the B-side of the first single I said, ‘How about “Groom?”’ He said, ‘Well, it was too slow.’ And I said, ‘Well, I dunno. It sounds great now!’… So we listened together and he really liked it.” This testimony places the event after the session of March 27, since the producer at that time was still Jimmy Iovine. Chuck Plotkin was only hired at the end of April. “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar” was initially the B-side of the “Heart of Mine” single. Only in the mid-1980s did Dylan and Columbia Records decide to insert “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar” as the sixth track of subsequent pressings of the LP and the compact disc of Shot of Love.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
As he so often does, Dylan changed the lyrics of this song before recording it. In the original text, he cites Fanning Street (“If you see her on Fanning Street, tell her I still think she’s neat”), a reference to a street in Shreveport, Louisiana, known for brothels and clubs. Leadbelly sang a blues song titled “Fannin Street.”
Infidels
Jokerman
Sweetheart Like You
Neighborhood Bully
License To Kill
Man Of Peace
Union Sundown
I And I
Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight
THE OUTTAKES
Blind Willie McTell
Slow Try Baby
Columbus Georgia
Back To The Wall
Oklahoma Kansas
Clean Cut Kid
Rainbow
This Was My Love
Man Of Peace
Don’t Fly Unless It’s Safe
Jesus Met The Woman At The Well
He’s Gone
Someone’s Got A Hold Of My Heart
Dark Groove
Borderline
Tell Me
Foot Of Pride
Julius And Ethel
Don’t Drink No Chevy
How Many Days
Lord Protect My Child
Green Grass
Death Is Not The End
SINGLE
Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground
DATE OF RELEASE
October 27, 1983
on Columbia Records
(REFERENCE COLUMBIA QC 38819)
Infidels:
The Return of the Songwriter
The Album
Infidels was Bob Dylan’s twenty-second studio album. It was released two years after Shot of Love and marked a dramatic change in his songwriting. After the Christian trilogy, he returned to secular music, especially protest songs (even if he still refused to think of himself as a political songwriter). He treated themes that he considered important, such as women, breakups, and the fragility of love, but he also wrote vitriolic songs about the society of the 1980s. Among them were “License to Kill,” in which he wondered about the benefits of progress and strongly condemned the arms race; “Union Sundown,” a protest song against globalization; and “Neighborhood Bully,” which is a defense of the state of Israel.
If Infidels stands apart from the Christian trilogy, it nevertheless remains marked by biblical references and religious imagery. Based on Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the opening track, “Jokerman,” is an evocation of the Antichrist and announces the imminent decisive battle between good and evil. “Man of Peace” conveys the idea that Satan can disguise himself as a “man of peace,” a reference to the Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. “I and I” is inspired by the Rastafarian concept that God lives in every human. In the outtake “Lord Protect My Child,” the narrator asks the Lord to watch over his child, and in “Foot of Pride,” inspired by the Psalms, he criticizes human pride. Thus, Infidels is a good mix of secular songs and faith-based references.
The choice of the album’s title is enigmatic. Why Infidels? In 1984, Dylan said, “I wanted to call it Surviving in a Ruthless World. But someone pointed out to me that the last bunch of albums I’d made all started with the letter S. So I said, ‘Well, I don’t wanna get bogged down in the letter S.’ And then Infidels came into my head one day. I don’t know what it means, or anything.”20
The Album Cover
The cover photo is a close-up of Dylan taken by his ex-wife Sara from a car on the day of their eldest son Jesse’s bar mitzvah, which they celebrated during their visit to Israel in September 1983. The songwriter, unshaven and hidden behind his sunglasses, seems deep in thought. In the inner cover, another photo shows Dylan on the Mount of Olives with Jerusalem in the background. The drawing on the back by the songwriter himself was initially intended to illustrate the cover of the album.
The Recording
A few weeks before returning to the studio, Dylan approached Mark Knopfler, who had previously worked on the album Slow Train Coming. This time the band leader of Dire Straits had a double mission: accompany Dylan on guitar and co-produce the different songs of Dylan’s new work. Why did Dylan, who could and wanted to produce himself, still use the British guitarist? The real motivation comes from the difficulty of understanding the technological revolution involved in the switch from analog to digital. Dylan needed a producer who was more at home with the new recording technology in the studio. Biographer Clinton Heylin indicates that Dylan approached David Bowie, Frank Zappa, and Elvis Costello before making his final choice of the leader of Dire Straits. Dylan knew Knopfler well, and since Slow Train Coming Knopfler had become one of the world’s hottest artists.
Once Knopfler was enlisted, he suggested keyboardist Alan Clark and sound engineer Neil Dorfsman, who had previously recorded the Dire Straits album Love Over Gold (1982) and the soundtrack of Local Hero (1983). At Dylan’s initiative, they hired bassist Robbie Shakespeare and drummer Sly Dunbar for the rhythm section. The two, known as “Sly & Robbie,” comprised a formidable reggae rhythm section. Dylan also recruited the talented guitarist Mick Taylor, a former Rolling Stone. Mark Knopfler recalled, “I suggested Billy Gibbons, but I don’t think Bob had heard of ZZ Top.”131 The pair chose the Power Station in New York City as the recording studio.
