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DESIRE by BOB DYLAN
by Johnny Black
Desire and its predecessor, Blood On The Tracks, represent Dylan at the top of his second peak, his mid-seventies renaissance. They also confirmed the suspicion, long held by the cognoscenti, that no matter how far down he might go, Dylan could never be counted out.
Anyone who had suffered through Self Portrait in 1970 or Planet Waves in 1974 had every reason to believe that Dylan was a spent force, but just a few bars of Desire’s opening track, Hurricane, was enough to sweep away the memories of half a decade of dross.
Sessions for the album had begun on 28 July,1975, at Columbia Studios in New York City. Emmylou Harris was on harmony vocals, Scarlett Rivera, a busker plucked off the streets of Greenwich Village, was on violin, and Eric Clapton was playing guitar. “It ended up with something like twenty-four musicians in the studio, all playing these incredibly incongruous instruments – accordion, violin … “ recalled Clapton later. “It really didn’t work. He was after a large sound, but the songs were so personal that he wasn’t comfortable with all the people around … It was very hard to keep up with him. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. He was really looking, racing from song to song. The songs were amazing.”
From that first session, only Romance In Durango made it to the finished album, but a few days later, Dylan returned to the studio with no producer and an almost entirely different band, although Scarlett Rivera was still aboard. “The sessions were outrageous,” she revealed subsequently. “There was just a rundown of the songs and, once the structure was understood, the red light went on.” In this mood of unrehearsed spontanaeity, they knocked off One More Cup Of Coffee, Mozambique, Hurricane and several others.
Clapton’s initial assessment proved spot-on, because the songs, mostly co-written with off-Broadway songwriter Jacques Levy, were extraordinary, particularly Sara, an uncharacteristically transparent proclamation of undying love for his wife, from whom he would soon part. Hurricane, a powerful plea for the release of convicted murderer Ruben ‘Hurricane’ Carter, re-asserted Dylan’s role as a fighter for justice, a man of the people standing up against the system. And One More Cup Of Coffee pulls off the classic Dylan trick of creating a startling contrast by interspersing seemingly mystical verses with a prosaic but evocative chorus.
If the band was somewhat raggedy, Rivera’s soaring violin lines were more than enough to maintain the musical interest and, for his part, Dylan’s vocals sounded more passionate than they had for years. “He wanted very unpolished and unaffected performances,” explained Rivera. “He was really looking for lots of heart and genuine expression, as opposed to precision playing and a flawless performance.”
The critics were divided on the merits of Desire, some clearly unable to hear the quality of the songs because of the looseness of the music, but the public had no such qualms. Desire reached No1 on the US album charts on 7 February 1976, and stayed there for five solid weeks.
(Source : Johnny Black, first published in the book Albums by Backbeat Press, 2005)
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by Johnny Black
Desire and its predecessor, Blood On The Tracks, represent Dylan at the top of his second peak, his mid-seventies renaissance. They also confirmed the suspicion, long held by the cognoscenti, that no matter how far down he might go, Dylan could never be counted out.
Anyone who had suffered through Self Portrait in 1970 or Planet Waves in 1974 had every reason to believe that Dylan was a spent force, but just a few bars of Desire’s opening track, Hurricane, was enough to sweep away the memories of half a decade of dross.
Sessions for the album had begun on 28 July,1975, at Columbia Studios in New York City. Emmylou Harris was on harmony vocals, Scarlett Rivera, a busker plucked off the streets of Greenwich Village, was on violin, and Eric Clapton was playing guitar. “It ended up with something like twenty-four musicians in the studio, all playing these incredibly incongruous instruments – accordion, violin … “ recalled Clapton later. “It really didn’t work. He was after a large sound, but the songs were so personal that he wasn’t comfortable with all the people around … It was very hard to keep up with him. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. He was really looking, racing from song to song. The songs were amazing.”
From that first session, only Romance In Durango made it to the finished album, but a few days later, Dylan returned to the studio with no producer and an almost entirely different band, although Scarlett Rivera was still aboard. “The sessions were outrageous,” she revealed subsequently. “There was just a rundown of the songs and, once the structure was understood, the red light went on.” In this mood of unrehearsed spontanaeity, they knocked off One More Cup Of Coffee, Mozambique, Hurricane and several others.
Clapton’s initial assessment proved spot-on, because the songs, mostly co-written with off-Broadway songwriter Jacques Levy, were extraordinary, particularly Sara, an uncharacteristically transparent proclamation of undying love for his wife, from whom he would soon part. Hurricane, a powerful plea for the release of convicted murderer Ruben ‘Hurricane’ Carter, re-asserted Dylan’s role as a fighter for justice, a man of the people standing up against the system. And One More Cup Of Coffee pulls off the classic Dylan trick of creating a startling contrast by interspersing seemingly mystical verses with a prosaic but evocative chorus.
If the band was somewhat raggedy, Rivera’s soaring violin lines were more than enough to maintain the musical interest and, for his part, Dylan’s vocals sounded more passionate than they had for years. “He wanted very unpolished and unaffected performances,” explained Rivera. “He was really looking for lots of heart and genuine expression, as opposed to precision playing and a flawless performance.”
The critics were divided on the merits of Desire, some clearly unable to hear the quality of the songs because of the looseness of the music, but the public had no such qualms. Desire reached No1 on the US album charts on 7 February 1976, and stayed there for five solid weeks.
(Source : Johnny Black, first published in the book Albums by Backbeat Press, 2005)