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True Believer reaches 70
Tuesday 24 May is Bob Dylan's 70th birthday. So what?
Dylan did an interview a couple of years ago which appeared in the Big Issue magazine. He’s asked about his ‘heroic performance’ of O’ Little Town of Bethlehem on his then-controversial Christmas album, Christmas at the Heart. (It was controversial because it wasn't controversial!)
“I don’t want to put you on the spot’” the interviewer says, “but you sure deliver that song like a true believer.”
To which Dylan emphatically replies with a short but direct answer: “Well, I am a true believer.”
 So much could be - and has been - written about the mysterious, enigmatic Dylan, who brought poetry and protest in the early 60s emerging pop culture, and then electrified it all and smoked pot with the Beatles and did the hippy thing. Born Robert Zimmerman in the Minnesota town of Duluth, Dylan's Jewish roots have always been present in his lyrics, with many allusions to Old Testament prophets and stories surfacing among an eclectica of other cultural references.
But in 1979, Dylan did the most controversial thing of his career: he was born again. His album Slow Train Coming stated with the award-winning track You Gotta Serve Somebody, in which the chorus goes:
It maybe the devil
Or it maybe the Lord
But you gotta serve somebody
It was pretty on the nine-inch nail. Other tracks included the say it straight I Believe In You, When He Returns and Shine Your Light (later covered by the World Wide Message Tribe on their 1997 drum'n'bass/rap/soul/pop album Heatseeker!). Around this time Dylan befriended the well-known Christian artist the late Keith Green. They went to Bible studies together and Dylan even played harmonica on Green's song I Pledge My Heart.
In 1980, Dylan did an overtly fundamentalist gospel album called simply Saved. This really upset and divided Dylan's fan base (because their 'religion' was the endless search, and to have found the answer was to 'sell out'). Critics hated it. But the album is actually a purist classic, full of soul, full of Jesus. Best tracks are Covenant Woman, Saving Grace, Solid Rock, Pressing On, In The Garden and Are You Ready? (Hey, that's most of the album!)
The following year saw Dylan's intensity wane. Maybe it was the evangelical pressure to become a celebrity Christian. Maybe it was other influences. But 1981's Shot of Love remains what King Kool musician Dan Donovan describes as 'rough and ready, not produced but pure'. This collection of songs is considered Dylan's third 'Christian' album, and persists in pointing us all the way to Jesus.
The title track is simply about needing a 'shot of love' over anything else the world can offer. Property of Jesus attacks those who think they've 'got something better.. [they've] got a heart of stone'. The Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar is a stomping blues rocker about the end of the age. The final track, Grain of Sand, is a beautiful poetic eulogy about the presence of God in creation and at work, silently, in life. I remember once breaking bread to this song at Dan's house. It worked.
One more album followed that was heavily laden with Biblical references, Infidels. A more sparsely produced collection, songs like Jokerman and Man of Peace are apocalyptic in nature. Here's the first verse of License To Kill:
Man thinks ’cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please
And if things don’t change soon, he will
Oh, man has invented his doom
First step was touching the moon
Following these four faith-specific albums, Dylan continued to refer to Biblical themes from this time onwards although his overt Christian witness became less. Tracks like the epic Across The Green Mountain (found on Tell Tale Signs) reveal a continued preoccupation with scriptural symbolism, and in recent times he's been seen in synagogues. His Christmas album of 2009 revealed the two threads that go back to childhood - one being to his roots in country and blues; the other being in a conscious recognition of the person of Jesus. “Well, I am a true believer.”
Some say he's a part-time prophet, and has been all along... The following lyrics are as true today as they were when they were first sung back in 1963, just one month before JFK's assassination.
The Times They Are A-Changin'
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music
 First played on October 26 1963 at Carnegie Hall, New York City, New York. Dylan has played this live throughout his career 637 times. You need to know these things.
For more on Bob Dylan's faith journey, read Restless Pilgrim (Relevant books) - go to www.relevant.com or www.amazon.co.uk/Restless-Pilgrim-Spiritual-Journey-Dylan/dp/097145762X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261052400&sr=1-1
Links
- Dylan’s official website: www.bobdylan.com
- Blowing In The Wind: Dylan's Spiritual Journey - BBC Radio 4 documentary (30 minutes): http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011c0s2/Blowing_in_the_Wind_Dylans_Spiritual_Journey/
- Bob Dylan 70 - Bob Dylan: Changing Times - BBC Radio 6 doumentary (1 hour) covering the Slow Train Coming period (part 2 of 6 episodes): http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011p7wr/Bob_Dylan_70_Bob_Dylan_Changing_Times_1979_Slow_Train_Coming/
- King Kool: www.kingkool.co.uk, www.myspace.com/king_kool
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Tim Harrold, 24/05/2011 |
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| | | Steve Morley, West Thurrock (Guest) | 24/05/2011 11:46 | Eclectica, indeed! He has become mature in His own faith rather than immature in another's. He has been set free from having to pretend to be a "good" evangelical and instead can be a "true believer" which transends all ecclesiastical labels. Eclectica, indeed!
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 | | Thames Gateway Prayernet visit Thurrock | | Yesterday (Thursday 10 May 2012), a group of prophetic intercessors from along the Thames Corridor region spent time at three key historic and significant places along the borough's riverside.
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| | Tim Harrold |
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