My Dylan Album

I grew up in the church of Dylan. When my father was around, we listened to Bob more than anything else. My mother had a greater dedication to the Beatles, Janis Joplin, and Simon and Garfunkel. When she and I listened to music without my father, that is what I heard.

The Dylan albums that were on repeat were the early ones: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), The Times They Are a-Changin’ (1964), Another Side of Bob Dylan, (1964), Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Blonde on Blonde (1966), and Nashville Skyline (1969). The first concert I ever saw was Dylan at Madison Square Garden, September 30^th, 1978. I was 11.

With that history, the Dylan album that I consider mine, the one I discovered, adopted, and loved, is Infidels. Infidels came out in 1983, when I was 16, and my appetite for music was insatiable. It followed years during which I didn’t listen to much Dylan. I no longer spent much time listening to music with my father, and the trio of Christian albums from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s didn’t do much for me.

And then came Infidels. It was kind of made for me. Classic Bob Dylan, but with the ‘80s sound that was mine. Produced by Mark Knopfler, who, with Dire Straits, had released Making Movies in 1980. I’ve almost certainly listened to Making Movies, straight through, probably more than any other record. Add to Knopfler Mick Taylor, who played with The Rolling Stones on Sticky Fingers and Exile, among my favorite records of all time. Then add the Sly Dunbar/Robbie Shakespeare rhythm section, whom I knew mostly from the Peter Tosh records I owned, and I was hooked.

The album opens with Jokerman, still my favorite on the album. The lyrics are classically Dylan, alone deserving of a Nobel Prize. His voice is strong, not yet the ragged mess it will become. (I write that with love.) He sings with heart and sincerity. The Dunbar/Shakespeare rhythm section is at its best, as are the Mick Taylor fills. The stanza that is a sort of victorious denouement still sends shivers down my spine

It’s a shadowy world, skies are slippery gray
A woman just gave birth to a prince today and dressed him in scarlet
He’ll put the priest in his pocket, put the blade to the heat
Take the motherless children off the street
And place them at the feet of a harlot

There is a video of Dylan singing Jokerman on Letterman with a punk treatment. I like this version better than the one on the album. It makes me wonder what Infidels would have been like, rerecorded the next year with a different producer and band.

Songs in which the singer, singing in the first person, inhabits a role are among my favorites. Sweetheart Like You is one of the best. The protagonist sits at a bar, weakly propositioning a woman with a string of come-ons that reveal everything about him. I love the throwaway:

By the way, that’s a cute hat
And that smile’s so hard to resist

Then there is:

They say that patriotism is the last refuge

To which a scoundrel clings

Steal a little and they throw you in jail

Steal a lot and they make you king

No comment.

The song ends with a Mick Taylor solo that brings to mind Time Waits for No One or Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.

As a teenager, I thought Neighborhood Bully was a cool song. It is kind of punky and shamelessly pro-Israel, released at a time when that was easier to accept. It feels like We Are the Champions. As a teenager, I was probably just excited that I understood the metaphor and realized the importance of this song coming after the so-called Christian Period.

I have nothing to say about License to Kill except that I like it. Ahh, the joy of Substack and not being an actual rock critic. I guess it’s a bit of an environmental commentary, but it’s also all over the place. To be honest, I’ve never been great at interpreting poetry.

Man of Peace is a rocker that flashes back to the best of the previous three albums, songs like The Grooms Still Waiting at the Altar. The guitar on this one sounds like Dire Straits. You also get the message that it would be hard to resist this “man of peace.”

He’s a great humanitarian, he’s a great philanthropist
He knows just where to touch you, honey, and how you like to be kissed
He’ll put both his arms around you
You can feel the tender touch of the beast
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace

Union Sundown is like Neighborhood Bully, but the message is even easier to understand. It is remarkable how little has changed. So much for music making a difference.

I and I is a blend of reggae rhythm, Dylan lyrics, and Dire Straits orchestration. “I and I” appears frequently in reggae, supposedly referring to the oneness of God and humanity.

My favorite story I’ve heard about I and I is that once, Dylan and Leonard Cohen were discussing their music. Cohen told Dylan he liked I and I and asked him how long it had taken him to write it. Dylan replied, “Oh, about 15 minutes.” Dylan then asked Cohen, “How about Hallelujah? That’s a great song. How long did that take?” Cohen responded, “15 years.”

Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight is a sweet song with which to end an album. Dylan ends a lot of albums with love songs. Today, it does sound a bit too ‘80s. I love the stanza about the Louvre because it reminds me of my favorite stanza from Vision of Johanna where “Infinity goes up on trial.” I also can see Dylan winking as he sings:

But it’s like I’m stuck inside a painting
That’s hanging in the Louvre
My throat starts to tickle, and my nose itches
But I know that I can’t move

The stanza about wishing he’d become a doctor also makes me smile:

I wish that I’d been a doctor
Maybe I’d have saved some life that had been lost
Maybe I’d have done some good in the world
‘Stead of burning every bridge I crossed

I still listen to Infidels start to finish, though when I reach for Bob these days, Blood on the Tracks and Blonde on Blonde go on first, with one of my mixes (Best of Dylan and Bob Covers) being next.

The politics of Infidels are less appealing to me these days. More likely, politics as expressed in song lyrics is geared to adolescent ears rather than to the middle-aged brain awash with, or paralyzed by, nuance. The production of the record is also not quite right; it’s got a bit too much of that ‘80s polish.

Of course, it was probably that sound, shared by my other favorite albums of that time — True Democracy and Imperial Bedroom from ’82, Speaking in Tongues and Murmur from ’83 — that sucked me in when I first heard Infidels. It was the voice and lyrics of the music I’d been weaned on, combined with the sound I’d grown into.