Dylan and his team recorded Infidels in twenty-two sessions with four overdub sessions (in all likelihood) between April 11 and May 18, 1983. Many outtakes and various takes emanated from these sessions. The pair produced only eight songs for the album. Some of these outtakes were discarded for no apparent reason, including the beautiful “Blind Willie McTell.”
Knopfler admitted during an interview with Guitar Player that it was difficult to produce Dylan. “Each song has its own secret that’s different from another song, and each has its own life… There are no laws about songwriting or producing… I’d say I was more disciplined. But I think Bob is much more disciplined as a writer of lyrics, as a poet. He’s an absolute genius. As a singer—absolute genius. But musically, I think it’s a lot more basic. The music just tends to be a vehicle for that poetry.”131
Dylan, in fact, liked to record his songs quickly, in order to capture the unique creative moment of each one. He once said of Infidels: “Did you ever listen to an Eagles record?… Their songs are good, but every note is predictable, you know exactly what’s gonna be before
it’s even there. And I started to sense some of that on Infidels, and I didn’t like it, so we decided to redo some of the vocals.”89 According to Knopfler, “Bob mixed it because I had to go on tour in Germany with Dire Straits. I think he changed some things. I’ve only heard the album once.”131
Infidels was released on October 27, 1983. Most critics appreciated Dylan’s willingness to sound different. According to Christopher Connelly of Rolling Stone, “Infidels is Dylan’s best album since the searing Blood on the Tracks nine years ago, a stunning recovery of the lyric and melodic powers that seemed to have all but deserted him.”132 However, the album was only a modest success.
Technical Details
Infidels was produced in the extraordinary recording complex located at 441 West Fifty-Third Street in New York City, a former Consolidated Edison power plant. In 1977, the building was transformed into a recording studio by engineer Tony Bongiovi (Jon Bon Jovi’s cousin). He named the space the Power Station in reference to the initial use of the building. In 1996, the complex was renamed Avatar Studios.
Dylan and his team recorded in Studio A, a vast room able to hold an orchestra of sixty musicians. In addition, Studio A was known as one of the finest acoustic environments for recording in the world. For this album, Dylan had to make one of the first recordings ever made on a digital recorder, the Sony 3324. Neil Dorfsman, the sound engineer, remembers that this early digital machine “was a nightmare… You couldn’t edit, you couldn’t really do anything. All you could do was record, and sometimes not even that. The converters would fail, error correction would be audible and things were generally weird.”133
The other equipment they may have used was a console Neve 8068 with thirty-two inputs, Urei limiters, and a Pultec equalizer. Besides the two “house” reverbs, Studio A had an EMT 140 plate reverb unit. The loudspeakers were Altec 604E and Yamaha NS-10. The Power Station had an extensive range of microphones, including a pair of Neumann KM86s suspended permanently from the ceiling.
The Instruments
It is difficult to know which guitar Dylan played on Infidels, but one can assume he used his Fender Stratocaster (he did not play acoustic on the album). Mark Knopfler claims he played his six-string guitar, a Greco handmade acoustic, and his red Schecter Stratocaster. As for Mick Taylor, he probably played his Gibson Les Paul, but also his Fender Stratocaster or Telecaster and his Ovation or Guild acoustic.
Jokerman
Bob Dylan / 6:19
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, harmonica
Mark Knopfler: guitar
Mick Taylor: guitar
Alan Clark: keyboards
Robbie Shakespeare: bass
Sly Dunbar: drums, percussion
Recording Studio
The Power Station / Studio A, New York: April 14, 1983 (Overdubs May 8, 1983)
Technical Team
Producers: Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler
Sound Engineer: Neil Dorfsman
Genesis and Lyrics
In March 1984, Bob Dylan told Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone how he composed “Jokerman” during a stay in the Caribbean. “Me and another guy have a boat down there. ‘Jokerman’ kinda came to me in the islands. It’s very mystical. The shapes there, and shadows, seem to be so ancient. The song was sorta inspired by these spirits they call jumbis.”
The jumbis, a Caribbean term for “spirits” or “demons,” are believed to exercise their evil power over the Caribbean. For Dylan, they are each the “Jokerman.” Infidels still retains a strong penchant for biblical texts, particularly the book of Ecclesiastes and the book of Revelation. Thus, “Jokerman” could also be the Antichrist, the son of perdition, “manipulator of crowds,” man of “Sodom and Gomorrah.” Against this evil spirit that obeys only the “law of the jungle,” Dylan sets up the moral precepts found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (the third and fifth books of the Old Testament), which focus on law. The last verse recounts the beginning of the final battle between good and evil with the birth of a prince.
