Bob Dylan :: “Trouble No More - The Bootleg Series Vol. 13 (1979-1981)”
To be a fan weighted with obliterated obsession and culturally concentrated affinity for Dylan throughout the 1970s is not the same as having been an admirer, for lack of a better word, for the early and mid 1960s manifestations of his folk to flat out rock n’ roll shape-shift during one of the most pinnacle moments of any musicians' life in the last century. But without indulging too much in the previous decade of the poetic paralysis and master of merciless melody, we move forward only to travel back in time to visit the tail end of the 1970s and into the 1980s, during Dylan’s reformed “born-again Christian” period where he recorded the compellingly complex and captivating trilogy albums — “Slow Train Coming”, “Saved” and “Shot of Love” all within a 2 to 3-year period. Themes with various temperatures on faith, love, mortality both in man and music, ramblings of reincarnation and the ever so clever explorations into existence via the unforgettable flesh suite in which he serves and sacrificed through song and scripture.
“Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else. Songs like “Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain” or “I Saw the Light”—that’s my religion. I don’t adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I’ve learned more from the songs than I’ve learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.”
While undertaking a three-month discipleship course run by the Association of Vineyard Churches, in November 1978, his friend Mary Alice Artes, helped in guiding Dylan as he attended various Bible studies classes in the Reseda area towards the end of the decade and, like most of his previous career choices, both personal and poetic in life, this remarkably vulnerable time in Dylan’s life is not only foundational fascinating and one step closer to potentially cracking the cosmic code of “Dylanism”, but a radical road of towards something greater than yourself and that's always been an underlying theme within his work no matter what era, album, or song you cautiously cherry-pick in order to locate a specific feeling or iconic insight from his ruthless repertoire of past, present and future fables. Nothing was ever a phase for Dylan during the first half century of his career, especially the period that concerns us at this very moment, and whether it was folk, rock n’ roll, political phenomena or divorce from discourse, it's all part of his ethereal experience into the human condition, and we merely choose which quest, or direction to take alongside him, but just know he does not care either which way we go. From San Francisco to Norway, Missouri to London, the years 1979-1981 can mean a lot depending on what seat or row you occupy in the “Church of Bob”, but one thing is for certain, after Dylan’s eternally epic return to endless touring in the mid 1970s, he was doing the Lord’s work.
“Jesus put his hand on me. It was a physical thing. I felt it. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble. The glory of the Lord knocked me down and picked me up.”
Returning to the stage as a new man time and time again, but this time with a new band and possibly new fans, the “Trouble No More” era is without a doubt a sophisticatedly exciting and less existential time spent alongside the legend of the melodic macabre. With a fresh start, wrapping up the musicians’ most lyrically linguistic and romantically resilient decade with titles like “Self Portrait”, “Blood on the Tracks”, “Desire” and “Street Legal”, while soaring through the liberating libraries of human consciousness, it was time to put on a new hat, sport a new cape and occupy a completely different suite of energy and recurring dreams, as Dylan went it alone after his untimely departure from longtime wife and monumental muse, Sara Lownds in the summer of 1977 after 12 years of marriage. With the insidious industries of soul-sucking performance pressure now behind him and fans both new and old scattered across the ultimate game of chess with no winners or losers, but only just players in the game of life, Dylan exercised, once again, his true freedoms outside of songwriting, which was to be anything you wanted to be if you only dare go it alone. Joined by a miraculous cast of musicians from this era such as Tim Drummond, Dylan’s former wife, Carolyn Dennis, the great Mark Knopfler, Fred Tackett and countless others both in studio and in the live performance setting, this impeccable range of talent helped bring this special time and place in Dylan’s life and career to the surface in all its electrifying entirety with their righteous and iconic intensity. Having everything thrown at him from words to wars to worlds to woes, it was during a show in 1979 in San Diego that someone tossed something up on stage and into Dylan’s world that he couldn’t separate or professionally distance himself from, a silver cross. After placing it in his pocket, shuffling off into the darkness and onto the next show in Arizona, he would go on to experience something that the mid to late 1960s tried so desperately and often times, successfully, to explore and express via the extremely emotional and spiritual layers of religion, the ultimate connection to God. Stating that he had "a literal visitation from Jesus Christ”, Dylan embraced the expectations of himself and the deeply judgmental and yet willing audience, but like the world and the people and places within it, things change and disappear only to reappear whether you're there or not. Dylan’s music is just like that in the sense that it would still exist in the ways it has over the last half century if we listened to it or not. It's always been there, ready to be discovered and experienced just like that of faith and complete sonic salvation.
