Despite being a Christian, I don’t listen to contemporary “worship music.” I find it bland and repetitive. If I don’t believe whoever wrote a pedestrian song was inspired, I can’t be inspired, either. Who knows if Bob Dylan is still a Christian today? Who knows if he truly was back then? After his three “Christian albums,” several songs for the following Infidels sessions were full of Christian, or at least Biblical, imagery: “Foot of Pride” and “Lord, Protect My Child” are well-known outtakes from that 1983 album, while “Man of Peace” actually made the cut; its chorus “sometimes Satan, you know he comes as a man of peace,” echoes a verse from 2 Corinthians: “Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.” The lead track, “Jokerman,” was packed with explicit Old Testament references, even if it seemed to be describing something else entirely. One could even argue that the pro-Israel “Neighborhood Bully” from Infidels was rooted in Dylan’s experience with the Bible, or just his own Jewish heritage, or maybe even both. Biblical imagery, however, would continue to appear in Dylan’s songs long after his faith became ambiguous, and had actually made appearances long before – “All Along the Watchtower” draws some of its words from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, chapter 21 (I’m serious – snoop around).
But as for identifying a reference to Scripture in a Bob Dylan song and laboring over it as a clue to the state of his faith when he wrote it, if any, is probably a fruitless exercise. Even the title of that first “post-Christian” album: Infidels. It could be a clue in itself. Or, it could mean nothing at all, just a little joke. And, before one reads too deeply into the words of “Death is Not the End” in 1988, in which “the bright light of salvation” and “where the spirit never dies” are hoped for, the caveat remains that a song’s narrator is not always reflective of the songwriter’s beliefs.
Whatever the truth is, the man is notorious for self-contradicting interviews that paint a frustratingly baffling portrait of the artist. He once famously said about the media, “I figured you lied to it.” To be fair, though, maybe we fans ought not have the right to be frustrated – it’s, in a way, none of our business what an artist’s personal beliefs are, unless they choose to splay them on record, film, or text. Sometimes it’s even best not to know: I can’t imagine the horror of being a young Billie Eilish and, upon instant stardom at age sixteen, being harangued by media and the public at large demanding to know your stances on abortion, feminism, wealth inequality, immigration, gender identity, and that cake store that refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
These poor kids don’t even know where babies come from yet.
The burden of being a music star from whom many demand their life answers, the terror of being turned into a golden calf, must be unbearable, unless one just naturally enjoys spouting off their opinions. Bob Dylan no doubt felt this heavier than any major artist before or after him, even more than the Beatles. His beliefs, his thoughts, his views were his, though he was labeled a prophet and those views were adopted with force by his audience.
But, not to defend the demands of such rabid and dogmatic fans, relating to a poignant piece of art while not knowing if the one speaking such seemingly personal statements is being genuine, or if it’s just part of an ever-changing series of the artist’s gimmicks, can be frustrating. Even if, again, sometimes it’s none of our business.
Who knows what goes through Bob Dylan’s head anyway?
But it’s the gentler moments of this otherwise hard rocking album that are most effective, and find Dylan at his most self- reflective, and self-aware. On the gorgeous harmonica-laden ballad “In the Summertime,” he asks, seemingly his audience and his critics, and maybe himself,
Did you respect me for what I did
Or for what I didn’t do
Or for keeping it hid?
Did I lose my mind
when I tried to get rid
of everything you see?
A passage from the 139th Psalm declares, “where can I go from Your presence? If I ascend into the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” It seems that way of thinking, that nothing is truly “secular,” as no song can hide from God, is being applied on songs that aren’t overtly “Christian,” like the genial “Heart of Mine” and the beautiful dirge “Lenny Bruce.” Other artists must have felt these tracks safe enough, as “Heart of Mine” features Ron Wood and Ringo Starr, and the Heartbreakers’ Benmont Tench plays keyboards throughout the album. On that note, it’s amazing to think that Slow Train Coming was produced by Jerry Wexler, who, when Dylan allegedly tried sharing his faith during the sessions, sighed and said, “Bob, you’re dealing with a sixty-two-year-old confirmed Jewish atheist. I’m hopeless. Let’s just make an album.” He proceeded to produce Bob to his first Grammy for “Gotta Serve Somebody,” a song John Lennon dubbed so offensively preachy that he responded with “Serve Yourself.”
