With his monumental January 1975 release ‘Blood on the Tracks‘, Bob Dylan reestablished his position as the preeminent songwriter of the rock era.
It had taken a failing marriage to reignite the muse of the single most important figure in contemporary culture, his creative artistry returning in abundance Dylan as expressed feelings of deep personal despair with the same eloquence he used in the 1960s to articulate changing social attitudes – ‘Blood on the Tracks‘ containing his most gripping lyrical expressionism since those times in reaffirming nobody else could be so compelling. No one at all.
As 1975 lay out before him 34-year-old Dylan, his critical esteem restored, began working with an enthusiasm and buoyancy he had not shown since the mid-60s. There was talk a collection of R&B covers was in the works, while he had also come round to the idea of finally allowing official release of (The) ‘Basement Tapes‘, a double-album worth of stunning material recorded in 1967 with his incomparable 1960s backing troupe The Band, at a house named Big Pink in upstate New York.
Year on year the aura surrounding these recordings had increased, Dylan, with the possible exception of Neil Young, alone among his contemporaries in creating four sides of exceptional music only to leave it on a shelf for eight years.
Separated from Sara, his wife of nine years and mother to their four children (the family living in Malibu), in March 1975 Dylan departed on a writing sojourn to the South of France, which in actuality resulted in just one song – although a very fine effort, (‘One More Cup of Coffee‘) it has to be said – but on returning to the U.S. gravitated to New York and in particular the Greenwich Village folk club haunts from the early days of his career.
With the concurrent activity surrounding ‘The Basement Tapes‘, there is a sense Dylan is having difficulty outrunning the past, the title of his next album ‘DESIRE‘ (January 1976) perhaps expressing the need to do exactly that.
Yet as one would expect from such a mercurial figure, the connotations are far more convoluted. Beyond doubt, however, is that his 17th studio album, while no less fascinating than a great many of the others, represented a unique entry into his body of work – a status it retains to this day.
On arriving in New York Dylan had been introduced to playwright and Broadway director Jacques Levy (known in rock circles for a writing a number of songs with former-Byrd and now solo performer Roger McGuinn), the pair agreeing to join forces as a songwriting entity – the forthcoming ‘Desire‘ album having the unprecedented (and unrepeated) feature of containing Bob Dylan songs that have been co-written, Levy receiving credit on seven of the nine tracks.
Indeed, Levy’s background is evident the lengthy, true life narratives that begin each side of the record – ‘Hurricane‘, based on events leading to the wrongful incarceration of boxer Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter and ‘Joey‘, depicting the murder of mobster Joey Gallo, both conveyed as scripted drama set to music.
While an intense three-week composing interlude yielded a wealth of material (Levy later claiming they wrote twice the number of songs that appeared on the final cut of ‘Desire‘), Dylan also extended this new found spirit of collaboration to the recording process.
At various times Columbia Studios in New York was full to the brim with top-notch sessioneers (Hugh McCracken, Mel Collins, Vinnie Bell), eight-piece R & B outfit Kokomo along with visiting in town rock luminaries Eric Clapton, Dave Mason and ex-Mott the Hoople front man Ian Hunter. They gathered with drummer Howie Wyeth, bass player Rob Stoner and violinist Scarlet Rivera, who Dylan had already decided would play on the album, the ensuing chaos producing just one track (‘Romance in Durango‘) that survived to make the finished album – producer Don De Vito having no control over the whims and what-we-should-do’s of the artist at the centre of things.
If Dylan did not see this pandemonium as prohibitive in terms of a working environment, then De Vito and Clapton did, both suggesting he clear the deck (or studio in this case) and record with a greatly reduced band of players. At a stroke the supporting musicians were stripped back to a core of Wyeth, Stoner and Rivera, although in maintaining aspirations of adding a female vocal dimension to the sound, an invitation was sent out and accepted by Emmylou Harris, the country-rock songstress arriving to add her resonant tones to what Dylan was intending to record.
