Expecting Rain

True and I don't think any of the other songs on S-L could be improved upon on stage now.

I've always thought of Street-Legal as Bob's cocaine and divorce album, definetly a mid life crisis album. Most middle aged men get their ear pierced and buy a Porsche. Bob did Street-Legal. I wonder what that says about him...

Senor, along with God Knows, used to be one of the Sunday setlist songs a few years back when he did 'day-of-the-week' setlist. To me this seems to strongly suggest that it does have a connection to Christian faith in his mind. It's obvious from his pre-conversion work that he was always a spiritual seeker, his choice was just less exotic than those of other musicians. I think that's got a lot to do with his life story though. He used to cast himself in the role of Christ repeatedly in his earlier songs.

The only other song he ever performed on the NET is We Better Talk This Over, and that was a one-off (a brilliant one though!).

It's certainly interesting to speculate whether Bob was thinkinging about Christ either conciously or unconciously during Street-Legal, or wether he made the ties after his conversion.

I'm listening to True Love and enjoying... maybe I'll have to rethink my hypothesis then again I have been following John B's reccomendation

I almost forgot to look this up in the heat of the discussion, sorry.... here it is, called "There's A New Day At Dawn", by Robin Witting. He's written three or four books on Tarantula, too! But this one, at 82 pages, is a short read indeed.

You can have Springsteen and his saxophone player. I don't hear mysticism on Changing the Guard, but I suppose if I got stoned I might. "There are seven levels"...the good line is where he figures out the girl isn't entirely his, but he took that for granted in his prime.

New Pony is hilarious and so is We Better Talk This Over. Those songs stand up without any trouble, and they're both believable.

"No Time to Think" has several wonderful lyrics; had it been the old Dylan the song would have been finished and he would have sung a decent vocal. But he was in a big hurry to get to something, either the beast with four legs or some powder.

The rest of it is pretty forgettable with the exception of the trainload of fools, nasty line that.

Oh I think it does reflect his search for salvation. It sounds very much to me like he is on the verge of a cataclysmic spiritual breakdown. Where Are You Tonight in particular comes across, in retrospect, as a desperate plea for help.

But that doesn't give any credence to the...validity of his conversion imo. It only marks it out as the last roll of the dice of an emotionally and creatively drained man. If you were going to write a biography of Bob then SL would be interesting to delve into because I believe that is the album where he began to lose the plot completely. But if you’re looking at it from a theological perspective, in an attempt to trace the steps of his spiritual development, then I'm not sure you'll find anything other than a man at rock bottom looking for an easy way out.

It tell us he was off his head on some nutty charlie.

We can always talk this over (again) when we all get sober! Different states of mind might lead to a whole range of different experiences and interpretations.

I agree with that I think. Street-Legal is fascinating because he's on the complete threshold of collapse and breakdown. On the record we hear half of him get sucked in and the other half of him rise above it on the triumphant first and last cuts.

True Love is one of those Street Legal songs which I find passable, but then I'm reminded of the lyric 'I'm getting weary looking in my baby's eyes' I feel a wave of furious anger roll over me and I'm restored to my senses.

There is some nice lines in that song, but also lines which are at best forgettable, at worst just plain lazy.

But I love Bob, it hurts me to slag him off like this. I don't know how bennyboy can sleep at night.

I mean, how unrealistic is that? You don't fall in love by choice.

I think the key to Street-Legal, especially in relation to the discussion about breakdown is the final lines of Where are You Tonight:

'There’s a white diamond gloom on the dark side of this room
And a pathway that leads up to the stars
If you don’t believe there’s a price for this sweet paradise
Remind me to show you the scars

There’s a new day at dawn and I’ve finally arrived
If I’m there in the morning, baby, you’ll know I’ve survived
I can’t believe it, I can’t believe I’m alive
But without you it just doesn’t seem right
Oh, where are you tonight?'

It's almost as if the album is a catharsis for Bob, with him finding God by it's close. It's as if Street-Legal is Dylan's conversion in itself. I think Michael Gray wrote an essay which dealt with that, about Dylan's path from Sara to Jesus.

It's evident in that line in particular.

What would make a conversion valid in your eyes? It's not like anybody forced him into bible class. As for the easy way out, it wasn't. He got death threats for this. His own mother tried to have him re-converted. His record sales waned and so did the support of his record label. Plus people booing his new songs.... but he's known that before, of course.

He also sings that line with incredible drive and passion, I love that line and that whole song... i feel like the words are etched upon me as scars: I've paid the price.

One of his best and most truthful couplets ever, imo.

Unless you become jaded by the world and allow yourself to become cynical and cut adrift. in that case you could endeavor to avoid 'letting people close to you' in order to prevent heartbreak further down the line. do not forget that ST Bob has 'Been hurt before' and 'knows the score'. With that in mind I would not entirely discount the possibility of Bob avoiding love but on further consideration relenting and giving himself up to the charms and pit-falls of an amorous encounter.

Unless you become jaded by the world and allow yourself to become cynical and cut adrift. in that case you could endeavor to avoid 'letting people close to you' in order to prevent heartbreak further down the line. do not forget that ST Bob has 'Been hurt before' and 'knows the score'. With that in mind I would not entirely discount the possibility of Bob avoiding love but on further consideration relenting and giving himself up to the charms and pit-falls of an amorous encounter.[/quote]

I suppose when you're worn out and you can't fall in love spontaneaously it can become necessary to make yourself fall in love with someone who's trying to get close to you.

^^^
I certainly agree with him trying to avoid it, as in 'avoid getting involved', but you can only suppress emotions to a certain degree.

In fact, it might have been among the first Dylan lyrics I consciously chanced upon, when reading a Janis Joplin bio called 'Scars Of Sweet Paradise'.

I don't know. I can only say that when I look at it as a whole, with the benefit of hindsight, taking into account what happened prior to the conversion and after it, I find myself viewing the affair with a skeptically raised eyebrow.

I'm not saying that conversions, religious fervor and all that jazz are necessarily founded on unstable minds, I just think that that was the case with Bob. When he starts talking about meeting The Big Guy in a hotel room you have to ask yourself is this man sincere or is he losing his marbles?

if he had devoted his life from that point on to Christianity and everything that goes with it then maybe I could believe it. But do you honestly believe that a man who encountered Jesus, a man who essentially has the mystery of our entire existence revealed to him, would find himself as unhappy and washed up and he later confessed himself to be only a few years later? i think not to be perfectly honest.