The rock world was shocked when Bob Dylan found Jesus. It shouldn’t have been. Dylan had spent the past 15 years undergoing crucifixion after crucifixion—when he went electric and the folk purists cried, “Judas!”; when his disciples wrote him off after the release of 1970’s still inexplicable Self-Portrait; and when those same disciples, drawn back by 1975’s Blood on the Tracks, nailed him to the cross again for 1979’s Bob Dylan at Budokan—and he was tired of being a Messiah. It’s no wonder he finally gave up and abandoned his status as a prophet to kneel, a humble acolyte, before an alien God. Let somebody else take the heat, he must have thought. I’ve had the shits of the crucifixion biz.
Ironically, his conversion (as revealed first in his 1979 LP Slow Train Coming) led to yet another crucifixion at the hands of his fans and critics, but he didn’t care. He was saved; it said so right in the title of his second Christian-era LP. By then I was amongst the crowd shouting for the hammer and the nails, and refused to even listen to either bloody album. To me Dylan was the guy who said don’t follow leaders and watch the parking meters, and frankly I was embarrassed for his sake. Embarrassed and disgusted. Religion, so far as I was (and still am) concerned is for slavish followers, and to find the haughty fellow who wrote “Like a Rolling Stone” amongst them was unthinkable, an abomination.
I avoided 1980’s Saved (as well as Slow Train Coming and 1981’s Shot of Love, the last of his born-again trilogy) for decades, because I lacked the stomach to hear my hero turned Jesus freak preaching the gospel via his music. And I probably never would have listened to Saved had I not heard “Pressing On” as sung by John Doe in Todd Haynes’ masterful 2007 Dylan biopic, I’m Not There. The song’s gospel flavor captivated me, although a few more years would pass before I actually listened to Saved in its entirety.
Unlike Dylan’s other religious albums, Saved was a humble affair; it couldn’t boast Slow Train Coming’s guitar work by Mark Knopfler or the horns of Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, much less the slew of stars (Ringo Starr, Ronnie Wood, Benmont Tench, Donald Dunn, Clydie King, etc.) who showed up to play on Shot of Love. But it doesn’t matter. Because Saved, artifact of a fallen hero or not, is great in some places, and pretty darn good in others. As for its message, I’ve grown open-minded enough to let people hang themselves with their own words, and in Dylan’s case compassionate enough to realize that whatever it was that led him to Jesus, it must have been spiritually painful indeed.
To be saved is to be saved from something, and while I don’t know what that something was in Dylan’s case, I don’t really care either. I suppose I’m glad he discovered what he needed in fundamentalist Christianity, although I still wish he’d found his way to one of your Christianity Lite sects, like the Unitarians or the Quakers. But then again Dylan always was a fanatic, and no believer in half-measures. We should all probably be glad he didn’t find his way to Jonestown.
But onto Saved, which is surprisingly listenable once you get over the shock of the sage of our age sucking up to a Supreme Being. It opens with the slow “Satisfied Mind,” a cover of a Red Hayes/Jack Rhodes song which features Dylan going “Mmmmmmmmm” over and over while singing that you’ll be lucky to find one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind. Meanwhile Clydie King and his other female backup singers are doing their gospel thang, and that’s about it—nice, simple, and satisfying to both mind and ears. As for the title track, which was co-written by Dylan and bassist Tim Drummond, it’s a fast-paced, piano-driven tune that is downright catchy. Dylan may be singing about how he was saved by the blood of the lamb, but that piano kicks things along like a rocker by Jerry Lee Lewis, who unlike Dylan believes in Jesus but also believes he’s beyond salvation because he plays the devil’s music. I had a bad feeling about “Covenant Woman” based solely on its title, but it’s an okay ballad; nowhere near his best work, but far more likable than I expected. It features a keyboard solo that’s a bit too “supper club” for my tastes, and Dylan doesn’t sound as impassioned as I’d like, but the melody is nice and Dylan doesn’t consign me to hell in the lyrics, so I suppose I should be grateful.