Then there’s the ode to Lenny Bruce (1925-1966), the most controversial comedian of his time, and to many a martyr for the First Amendment. On almost any other Dylan album, the eulogy would settle inconspicuously in the track list, as Bruce was almost as much of an icon of 60s counterculture as Dylan and Abbie Hoffman. But when placed on an album identified as a Christian album, its inclusion is curious – at first. The lament is actually very fitting among the title track’s anguish and the bite of “Groom.” “Lenny Bruce” captures a sadness that comes from events in the “secular world” (wherever that is) processed through a faith that is mutually inclusive with inevitable feelings of heartbreak. The closing lyric
Lenny Bruce was bad
He was the brother that you never had
gives the listener a look through watery eyes at loss and waste, of a man dead too soon, even if that man was never the singer’s Christian “brother.”
If Dylan was aware his Christian era was, at least musically, coming to a close, there was no better song that could have rolled over the credits or a closing montage of savagely derisive press clippings than “Every Grain of Sand.” It ranks among “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” “Buckets of Tears,” and “Roll On John” as one of the greatest closing tracks to a Dylan album. Even if he has truly eschewed his faith in Christ since the early 80s, he wrote a realistic and heart-wrenching look at the whole idea of faith that’s topped only by King David’s most anguished but hopeful Psalms. Again, being so emotionally gritty, it’s not the kind of contemporary music played in many churches. An even more stunning, rougher early version of the song is available on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 3. “Every Grain of Sand” encapsulates “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (that’s a Bible verse).
I guess you’d just have to have experienced for yourself the beautiful insanity of faith to identify with the poetry in this song. Or, maybe you just have to be someone with a lot of hope, whose hope wrestles daily with a lot of pain. As Dostoevsky once wrote, “my Hosanna has passed through a furnace of doubt.”
-from the book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems
But as for identifying a reference to Scripture in a Bob Dylan song and laboring over it as a clue to the state of his faith when he wrote it, if any, is probably a fruitless exercise. Even the title of that first “post-Christian” album: Infidels. It could be a clue in itself. Or, it could mean nothing at all, just a little joke. And, before one reads too deeply into the words of “Death is Not the End” in 1988, in which “the bright light of salvation” and “where the spirit never dies” are hoped for, the caveat remains that a song’s narrator is not always reflective of the songwriter’s beliefs.
Whatever the truth is, the man is notorious for self-contradicting interviews that paint a frustratingly baffling portrait of the artist. He once famously said about the media, “I figured you lied to it.” To be fair, though, maybe we fans ought not have the right to be frustrated – it’s, in a way, none of our business what an artist’s personal beliefs are, unless they choose to splay them on record, film, or text. Sometimes it’s even best not to know: I can’t imagine the horror of being a young Billie Eilish and, upon instant stardom at age sixteen, being harangued by media and the public at large demanding to know your stances on abortion, feminism, wealth inequality, immigration, gender identity, and that cake store that refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
These poor kids don’t even know where babies come from yet.
The burden of being a music star from whom many demand their life answers, the terror of being turned into a golden calf, must be unbearable, unless one just naturally enjoys spouting off their opinions. Bob Dylan no doubt felt this heavier than any major artist before or after him, even more than the Beatles. His beliefs, his thoughts, his views were his, though he was labeled a prophet and those views were adopted with force by his audience.
But, not to defend the demands of such rabid and dogmatic fans, relating to a poignant piece of art while not knowing if the one speaking such seemingly personal statements is being genuine, or if it’s just part of an ever-changing series of the artist’s gimmicks, can be frustrating. Even if, again, sometimes it’s none of our business.
Who knows what goes through Bob Dylan’s head anyway?
