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Never Just One Thing, Part XIII: The Infidels Debate

Bob fans know the drill. The maestro puts out an album that's good, maybe even very good, and it is declared his best release since Blood on the Tracks, which by the way, is 50 years old now. We can all recite the litany. Desire doesn't get counted since it's too close to Blood and also no one expected long fallow periods yet. Then there is Infidels, my personal measuring stick, my subject here. Then comes the Daniel Lanois-produced Oh Mercy. Next is Time Out of Mind, also with Lanois, followed by Love and Theft. Remind me: Did Modern Times and Tempest get this treatment? Finally, there is My Rough and Rowdy Ways, which had critics declaring it a timeless classic, maybe even better than Blood and on the level of the 60s masterpieces. Maybe I even missed some. At any rate, every time we get the best-since-Blood on the Tracks line I think to myself, Wait, what happened to the previously-acclaimed record X? Was it maybe not so good after all? The only other option is that each successive "best since" record actually is better than the one that came before, but that seems not only an aesthetic but a mathematical impossibility. If one were to chart the albums on a bar graph there wouldn't be enough room. 

Part of the issue, beyond critical conformity, faddishness, wishful thinking, and presentism, is the fact of the sheer volume and variation in Dylan's output. Wikipedia tells me that there are 40 studio albums, 21 live albums, and infinite numbers of bootleg / outtake cuts. You can bet Bob doesn't like them all, so why should we? Or, rather, Dylan probably doesn't think of them much at all. You write the songs, you cut the record, and you move on. As for the listener, or at least this listener, it often comes down to what I call the aura of a track or an LP. Part of it is the sonic atmosphere, which must suggest a state of grace, and part is the songs having the quality of drawing one in and, not least, having the capacity to move you: emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, bodily. To me, Traffic's Low Spark has a graceful aura, but John Barleycorn doesn't. Another: Stevie Wonder's Innervisions does but Music of My Mind doesn't. An example from Dylan: To me, "Idiot Wind" has a transfixing aura, no matter how it's performed, but an equally complex and celebrated song such "Visions of Johanna" doesn't. Who knows why? One sits easy on my spirit and gets the synapses firing, the other doesn't. It is surely the opposite case for many.

And so it is with the albums. If we look beyond the essential canon of the 60s plus Blood, I'll always be, for example, an Infidels guy versus a Time Out of Mind or Love and Theft guy. Well, maybe not always. Like me, you've probably had the experience of returning to a recording that never clicked for you and suddenly it does. Usually it happens by finding your way in through a particular song, or even through a particular aspect of a song that functions like a master key to the artist's intention and aesthetic ethos for the overall album. In that spirit I spent a lot of time with Love last year. The result was appreciation bordering on affection, rather than full-on clicking, which still may happen, of course. There's no time limit on this phenomenon. "Mississippi" does carry the weight, mystery, and majesty of his greatest songs. And when he switches tone and says, "But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free / I've got nothing but affection for all those who sailed with me," that's when I found my way in. All of us who are advanced in years understand we do well to develop this attitude. 

Part of the issue for me has to do with performance. In my view, the Infidels band is the best Dylan ever had. I mean, come on. Sly and Robbie? Mick Taylor? Mark Knopfler? And Dylan himself in prime musical form, with, as I have argued elsewhere in this series, his best singing ever, supple and adventurous like a jazz vocalist. Maybe Sly and Robbie are the key to the tight-but-loose feel. Which points to one problem I have with late(r) Dylan. His band is very, very good, but the arrangements and performances are too polite. Basically, on records like Love all the sounds run the gamut of pre-1960s styles, with special affection for what I call his courtly, early swing sound. Like someone said, let those guys off the leash! Even when a tune is rocking like "Summer Days," it doesn't feel to me like it jumps off the grooves like, say, "Rock Around the Clock," the tune it most brings to mind. There's no doubt that "Summer" is a hot track, but it somehow feels stylized and studied. This not a problem that Infidels suffers from.