The spontaneous feel he sought quickly became apparent to her as within minutes of entering the studio and with barely a chance to study the lyrics she had been handed, Harris was in a recording booth. At times there appears an add-libbing element to her vocal lines, not that it sounds detrimental to the finished piece, in fact adds to the immediacy of it all.
With the supporting cast now paired back to a minimum there was a sudden upturn in productivity, the majority of tracks laid down through a four day gallop at the end (28th-31st) of July 1975.
But in the meantime Dylan developed plans to write and feature in a film (the subsequent ‘Renaldo and Clara‘, a somewhat indulgent road movie that made little sense, including to those appearing in it, eventually seeing the light of day in 1978), while neither could he let go of a notion to undertake an ‘anti-tour‘ tour – heading out on the road to play small venues with little pre-publicity, this in stark contrast to a run of arena-based shows Dylan had played on reconvening with The Band in early 1974.
This particular ambition quickly gained momentum and with cohorts such as McGuinn, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, David Blue, poet Allan Ginsberg, Stoner, Rivera, Wyeth and former David Bowie sideman/guitarist Mick Ronson in tow, the ‘Rolling Thunder Revue‘ as it became known began in earnest as October 1975 came to a close.
It produced some extraordinary music, but this travelling rock circus soon manifested into a financial disaster as it ploughed on through November and December, creating the necessity of ultimately playing venues with the capacity of Madison Square Garden and the Texas Astrodome which undermined the original ethos. Taking the shows into such places had become essential in allowing Columbia Records, for whom Dylan recorded, to recoup a fraction of their costs in supporting this daring artistic escapade, if ultimately doomed commercial venture.
Those who attended the performances, at whatever sized location, heard inspired versions of songs from Dylan’s back catalogue along with a batch of new and as yet unreleased material – the album recorded back in the late-summer of 1975 remaining in the can with each passing week of the Rolling Thunder Revue.
The release date, however, had not been pushed back until the first week of the following year because its creator was still touring, more in regard to legal issues surrounding the content of opening track ‘Hurricane‘.
Written to protest the innocence of former middleweight fighter Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, who in 1967 at the age of 29 had been found guilty of a triple murder, it stands as one of his great pieces of evocative narration. While not an altogether accurate account of events, especially in relation to chronological timeline, Dylan in the dramatic first line sets the scene, Levy with the second emphasising his stage-writing background:
‘Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night/Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall/She sees the bartender in a pool of blood/Cries out, “My God, they’ve killed them all!”
Punctuated by the incisive violin lines of Rivera, (which increase in fervour as the drama unfolds) and steady work from a rhythm section supplemented by propulsive congas played by percussionist Luther Rix, Dylan makes his musical contribution on acoustic guitar – inspired to convey the story upon reading Carter’s 1974 autobiography ‘The Sixteenth Round‘, written during the early years of serving his life sentence.
Delivering the piece with striking intent Dylan rails against the injustice, calling out the legal system for its racism (‘If you’re black you might as well not show up on the street/Unless you wanna draw the heat‘) and the inconsistences attached to a clearly unsafe conviction:
‘Yes, here’s the story of the Hurricane/The man the authorities came to blame/For somethin’ that he’d never done/Put in a prison cell, but one time he coulda been/The champion of the world.’
Never wavering in his accusatory tone in regard to the police and judiciary, Dylan has no intention of letting those guilty of the judicial miscarriage off the hook, his anger coupled with righteous indignation in this metaphorical clash of David against Goliath – the truth having been subjected to mockery and manipulation:
‘How can the life of such a man/Be in the palm of some fool’s hand?/To see him obviously framed/Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land/Where justice is a game‘
Due to the potentially libelous content attached to some of the lyrical couplets, the legal department at Columbia insisted upon some changes, most in relation to those implicated in committing the crime. Dylan subsequently revised a couple of lines and in doing so re-recorded the entire track three months after cutting the original take. The final late-October rendition features actress/singer Ronee Blakley (another member of the Rolling Thunder troupe) on backing vocals rather than Harris, who had sung on the initial version.
