"I’ve been broken, shattered like an empty cup. I’m just waiting on the Lord to rebuild and fill me up."
My attempt to boil down the (explicitly) Christian phase of Dylan's career into one album entitled Get Saved!
Perhaps the most misunderstood or overlooked part of Bob Dylan’s illustrious, Nobel Prize-winning career are the years when he converted to an evangelical form of Christianity and began writing music that reflected that belief in an explicit way.
Perhaps owing to my Jokermen podcast binge-ing (though I’m sure they would ridicule my project here, amongst other things), I elected to spend more time than I ever had before listening to the music from that time and decided to boil down the best-of-the-best from that period of time into one playlist/album (akin to my Lucky Touch album with Bruce’s “Other Band” era albums).
One thing that’s worth noting is that while Dylan’s “Christian” period only represents a set amount of time in his career, throughout his career he’s been interested in themes and topics that are spiritual and religious and yes Christian at time. There are ideas throughout his entire career that resonate with Christian theology and philosophy.
For example, Oh Mercy is a profoundly Christian album in many ways (perhaps owing to its production in New Orleans, I hear it as a kind of musical version of Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer) but for the purpose of this project, which is boiling down Dylan’s explicitly Christian phase music into one playlist, I won’t be including anything from that album.
I also tried to see if I could justify including tracks from Infidels on here but it was like Oh Mercy in the sense that it does have religious (and even explicitly Christian) images and themes but not in the same way as the Slow Train Coming-Saved-Shot of Love trifecta. Thus I didn’t include anything from it (so, sadly, no “Foot of Pride” included here.
Anyways, here’s what I came up with, the “album” I’ve called Get Saved!
The album is heavy on tracks that either were on Shot of Love or were recorded during those sessions, with more than half coming from that period. That time produced the best songs of Dylan’s “Christian” period, though the stuff on Saved and Slow Train Coming is perhaps more explicitly in that Christian framework. I wonder if I’m predisposed to liking those tracks a bit more because they’re ever-so-slightly out of the evangelizing mode.
In what I’m gathering is a controversial opinion, I’m a fan of “Watered Down Love.” The melody is quite catchy, I really like the sound of the guitar on the track, and it has a real… stomp-y drum part that makes it fun and memorable. I also think there’s a clever subversion of expectations by Dylan in this song. One usually thinks of songs as articulating or calling out the good kind of love in the chorus. Dylan does do that on this song but on the verses rather the chorus. The hook of the song, the chorus, is talking about that “watered down love” that contrasts with the “love that’s pure” of the verses.
You also have tracks on here like “Gotta Serve Somebody,” “Every Grain of Sand” and “Caribbean Wind,” songs that are in the pantheon of great Dylan songs so maybe it’s not worth my spilling of the proverbial ink talking about them. That said, “Every Grain of Sand” is one of the best examples not just of Dylan’s greatness as a musician and lyricist, but more specifically what he could do when composing from this more explicitly religious context. It’s a song that lives in both worlds. It certainly does not have to be read and regarded as a “religious” song and yet it also articulates truths of Christian belief (the imminence of the divine, God’s presence in everything).
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand
I was somewhat ambivalent about including “Gotta Serve Somebody” because it’s always been a song that didn’t really work for me. However, I think it’s a song that’s both important in Dylan’s oeuvre and, like “Every Grain of Sand,” is an example of Dylan writing something that works in multiple worlds or realms. But the music of the song just leaves me wanting a little more.
You also have a few unreleased songs on here, recording during this time in Dylan’s career but not released on a proper album. In addition to “Caribbean Wind,” I’ve included tracks like “Angelina,” “Making a Liar Out of Me,” and “You Changed My Life.” “You Changed My Life” was a song that stood out to me upon a re-listen to The Bootleg Series: Volume 3 and one I would not have initially included.
Ultimately, as I put this playlist together, I felt a lot like I did as I assembled Lucky Touch with Springsteen. I felt like there was enough good material for one solid album but spread out over multiple albums the power of those stronger songs is diminished a bit. It’s a little different than with the Springsteen example in terms of the time frame and the circumstances of the recording, but I think the point still stands.
What songs did I leave off? Was this project ridiculous? Let me know!