In fact, I just listened to it on headphones and Infidels sounds even better than I remembered; it's got a vital aura. Has there ever been another Dylan album that truly and deeply grooved like this? The 60s groups with Mike Bloomfield rocked, but this is something different. Dylan's words are so good that we easily accept instrumental backings that are merely serviceable. And there's no shame in that as long as they set the words off to their best effect. But with Infidels we achieve the kind of mind-body synthesis that is rare for Dylan but also in music in general, a sort of golden mean. For example, it blasts right of the gate musically and lyrically with "Jokerman," with Dylan intoning in full Biblical mode over a propulsive Robbie Shakespeare bass line: "Standing on the water casting your bread / While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing / Distant ships sailing into the mist / You were born with a snake in both of your fists / While a hurricane was blowing." One of the great openings in his entire body of work. Then, later in the song I like when he disrupts the regular cadence of the piece by incanting "Nightsticks and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks / Molotov's cocktails and rocks behind every curtain."

Let's touch on a few of the LP's other standout songs before turning to the meat of the matter: the "offensive" ones. Musically speaking, "Neighborhood Bully" and "Man of Peace" rock like nothing I've heard before or since from Dylan. Not only do they rock but they roll too. Impressive group performances. In terms of lyrics, I am quite partial to the melodic "Don't Fall Apart On Me Tonight." We should never forget that beyond all the layers of irony and misdirection and collage and symbolist abstraction that Dylan specializes in, he can also "do sincere" -- as in the statement of regret in my favorite stanza of the song: "I wish that I'd been a doctor / Maybe I'd have saved some life that had been lost / Maybe I'd have done some good in the world / 'Stead of burning every bridge I crossed." And it is this regret that makes the chorus that follows that much more powerful.

Don't fall apart on me tonightI just don't think that I could handle itDon't fall apart on me tonightYesterday's just a memoryTomorrow is never what it's supposed to beAnd I need you, oh, yeah
 
Dylan also does "religion," too. After the explicit evangelizing of the Christian period, with "I and I" he returns to the mode of songwriting in which religion imbues rather than dictates the lyrics. Leonard Cohen was a master of this mode, so it makes sense he expressed admiration for this song. In the verses it mostly is a song of sacrifice and devotion, but the chorus moves things to a metaphysical register. "I and I / In creation where one’s nature neither honors nor forgives / I and I / One says to the other, no man sees my face and lives." Here, Dylan seems to being using "I and I" to express duality rather than the unity implied in the Rastafarian meaning of the phrase. So when he invokes Exodus, it must be the divine aspect of the self addressing the mundane or worldly self. Two things. I still don't know what "in creation where one's nature neither honors of forgives" means, and I like it that way. It's generative like a koan. And I always love thinking about the double meaning of "no man sees my face and lives." Does this mean that you have to be dead to see God or that if you saw God it would kill you?

The main objection, of course, to Infidels is political, or at least based on distaste for those lyrics that come across as reactionary, crackpot, crankish. This certainly was Christgau's point of view, who rejected the record vehemently while acknowledging the musicality of it. Hell, this record made him angry. Which raises the question of whether or not politics is a good basis for judging, or at least enjoying, a work of art. In the case of Infidels, I find I don't need to agree per se with various passages of what Dylan is saying to find them engaging or capable of sparking thoughts and associations. Certainly Dylan himself doesn't "agree" with basically anything he has ever said. Nevertheless, I can see how this aspect can be a deal breaker for many. I've got deal breakers right and left. For instance, I rarely listen to Radiohead because I can't understand a single word, no, syllable, that Thom Yorke sings, and it annoys me. I guess I'm on the side of those who give the whole rap genre, with its rampant misogyny, a grudging pass because of the panache with which is delivered, not that I listen to it much.

The top crankish offenders on Infidels include, first of all, the aforementioned "Neighborhood Bully," a pure shot of militant Zionism which would be banned if today's progressive culture warriors even knew this record existed. I'm pro ceasefire (with a couple conditions) and pro two-state solution; I am also a Zionist to the extent I believe that Israel absolutely has a right to exist. So I admit to being affected by the song. I always recall the line, "Then he destroyed a bomb factory, no one was glad." The song is one hell of a rant, fueled by the blistering instrumental backing, but I find it compelling even as I think, "yes, but violence never helps anything," despite Bob's contention in "Union Sundown" that "this world is ruled by violence."