The song shed light on the Carter case but at a retrial in 1976 (Dylan having played a couple of benefit shows during the Rolling Thunder jaunt to assist with legal costs), he was again found guilty with an order for continuation of the sentence. But in November 1985 the convictions of 1967 and 1976 were set aside by the United States District Court of New Jersey, the locale where the murders (for which nobody has ever been brought to justice) were committed.
After taking up a human rights cause of behalf of an individual, Dylan moves headlong in Egyptian mysticism with ‘Isis‘, the lyrics a collection of surrealist anecdotes centred on a captivating mystical female, the title appertaining to a divine wife/mother figure in Middle-Eastern folklore.
Delivering the song from the piano, with familiar harmonica blasts between the verses, the melody has overtones of country-swing, Dylan conveying a lyric which is often ambiguous in revealing what she truly represents, ‘I married Isis on the fifth day of May/But I could not hold on to her very long/So I cut off my hair and I rode straight away/For the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong.’
As the protagonist continues his quest for meaning (‘As we rode through the canyons/Through the devilish cold/I was thinking about Isis, how she thought I was so reckless‘), the journey extends far and wide (‘We came to The Pyramids/All embedded in ice’) while encompassing an episode of futile grave-robbing, (‘I broke into the tomb but the casket was empty/There was no jewels no nothing I felt I’d been had‘). Yet as the fast unfolding cinematic imagery moves to a conclusion, there develops a feeling that salvation has been close at hand all along – contemplations within the final verse suggesting a broader, more personal perspective to the narrative:
‘Isis, oh, Isis you mystical child/What drives me to you is what drives me insane/I still can remember the way that you smiled/On the fifth day of May in the drizzling rain.’
Introducing some light relief ‘Mozambique‘, at three minutes the shortest track on the album, represents culmination of a game between the two co-writers in regard to how many words they could find to rhyme with the title.
As things transpire Dylan and Levy concoct an atmospheric piece based upon a romance taking place in a land where ‘The sunny sky is aqua blue‘. The ‘Cheek to cheek‘/’Stop to speak‘/‘Final peak‘ connotations are all amusingly inserted, although ironically it is the bridge, without any, (‘Lying next to her by the ocean/Reaching out and touching her hand/Whispering your secret emotion’/Magic in a magical land‘) where the lyricism is found at its most endearing.
The only song he did manage to complete during the time spent in France (and thus credited solely to Dylan), ‘One More Cup of Coffee‘ (Valley Below), is a haunting folk-song melodrama, the composition having a doleful resonance due to the mournful violin accompaniment.
With Stoner contributing sympathetic bass lines, the central figure is another beguiling woman shrouded in mystery (‘Your daddy he’s an outlaw/And a wanderer by trade/He’ll teach you how to pick and choose/And how to throw the blade‘) who draws all manner of differing emotions from within the writer, ‘But I don’t sense affection/No gratitude or love/Your loyalty is not to me/But to the stars above.’
The eerie ambience is enhanced by Dylan and Harris simultaneously singing different lines at the first chorus, he (‘One more cup of coffee for the road‘), she (‘One more cup of coffee before I go‘) and although his guest offered to re-sing the line in the interests of cohesion, the ambiguity appealed to the writer who let it pass as the definitive take.
By virtue of the crisp but downbeat drumming of Wyeth the ominous mood persists and while the two singers, just for a moment, are not lyrically speaking on the same page there is undoubted chemistry between them, Dylan in the closing lines reflecting upon the bittersweet desires that are testing him:
‘And your pleasure knows no limits/Your voice is like a meadowlark/But your heart is like an ocean /Mysterious and dark.’
Structured and performed like an earthy spiritual from the Old West, the fragility of a relationship comes under scrutiny in serene side one closer ‘Oh Sister.’
