Video Podcast: Bob Dylan’s’Pop Songs’ of the 1980s

A VERSION OF THIS IS PART OF ‘MINSTREL BOY: THE METAMORPHOSES OF BOB DYLAN’

EXTRACTS       FULL TEXT HERE

Bob Dylan is an artist who has ‘reinvented’ himself and his music many times. By the late ‘70s he had presented himself as a Woody Guthrie clone, a solo folk-protest and blues singer, a radical rock revolutionary, a ‘down home’ country singer, a confessional singer-songwriter and a make-up wearing ‘stage actor’. Up until 1979, each of these transformations had a strong effect on the entire landscape of popular music. In some ways his ‘gospel period’ of 1979-80 can be seen as an immersion in yet another authentic form of American ‘roots music’. This latest radical reinvention had, however, divided his followers. Many of them could appreciate the considerable power and fired up apocalyptic fervour of his performances over this period but relatively few were in sympathy with his lyrical approach.

By late 1980, however, it was becoming clear that Bob Dylan’s devotion to ‘Born Again’ Christianity was ebbing away. Having only performed explicitly religious songs in concert since 1979, in his final tour of 1980 he now began to reintroduce his classic material. Although he continued to feature some songs from Slow Train Coming and Saved and allowed space in his shows for his backing singers to perform gospel material, there would be no more on stage ‘sermons’. In August of 1981 he released Shot of Love, an album which mixed some purely secular compositions with a number of often rather troubled ‘post religious songs’. By the time he returned to touring in 1984, he was playing what might well be described as a ‘Greatest Hits’ set with minimal selections from his ‘gospel years’. There has been much debate in subsequent decades as to whether he then retained his Christian beliefs, ‘returned’ to Judaism, adopted a pan-religious attitude or even turned away from such beliefs entirely. In the rare interviews he has given over the years his answers to such inquiries have been characteristically elusive. He continued to refer to Biblical sources in his songs. He had, however, been doing this since his earliest days as a songwriter.

‘Pop Songs’

Over the next seven years, Dylan’s reputation as a contemporary force in rock music was to plummet. Having alienated much of his fan base, his record sales and his status as a headlining act went into in rapid free fall. He released a series of badly received albums and towards the end of the decade was being backed up in concert by established bands Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and The Grateful Dead. In these shows the spotlight appeared to be on his well known compositions from the past rather than contemporary songs. As the decade progressed he seemed to have less and less faith in himself as a songwriter. By the time he released Knocked Out Loaded in 1986 and Down in the Groove in 1988 he did not even have enough new songs to fill the albums. As he later wrote in Chronicles Vol. One …There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him.  I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck…… I had been closing my creativity down to a very narrow, controllable scale…

DYLAN WITH PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS

‘Pop Songs’

Dylan was not the only singer songwriter who struggled in the early to mid 1980s. Artists like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon all had problems recording albums in this period, especially with regard to current trends in recording techniques. Leonard Cohen even found it difficult to get a secure recording contract. In the wake of the short lived punk and post-punk eras, a new ‘big haired’ pop aesthetic had become dominant. It seemed that the rock and folk rock styles of ten years before were now passé. Forms of ‘70s dance music such as disco were heavily influential on electronic duos such as Eurhythmics and Soft Cell, not to mention on the burgeoning hip hop scene in America. Pop-soul oriented acts like Michael Jackson, Lionel Ritchie, Madonna and Whitney Houston sold vast amounts of albums. Even innovative songwriters like David Bowie (with his pop-funk album Let’s Dance) and Bruce Springsteen (with his pop-rock mega seller Born in the USA) seemed to be buying into current trends. This was also the era of the dominance of the pop video, especially on the American cable TV channel MTV, in which the messages of songs were often reduced to simplistic semi-cinematic dramatisations which were often remembered more by the fans than the songs themselves.