Slow Train Coming -- Bob Dylan (1979)
Consider Dylan’s born-again phase, and the insistent pulpit pounding of Slow Train Coming—a friend tried to convince me it’s full of conviction and creative worth, but I’m not buying. Dylan’s biblical borrowings aren’t new currency; he’s been strip-mining scripture since day one, patching together Old Testament thunder and parched gospel imagery, whether he’s riding the tide in “When the Ship Comes In” or picking at spiritual scabs in John Wesley Harding. Dylan isn’t just a magpie for sacred texts—he’s the master of turning tired idioms inside out, his voice always straying somewhere between prophetic and profane. At his best, he traffics in existential uncertainty, never content to hand out answers, always inviting you into the labyrinth knowing you’ll never find the center.
Slow Train Coming, though, is a different beast. Masks off.
Subtlety gone. Instead, you get blunt-force dogma, Dylan as Sunday school
disciplinarian, rallying the troops with “You gotta serve somebody” sermons and
threats of damnation for the unconverted. Gone is the sly relativism, replaced
by the flat certainty of the freshly saved: you’re either in or you’re out, no
questions, no shades of gray. If spiritual crisis was once the engine of his
art, now it’s just a flag waved in your face. Sure, maybe faith gave him a
ladder out of whatever existential sinkhole he’d fallen into, and I won’t
begrudge the man his lifeline. But what’s missing is any trace of
introspection—he’s no Eliot or Greene, no Lewis, just a preacher at a tent
revival, voice all brimstone, the ambiguity left to rot behind the altar.
Let’s be clear: Dylan burned bright in the ’60s, then spent
the following years outrunning the shadow of his own genius, sometimes with
pyrotechnic self-destruction (see: Self Portrait). Slow Train Coming feels less
like a second coming and more like a warning flare. If you spend all your
insight on one revelation, what do you have left for the long road ahead?
Dylan’s latest incarnation is the saddest of all: a legend gutted by the weight
of his own myth, now stuffed full of the easy certainties of the converted. In
the end, it’s a cautionary tale for anyone tempted by answers that come too
easily—listen closely, even if the tune’s gone flat.
Ron Rosenbaum recently published a book on Dylan called Things Have Changed. He goes into great detail about Bob’s Christian phase. Think you’d like it.
ReplyDeleteI probally would enjoy the book, as I wrote this review in 1979, fifty years ago and have come to like this record much more than when I was a 27 year old know it all. Especially effective on the record was the band itself , a genuine blues-funk unit that maintain a pulsing groove throughout, all of which provides the right set of earthly moods for Dylan's world weary vocals and Mark Knopfler's brilliant Albert King inspired lead guitar work. I think this is one of best bands had the privilege to record with. For the message being delivered, I'll grant the Bard his right to believe, worship and speak as he sees fit and believe as well he was serious at this moment in time, but I remain agnostic about a need to bend a knee to deities . What actually is interesting is the kind doom and gloom Dylan hints at and see him delivering a message a bit concealed under the preaching, which I think is the need to have a purpose greater than one's own ambitions . We serve one another under whatever philosophical rationale we choose or we suffer the consequences when we choke on the mess we've made of the world we've been gifted with.
ReplyDeleteRosenbaum’s view on Bob’s Christian years was actually pretty similar to what you first posted Ted. He hated the albums and the preachy shows. According to Rosenbaum, Dylan's conversion was influenced by a combination of factors: a perceived "disenchantment with Judaism," personal and emotional turmoil, and being taken advantage of by "Jesus-freak brainwashing" fanatics.
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