“What Can I Do For You” is a dud, more or less, with all the charisma of Lazarus climbing out of his grave, sleep dirt still in his unbelieving eyes. It sorta crawls along, the backing vocalists jumping in here and there, while Bobby D takes a couple of fundamentalist turns on the harmonica and asks Jesus what he can do to pay him back for the many wonderful gifts he’s been given. “Solid Rock,” on the other hand, establishes a fast-paced groove that is pretty cool, over which a fervent Bob sings, “Well, I’m hanging on to a solid rock/Made before the foundation of the world/And won’t let go, and I can’t let go, won’t let go/And I can’t let go, won’t let go, and I can’t let go no more” to the accompaniment of his female backups. As for “Pressing On,” it’s a great song—a slow starter with just Bob and a piano. Then the backup singers come in, and they establish a soulful gospel groove. “I just keep pressing on,” sings Bob, “to the higher calling of my Lord” while the piano sets the pace. His singing grows more urgent as he goes on, the backing singers wail and moan, and it almost makes me want to go to church, but not quite, because I’m a happy sinner who finds only one sympathetic figure in the entire Bible, namely Job’s wife, who after God took everything from them recommended that Job “Curse God and die.”
“In the Garden” taps into that gospel vein as well, and it works thanks to Bob’s fervor and the way the song builds to a climax, comes back to Earth, and climbs to yet another heavenly climax. The song’s lyrics address those involved in Christ’s mission, death, and resurrection, and whether they believed in his divinity or wrote him off as just another religious nut. “When he healed and crippled/Did they see?” he asks repeatedly, and “Did they speak out against Him/Did they dare?” The backing singers really make this one work, along with that great piano, and I wish “Saving Grace” worked as well. It’s not bad, mind you, a slow number in which Dylan asks God, “If you find it in your heart can I be forgiven?/Guess I owe you some kind of apology.” He goes on to say he expected by this time to be in a pine box for all eternity, but was protected by the saving grace hanging over him. I like the tone of the guitar solo at the midway point, and the organ that follows, and the passion that Dylan summons up as he sings on and on about how all roads lead to Calvary. Then the guitar and organ come in again, before the song ends.
It’s followed by the apocalyptic prepper “Are You Ready,” and I assume he’s not wondering whether I’ve packed a suitcase. This one’s a bluesy hard rocker with lots of input from the backing vocalists, and features Dylan repeating “Am I ready?” and “Are you ready” and my personal favorite, “I hope I’m ready.” Which is followed by a piercing guitar solo that takes no prisoners, while the drums bash away and the organ takes a turn. I really like this tune and plan to cover it in the next band I’m in, because when he asks, “Are you ready for Armageddon?” it’s so cool. As is the harmonica he plays as the song fades out. I’ve got to hand it to the guy; he may have found the Lord, but he’s still the zealous young man who warned that a hard rain was going to fall.
And that may be the bottom line. Dylan was always a prophet of the apocalypse; his rebirth as a Christian merely gave him a new angle from which to utter his gloomy prophecies and profound denunciations of the ills of society. “This wheel shall explode,” his tombstone could read, because he’s spent his whole career predicting the worst; from his lofty perch he’s looked down upon our wrack and ruin of a world and found it wanting.
Christianity was his way out, his escape from a world forever out of joint. The road to Calvary was just Highway 61 revisited, but from the perspective of someone saved from its implications, rather than a mocking onlooker. With the flood coming and the levee threatening to break, Dylan cast about for an escape, and he found it in Jesus. I shall be released, he once sang, and he found that release hanging on the cross. And who am I to cast stones? Too much of nothing, he sang, makes a man ill at ease, and we all find that vital something that will ease us in the best way we can. Bobby Dylan found it in the Bible. I have yet to find it anywhere. So who knows; maybe he was on to something after all.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
