Bob Dylan’s “Wilderness Years”

His next offering, Saved (1980), was a more awkward venture in some respects (no joke), down to the initial cover art that looked like extremely-tacky religious hand-outs left on busses or park benches. Again, Bob rolls out nine songs, and the point here is to appreciate them as gospel pieces with a more “live” sound.

The highlight, to me, is “Pressing On;” it has that repetitive lyrical thing happening endemic to gospel songs, which allows a foothold for the most forgetful person to remember the words. It’s passionate, with a tumbling piano and hosanna backing by the female singers. The classic theme of man trying to do right in this world without being corrupted by it is reiterated, and Bob pulls it off with a guileless passion.

Now, the problem with Saved—as opposed to the first album—is that Bob sounds like he’s talking himself into his faith: the idea that if you keep repeating the same words and thoughts over and over, then you will somehow cement it. These things don’t always match up in reality when the singing is over.

Which leads to the final album in the bunch, the much-maligned Shot of Love (1981).

It’s around here that Dylan begins to get a little confused; perhaps “uncertain” is the best way to put it. There’s a sense, to me at least, that he suffered from the idea that creating three albums worth of God-loving music would somehow transport him into the cosmos, closer to his Maker.

But I think the reality hit him hard that in the end, it’s all just sounds on a bit of plastic. “Lenny Bruce” is proof of that confusion, the man who “never robbed any churches nor cut off any babies’ heads.” One gets the feeling he substituted “Jesus Christ” for “Lenny Bruce” just to get people off his back and maybe replenish a little bit of his hipster stock. Either way, it’s a little clumsy. The reigning achievement on this album is “Every Grain of Sand,” which I think can be taken as one of the most beautiful religious songs that can also be appreciated on a secular level.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.
—”Every Grain Of Sand”

To read this is to see Dylan assume his rightful position as a genius poet, and to hear it set to music is to note Dylan assuming his position as musician-craftsman.

So at the end of this, will the casual listener like these albums any better than Highway 61 Revisited or a greatest hits compilation? Probably not. But at the very least, one will come away with an appreciation of an imperfect person’s maddening pursuit of perfection, something you can cloak in religious terms or in basic day-to-day living.

“I find the religiosity and the philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else. . . 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.”
—Bob Dylan, Newsweek, 1997

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