1981’s Shot of Love is the last, the hardest-rocking, and most accessible of Dylan’s trio of “Born-again” records that began in 1979, all of which were (and still are) widely criticized. I’ve met many non-believers who, despite not having a religious interest, nonetheless appreciate and gravitate toward the book of Job. There are many elements on Shot of Love that reflect that Old Testament figure’s rage and agony. The title track and “The Groom’s Still Waiting At the Altar” are the most musically ferocious things Dylan had done since “Hurricane.” The former finds Dylan decrying the “rape” of the Church and the declaration that “God is dead,” the latter an angry defense of those who “try to be pure at heart, they arrest you for robbery,” blasting those who “mistake your shyness for lewdness, your silence for snobbery.” “The Groom’s Still Waiting” could have easily fit on Highway 61 Revisited – imagine if The Band, or even just Levon Helm or Garth Hudson, had been in the lineup. “Property of Jesus” is exactly what the title suggests, except it’s much more rollicking and loose than any of the more stiff, underwhelming material on the previous Slow Train Coming and Saved. Its lyrics are moving and stark, the opposite of the kind of Christian music that simply doesn’t move me.
But it’s the gentler moments of this otherwise hard rocking album that are most effective, and find Dylan at his most self- reflective, and self-aware. On the gorgeous harmonica-laden ballad “In the Summertime,” he asks, seemingly his audience and his critics, and maybe himself,
Did you respect me for what I did
Or for what I didn’t do
Or for keeping it hid?
Did I lose my mind
when I tried to get rid
of everything you see?
A passage from the 139th Psalm declares, “where can I go from Your presence? If I ascend into the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” It seems that way of thinking, that nothing is truly “secular,” as no song can hide from God, is being applied on songs that aren’t overtly “Christian,” like the genial “Heart of Mine” and the beautiful dirge “Lenny Bruce.” Other artists must have felt these tracks safe enough, as “Heart of Mine” features Ron Wood and Ringo Starr, and the Heartbreakers’ Benmont Tench plays keyboards throughout the album. On that note, it’s amazing to think that Slow Train Coming was produced by Jerry Wexler, who, when Dylan allegedly tried sharing his faith during the sessions, sighed and said, “Bob, you’re dealing with a sixty-two-year-old confirmed Jewish atheist. I’m hopeless. Let’s just make an album.” He proceeded to produce Bob to his first Grammy for “Gotta Serve Somebody,” a song John Lennon dubbed so offensively preachy that he responded with “Serve Yourself.”
Then there’s the ode to Lenny Bruce (1925-1966), the most controversial comedian of his time, and to many a martyr for the First Amendment. On almost any other Dylan album, the eulogy would settle inconspicuously in the track list, as Bruce was almost as much of an icon of 60s counterculture as Dylan and Abbie Hoffman. But when placed on an album identified as a Christian album, its inclusion is curious – at first. The lament is actually very fitting among the title track’s anguish and the bite of “Groom.” “Lenny Bruce” captures a sadness that comes from events in the “secular world” (wherever that is) processed through a faith that is mutually inclusive with inevitable feelings of heartbreak. The closing lyric
Lenny Bruce was bad
He was the brother that you never had
gives the listener a look through watery eyes at loss and waste, of a man dead too soon, even if that man was never the singer’s Christian “brother.”
If Dylan was aware his Christian era was, at least musically, coming to a close, there was no better song that could have rolled over the credits or a closing montage of savagely derisive press clippings than “Every Grain of Sand.” It ranks among “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” “Buckets of Tears,” and “Roll On John” as one of the greatest closing tracks to a Dylan album. Even if he has truly eschewed his faith in Christ since the early 80s, he wrote a realistic and heart-wrenching look at the whole idea of faith that’s topped only by King David’s most anguished but hopeful Psalms. Again, being so emotionally gritty, it’s not the kind of contemporary music played in many churches. An even more stunning, rougher early version of the song is available on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 3. “Every Grain of Sand” encapsulates “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (that’s a Bible verse).
I guess you’d just have to have experienced for yourself the beautiful insanity of faith to identify with the poetry in this song. Or, maybe you just have to be someone with a lot of hope, whose hope wrestles daily with a lot of pain. As Dostoevsky once wrote, “my Hosanna has passed through a furnace of doubt.”
-from the book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems
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