Vinyl Vault

It’s time once again to jump into the Wayback machine and look at a classic album. This time it’s Bob Dylan’s Desire, an album that was a huge hit upon its release in 1976, but isn’t quite mentioned these days in the same breath as Dylan’s classics. Is there a reason for that? Only a song-by-song dissection will tell the tale. The rating system:

****-A classic
***-Deserving of a place on any mix CD
**-Worthy of a download, but not of frequent play
*-Drop it like a hot rock

“Hurricane”: **** - Given new life by the Denzel Washington biopic, this breathless retelling of the Rubin Carter saga is a classic-rock staple today. It’s not quite as good as “Hattie Carroll” among Dylan’s tales of injustice, but, then again, what is? Scarlet Rivera’s violin, the dominant sound on the album, furiously drives the pace, while Dylan reels off brilliant one-liners like “Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties/Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise.”

“Isis”: *** - Dylan as tomb-raider? Indeed the narrator of this song hooks up with a shady cohort to try to steal a body from a pyramid, but that story is just the backdrop against which Dylan muses about the titular “mystical child” who dominates his thoughts. This is one of several songs on the album which plays out like a short story, rendered more fascinating by its unresolved conclusion.

“Mozambique”: ** - A bit of a breather from all the mystical questing going on elsewhere in the album, “Mozambique” features a breezy melody and the unassailable backing vocals of Emmylou Harris, but it’s a bit inconsequential next to the epics that surround it.

“One More Cup Of Coffee”: *** - Supposedly inspired by a visit with a Gypsy king, this ominous number finds Dylan trying to win over an unattainable exotic woman controlled by a domineering father. Failing that, he asks for a hit of caffeine before he heads off into the “valley below.” Suitably spooky music sets the mood for this interesting piece.

“Oh Sister”: *** - It’s likely that Dylan wasn’t literally referring to a sibling in this song, which is essentially a duet with Harris. There are traces here of the Christianity that would dominate Dylan’s work in years to come, what with references to dying and being reborn. I read it as a simple plea for mercy and kindness set to a lovely melody.

“Joey”: ** - One of the big drawbacks to Desire is that its longest song is one of its weakest. Even if you can get by Dylan romanticizing Joey Gallo, by all accounts a murderous mobster who was the John Gotti of his day, the song drags at a lifeless pace that overshadows some nifty lyrics.

“Romance In Durango”: *** - Dylan brilliantly plays the role of a Mexican bandit, singing in Spanish in the chorus and making all the right cultural references without coming off as a stereotype. (Credit should also be given to Jacques Levy, who co-wrote seven of the songs, including this one, on the album. The Broadway producer and lyricist certainly helped with the theatrical feel of Desire as a whole.) The hero of the song meets his fate at the end, his romantic dreams of wedding his love doomed by his violent past.

“Black Diamond Bay”: **** - One of Dylan’s great lost classics. Interweaving the fate of a femme fatale, a suicidal Greek, a love-starved soldier, a “tiny man,” and a desperate gambler amidst the backdrop of a volcano that threatens to destroy them all, the song would have been brilliant had it ended with that. But in the last verse, Dylan pulls out the rug, revealing that he was watching Walter Cronkite and saw the destruction described in the previous verses reduced to a blurb on the nightly news, and the story didn’t even hold his interest. If this one review does nothing else, I hope it makes you look up this amazing song.

“Sara”: **** - Written for Dylan’s first wife Sara, it is impossible now to hear this song without thinking of the context: Just a year after the song’s release, the couple would divorce. Thus the song, with Dylan rehashing snapshots of the couple’s life together while sitting on a beach, now deserted, where there children once played, is absolutely heartbreaking. At the time of its conception, it was a plea for reconciliation, and the recording used for the album is supposedly a first take that Dylan sang directly to his wife while she stood watching from outside the recording booth. It’s just another amazing chapter in the legend of the greatest songwriter that ever lived.

Listening to this album fresh again, I realized that it takes concentration and devotion to appreciate it fully, which may be why its reputation has faded over the years. But, at times, it is a better indicator of its creator’s prodigious talents than anything else in his catalog.