Another offender is "Sweetheart Like You," which appears to suffer from a retrograde woman-on-a-pedestal approach to "feminism." And yet is it not clear that women achieve a weird source of empowerment by "leaning in" and outdoing the worst aspects, yes, the toxic aspects, of male behavior in, say, the military or corporate spheres? I know that people need to work and can contribute in those fields, but we also know that certain modes of sociopathic behavior can make a person very, very wealthy and successful. I especially love the line, "You could be known as the beautiful girl to crawl across cut glass to make a deal." The idea is that these kind of men are already a lost cause, no need to join them. The old bohemian in Dylan has no use for any of it. After all, he came of age when Pete Seeger was a hero and way before the hippies became venture capitalists.

Even one of the album's best songs, "License to Kill," has a couple crackpot moments. Before getting to that, let's just consider the strength of the song. This is a song with legs, inspiring many cover versions. Tom Petty famously performed a great one at 1992's "Bob Fest," and I saw Graham Parker sing it when he opened for Nick Lowe here in Somerville a few years ago. And it sure felt like a highlight. There must be plenty more. Here's my favorite verse, though I love them all:
    
Now he worships at an altar of a stagnant pool
And when he sees his reflection, he’s fulfilled
Oh, man is opposed to fair play
He wants it all and he wants it his way

This oozes verisimilitude. It's inarguable. The arguable part come in when Dylan goes ahead and informs us that "Oh, man has invented his doom / First step was touching the moon" and "Then they bury him with stars / Sell his body like they do used cars." Really, going to the moon was a tragic mistake? And who wouldn't accept an organ transplant? Two things: The first is another Yes, but. There is little doubt that we are on a fast track for a trans-humanist future. Transsexualism is merely a subset of the larger movement toward the merger of humans with technology and the increasing capacity of humans to wrest "creation" away from the natural world. This may be a perfectly good, even desirable future in one's view, but it does represent the death of the ancient understanding of "man." Secondly, such crackpottery can be downright exhilarating. Why do secular Americans thrill to Bob Marley going on about Babylon and Haile Selassie? Because we have the sense that righteousness is gone from the world, with rationality a main culprit. We like irrational certainty. Or, I do, anyway. It scratches an itch. You just have to be careful not to turn that feeling into a political program.

Finally, we come to the "Blind Willie McTell" matter, namely the assertion that Dylan fatally wounded the album by not including on it his very best song from that session. Imagine removing the worst offender and replacing it with "Blind Willie," the reasoning goes. The whole disc is instantly elevated. It's a compelling line of thought. "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields" are way better than all but one or two songs on Sgt. Pepper's. But when you think about it, maybe Sgt. Pepper's wouldn't be Sgt. Pepper's with them on there. And this was Dylan's reasoning about "Blind Willie McTell": It didn't fit. And I think he may be right about that. First of all, the song is tragic in tone. There's nothing crankish or pissed off or wounded there. Secondly, it seems to exist in a world of its own. It is among Dylan's very greatest songs, but somehow it doesn't seem representative. We have a painting from a local artist like that. We purchased her best and most complex piece, but it feels discontinuous with her main body of work, and I sometimes wish we had purchased one of those "lesser" ones instead.

Ultimately, what is really interesting about Infidels, beyond the sheer listenability of it, is that it represents his transition out of his Christian phase -- and works of art that successfully bridge worlds are often among the very best. With Infidels, there's actually nothing Christian about it, except for maybe a Satan reference or two, and the term 'infidels' is associated with Islam, so why isn't it classified as a clean break? Well, it's that concern for living in a fallen realm. Bewilderment at how possible it is to become "defiled in this world." Now that I think about it, many Infidels songs actually are "finger pointing" songs, comprising a new twist on his old work in this vein, a vein that I was very happy he left behind in the mid-60s. So how could it be, then, that I love Infidels? Maybe it's like what Willie Nelson said when he was asked why he considered "Moonlight in Vermont" his favorite song. "I don't know," responded Willie, "I just like it."


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