Bob Dylan: Desire - 1976
"If I had crossed the street seconds earlier" - Scarlet Rivera
Following on from Bob Dylan's successful Rolling Thunder tour this album utilises the same large group of musicians that had troubadoured around with Dylan the previous year. It is one of his most "collaborative" albums, musicians-wise and began its genesis only a few months after the release of Blood On The Tracks.
It is, however, a completely different album in its overall sound, is ambience and its lyrics. Its sound is more upbeat, heavily-centred around the use of a violin and its lyrics not influenced by the previous one's emotional angst. There is a strange story emanating from the early months of the creation of this violin-dominated 1976 album - apparently Dylan was being driven around Manhattan and saw violinist Scarlet Rivera carrying violin around Greenwich Village in a case. Dylan stopped to talk to her and she ended up playing a huge part on this album, contributing a great deal to the unique sound. Rivera herself has said that if she had been a few seconds earlier or later, the whole thing would never have happened. Such is fate, and, indeed, musical mythology. I would like to think it is true. She says it is.
Anyway, let's get a taste of those hot chilli peppers....
For many, Hurricane stood as obvious proof that the old sixties protestor had got his fist-pumping mojo back but it stands pretty much alone in this period as a lone, surprising song about injustice. It didn't really represent any sort of change - in fact the opposite - it still remains a bit of an incongruity. Either way, it is just an iconic narrative song, a wonderful tale of Carter's stitch-up by the police and the corrupt, racist nature of the legal system. Again, like Joey, it is overflowing with great Dylan characterisation. Incidentally, I went to the restaurant in New York's Little Italy where Gallo's shooting took place and posed outside for a photo which I have now, infuriatingly, mislaid.
Other songs with something of an evocative, cinematic quality are the Mexican-flavoured Romance In Durango ("...hot chili peppers in the blistering sun..." - what a great opening line) and Dylan's heartfelt plea for forgiveness to his wife, (soon to be ex-wife), Sara. It contains the legendary line "staying up for days in the Chelsea hotel, writing "Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands" for you...". It is one of Dylan's greatest love songs, and contains none of the vitriol contained in something like Idiot Wind from Blood On The Tracks. Whatever irked him enough to write Idiot Wind had long blown away on that very wind and he was now well and truly gushing all over Sara again.
Also tender in its lyrical content is the rarely-mentioned but touching Oh Sister. Very atmospheric, too, are the beguiling Mozambique and the very Eastern-Sufi-influenced One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below) evoke many different images. The latter was, along with the rejected track Abandoned Love, the first material written for the album and was apparently inspired by a visit to a gypsy festival in the Camargue area of south-west France.
Isis is packed full of all sorts of images too, as are many of Dylan's songs, as we know. This one has its roots in Egyptian mythology and carries hints of Mexican folklore too. Dylan liked a few Mexican references in the seventies - Romance In Durango containing many more, of course. Dylan sings in the first person as the male character in the song, ending when Isis asks him if he is going to say anything and he replies "if you want me to, yes...". I have always liked the apparently offhand tenderness of that line.
Black Diamond Bay is a captivating, lively and rhythmic song about an earthquake on a small island and the outside, larger world's general level of apathy and disassociation towards it. It was inspired, apparently, by the often nautically-based work of Joseph Conrad.
Overall, the album is a tuneful, interesting one, musically, with debts to Middle Eastern music. Mexican music and Caribbean melodies. There is an overall air of summer heat about it, for me. Lyrically it is packed with all sorts of images and characters and it is one of Dylan's best albums for that. The use of violin is a unique masterstroke, but not one that would be repeated. Next up, on Street-Legal, it would be the saxophone taking centre stage. I have to say that the run of albums from 1974 to 1979 - Blood On The Tracks, Desire, Street-Legal and Slow Train Coming is up there with Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde and John Wesley Harding as one of the two great Dylan quartets.
There are three songs that were recorded during this album's sessions that didn't make the final cut. Indeed, the very first track laid down for the album was the winsome, violin-driven Abandoned Love that features Scarlet Rivera's talents to the max, together with a nice bass line, acoustic melody and an impressive harmonica at the end too. It is a fine song which would have fitted in well on the album. There was really no need to have omitted it, but that was Dylan for you. Only Springsteen has come close to as many incomprehensible omissions.
Catfish was a slow bluesy, sleepy number about a baseball player, Jim "Catfish" Hunter, apparently. It would have been a bit incongruous on the album. The slightly folky Golden Looms has more of the album's typical violin and drums sound.