Believed by most to have been written in reply to the potent Baez composition ‘Diamonds and Rust‘ that contains several allusions to Dylan and their romantic entanglement of the early-60s, the song had been the title-track of her critically acclaimed album released earlier in the year. For his part, in this public exchange of directed sentiment, Dylan appears to be reaching out in friendship with guarded affection, pondering a religious aspect to their bond which he considers to have holy blessing:
‘Oh, sister, am I not a brother to you/And one deserving of affection?/And is our purpose not the same on this earth/To love and follow His direction?‘
Being so absorbed in the emotional Dylan/Harris vocals in this plea for human kindness is not to miss the striking fusion of violin and harmonica, whose interweaving effect makes it hard to tell where one instrument ends and another begins.
While the lyric strikes a note of caution in that kinship cannot be taken for granted, ‘Oh, sister, when I come to knock on your door/Don’t turn away, you’ll create sorrow/Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore/You may not see me tomorrow,’ this tender, resonant track would not prove the last musical correspondence between them.
While touring as part of the Rolling Thunder Revue (captured on film during the tour is a fascinating, if prickly exchange between Baez and Dylan as they reflect on their romance of the distant past), Baez wrote a number of songs for her next album, one of which was pointedly titled ‘O Brother‘ – but far from accepting his overtures for a cosy friendship, she pens lines that suggest there are complexities he has overlooked:
‘And I’ve known you for a good long while/And would you kindly tell me, mister/How in the name of the Father and the Son/Did I come to be your sister?’
Side two opens with the 11-minute, 12-verse epic that is ‘Joey‘ which at best is a highly romanticized biography of New York mobster ‘Crazy’ Joey Gallo (1929-1943) – although revered rock commentor Lester Banks heard it as character white-washing, dismissing the song as ‘repellent‘ and ‘mindlessly amoral.’
Accused, but never convicted, of committing two murders, Gallo was imprisoned on conspiracy and extortion charges in 1961. Released in April 1971 he no longer found himself welcome as part of the Colombo crime family, his destiny mapped out from the first chorus of this intermittently ponderous ballad:
‘Joey, Joey/King of the streets, child of clay/Joey, Joey/What made them want to come and blow you away?’
Nicely decorated by the delicate accordion playing of Dominic Cortese, ‘Joey‘ is overwrought and often misleading in painting an overtly flattering picture of someone linked to several violent incidents, the verse describing Gallo’s death (that occurred on April 7 1972, his 43rd birthday), extolling his virtue in attempting to save those with him:
‘One day they blew him down in a clam bar in New York/He could see it comin’ through the door as he lifted up his fork/He pushed the table over to protect his family/Then he staggered out into the streets of Little Italy.’
From one song that builds to a climax of bloodshed the album moves on with another, ‘Romance in Durango‘ built around a fugitive on the run with his lover, Magdalena, their flee from justice (for an unspecified crime), leading them to Mexico.
The backdrop is beautifully enhanced by Clapton’s understated guitar work and the Tijuana-styled trumpet playing of Mike Lawrence, while in the foreground the couple continue toward their intended destination of Durango – somewhere Dylan (playing a character named ‘Alias‘) was familiar with being the location where Sam Peckinpah filmed his 1973 Western ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid‘ for which he wrote the song ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door‘, that to date was Dylan’s biggest hit of the decade.
Singing the chorus in Spanish but writing enthralling verse lines in English (‘Hoofbeats like castanets on stone’), the pursued couple who have visions of lifelong togetherness (‘You’ll shine with diamonds in your wedding gown‘), are eventually tracked down, such dreams of the future ended by a destructive bullet:
‘Was that the thunder that I heard?/My head is vibrating, I feel a sharp pain/Come sit by me, don’t say a word/Oh, can it be that I am slain?’
No sooner does this tumultuous tale set in an exotic location end then another begins, the near split-second gap before ‘Black Diamond Bay‘ presumably to save space on a record that runs to an overall length of just over 56 minutes – ‘Desire‘ having the running time of three sides compressed onto two, the huge-selling 1975 Paul Simon album ‘Still Crazy After All These Years‘ for example clocking in at a modest (not in terms of quality), 35 minutes.