This mystical vision is not the only possible interpretation. The “Jokerman” could be the artist lazing on his boat, whose main goal is to entertain the crowds—the one who “[dances] to the nightingale tune.” As always with Dylan, the song can be appreciated regardless of its interpretation. Dylan admitted in 1991 to journalist Paul Zollo that he was not really pleased with the song: “That’s a song that got away from me… It probably didn’t hold up for me because in my mind it has been written and rewritten and written again.”20
Production
Sly Dunbar told MOJO magazine, “Bob Dylan always do songs in different keys, like he’ll change three, four different keys in a song, and he will change the lyrics on the fly, so when we cut ‘Jokerman,’ we recorded it and then we had a break overnight. [Dylan] came in the morning and said, ‘Oh, gentlemen, could you just run ‘Jokerman’ for me again?’ Nobody knew the tape was spinning; we were just running down the music and he said, ‘OK, that’s it’—it was the take we didn’t know we were taking that he used.”134
The recording of “Jokerman” started on April 13, 1983, with five takes. The following day another take was done. The sound of the African drums gave the piece color. “Jokerman” has a laid-back reggae groove—more precisely, rock and reggae. The rhythm, provided by Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, two giants of Jamaican music and stars of reggae, is inimitable and irresistible. Their characteristic rhythmic pulse in this ballad curiously gives it a pop feeling, which is reinforced by Mark Knopfler on his Stratocaster (Schecter). Supported by Alan Clark’s ethereal organ, Dylan delivers an excellent vocal in this sublime ballad with a rich and, for Dylan, unusual harmony. After Knopfler’s first impressive solo, Dylan plays harmonica (in E-flat). The sound is very curious, very equalized, and probably treated with a sound effect, but the result fits the tune perfectly. Finally, after the fourth verse (around 3:29), Mick Taylor enters, probably on his Gibson Les Paul with a saturated tone.
The opening title on Infidels, “Jokerman” is a great song proclaiming a new era for the songwriter. As his first song recorded in digital, the sound is colder, cleaner, with an apparent lack of roundness but with greater precision. Dylan had just switched to the digital age, not necessarily the best technology to express his creative fervor. On May 8, according to studio record sheets, Sammy Figueroa added percussion, but it is, unfortunately, inaudible.
“Jokerman” was released as a single with a live version of “Isis” on the B-side in April 1984, exactly one year after the recording sessions, but it failed on the pop charts. However, Bob Dylan has performed “Jokerman” more than 150 times onstage since the concert at the Verona Arena in Italy on May 28, 1984.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
A music video of “Jokerman” was directed by George Lois, best known for his work with Esquire magazine in the 1960s. He mixed close-ups of Dylan during the song’s choruses with images from art history and the words of the song. It won an MTV Award for Best Music Video in 1983.
Sweetheart Like You
Bob Dylan / 4:36
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals
Mark Knopfler: guitar
Mick Taylor: guitar
Alan Clark: organ, piano
Robbie Shakespeare: bass
Sly Dunbar: drums, percussion
Recording Studio
The Power Station / Studio A: New York, April 18, 1983 (Overdub May 10, 1983)
Technical Team
Producers: Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler
Sound Engineer: Neil Dorfsman
Genesis and Lyrics
The heroine of this song embodies all the best qualities, both physically and spiritually. Symbolizing resistance to the baseness of humanity, enduring every humiliation and mocked by wolf whistles, she even has a Christ-like dimension. Yet Dylan made every feminist’s hair stand on end with these provocative lines, “You know, a woman like you should be at home / That’s where you belong / Watching out for someone who lov
es you true.” In 1984, he defended himself by saying to Kurt Loder, “Actually, that line didn’t come out exactly the way I wanted it to. But, uh… I could easily have changed that line to make it not so overly, uh, tender, you know? But I think the concept still woulda been the same.”20 This piece could also be a comment on the conservative revolution started at about the same time by the American president Ronald Reagan and the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The last verse is clear, condemning patriotism as “the last refuge / To which a scoundrel clings.” Dylan sends out a sloganlike line, “Steal a little and they throw you in jail / Steal a lot and they make you king.” In a 1983 interview with Martin Keller, Dylan said of “Sweetheart Like You,” “I guess that’s a Byronesque ballad… Sort of like Childe Harold in Babylon or Elizabethan rhythm and blues.”
Production
The working title of the song was “By the Way, That’s a Cute Hat.” Dylan and his band recorded two takes of “Sweetheart Like You” on April 14, and four days later eighteen others (the ninth being retained as a base rhythm track). This ballad with a soul-pop feeling is another excellent song on the album. Dylan provides a good vocal performance; his style moves from emotion to determination. The Jamaican duo perform with utter professionalism. Two acoustic guitars can be heard, presumably played by Knopfler, who was indeed playing the riff on the electric throughout. But the astonishing solo at the end grabs the listener’s attention. It was played without a doubt by Mick Taylor on his Gibson Les Paul (overdub on May 10). On the official video, the guitarist playing is Carla Olson, who played later with Mick Taylor (Too Hot for Snakes, 1991).
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 68