Pooling their collective appreciation for the literature of Joseph Conrad (‘Black Diamond Bay’ mentioned in his 1915 Indonesian-based novel ‘Victory‘), Dylan and Levy construct an intriguing story populated by various enigmatic characters (woman in a Panama hat, suicidal Greek man, possible Soviet ambassador), each one seemingly at a loss to how they have come to be in such a strange environment.
With its segments of betting and cards being dealt (‘While a loser in the gambling room lights up a candle/Says, “Open up another deck”), there are allusions aplenty to risk and life being a game of chance, a tale layered with paradox unfolding in the shadow of a volcano that eventually erupts.
Above an effortlessly lilting folk melody, cushioned by the gorgeous tones of Harris, the storyteller, much like the one in ‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts‘ on ‘Blood on the Tracks‘ is kept busy recounting every detail and plot twist.
But with the final verse Dylan pulls off his most masterful allusory feint in relaying how somewhere following an earthquake the only items to be found were ‘a Panama hat/And a pair of old Greek shoes‘, which he discovers while at home watching the seven o’clock news in L.A. At this point the commentary is delivered in the first-person, the television viewer showing little empathy with a natural disaster to have occurred so far away:
‘Seems like every time you turn around/There’s another hard-luck story that you’re gonna hear/And there’s really nothin’ anyone can say/And I never did plan to go anyway/To Black Diamond Bay‘.
After all the allusion and allegories evident through a number of songs that have gone before, ‘Desire‘ closes with Dylan (the track credited to just him) writing the most direct and overtly autobiographical piece of his career – ‘Sara‘ a raw, unflinching appeal to his estranged wife for reconciliation.
In keeping with his two previous albums – ‘Wedding Song‘ (‘Planet Waves’)/’Buckets of Rain‘ (‘Blood on the Tracks’) – it is another closing track offering clear expression of love for the woman to whom he has been married since 1965. But now the sentiments come coated in desperation as the stark reality of their marriage ending has come fully into view.
With the instrumentation kept sparse and Harris not involved, Dylan makes the case for their continued union by looking back fondly at happier times, (‘When the children were babies and played on the beach‘), the repeated use of her name at each chorus adding to the urgency he feels for all not being lost:
‘Sara, Sara/It’s all so clear, I could never forget/Sara, Sara/Lovin’ you is the one thing I’ll never regret.’
Confirmed by a number of those at the session that Sara was present for recording of the track, her heartstrings are further tugged when Dylan, enunciating with great clarity, takes the never before made step of referencing one of his own songs in another. Turning the clock back ten years he reveals how the final piece on his era-defining 1966 ‘Blonde on Blonde‘ album came to be created, ‘Stayin’ up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/Writin’ “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” for you‘.
Yet for all the impassioned hopefulness there remains an air of fatalism, lines such as ‘Sara, Sara/Wherever we travel we’re never apart‘, suggesting he knew deep down they were destined to part (the couple did briefly reconcile but endured a messy separation after Sara filed for divorce in 1977). Indeed, while the song makes no specific reference to the cause of their martial strife, such as his alleged infidelities, it does come with the blunt admission, ‘Sara, Sara/You must forgive me my unworthiness.‘
While travails in Dylan’s personal life would remain through the months ahead, ‘Desire‘ was released to favourable reviews, his reemergence irrefutably confirmed when it simultaneously topped the U.S. and U.K. charts.
Despite some critical reservations (many centred on the content of ‘Joey‘) most reviewers warmed to the fact he was again, with assistance from Levy, writing character-driven pieces based on those who were out of luck or out of sync with their surroundings, figures for whom truth is shrouded in vagueness.
All of which left the best appraisal of ‘Desire‘ in 1976 to come inadvertently come from the pen of Baez, who in ‘Diamonds and Rust‘ describes Dylan to be:
‘You, who are so good with words/And keeping things vague.’
BOB DYLAN – DESIRE (Released January 5 1976):
Hurricane/Isis/Mozambique/One More Cup of Coffee/Oh, Sister/Joey/Romance in Durango/Black Diamond Bay/Sara;
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