A Contrarian's View of Dylan

While most of Bob's big band sound is in tact from Desire, trading the violin for the saxophone and Emmy Lou's lone back-up vocals for a trio of female gospel singers suddenly turns the ragged gypsy caravan into a slick Vegas production. I've always been really conflicted about Street Legal. On one hand you've got this brave new experimental band giving the songs a wide variety of possible sounds. On the other, the LP was recorded almost as muddily and murkily as The Basement Tapes leaving most of the subtle nuances buried in the mix (subsequent attempts to re-mix the album have produced no effect audible to my ears). On the plus side you've got three of my all-time favorite Dylan tunes: "Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power)", "New Pony", and "Changing Of The Guards". "New Pony" even shows a return of Bob writing an entire song around one simple magnetic riff, something we haven't heard since "The Wicked Messenger" on John Wesley Harding. However, the other two-thirds of the songs on there are as unremarkable and forgettable as Planet Waves. The band on this album is great. I don't know why it gets knocked as too show-biz-y. I even liked their live At Budokan album. I generally don't pay much attention to live albums (If the songs are too close to the original arrangements, then why not just listen to the original. If the songs are too far off of the arrangements, then they just seem sacrilegious). But the constant way that Bob and his quote-unquote Vegas band deconstruct and rearrange the most notable songs from Bob's catalog is both fascinated and brave, if not always successful ("Going, Going, Gone"). I find myself listening to Street Legal a lot - if just out of curiosity, though not usually enjoying it as much as I think I should.

A terribly underrated work of genius

Negative reviews of this album led me to avoid it for the longest time. I'd heard (and been irritated by) the female backers on other Dylan releases, and "Street Legal" is the first album to feature them prominently (not counting Emmylou Harris's marvelous work on "Desire"). Imagine my surprise to find a collection of spectacularly written songs set to catchy, evocative tunes that sound unlike anything else in the Dylan canon.

Sure, the female backers still annoy me at times (if it weren't for them, I'd give the album five stars, no question), and Dylan's voice is beginning that steady nasal climb. But there's no getting around his songwriting genius. "Changing of the Guards" is storytelling at its most brilliant. "Where Are You Tonight?" is heartfelt and powerful. "We Better Talk This Over" is as catchy as any of Dylan's tunes. "No Time to Think" is a technical rhyming masterpiece. And "Senor" is dark and mysterious and impenetrable in a way only Dylan can be. Hey, I even kind of like the sax solos! Go figure.

This may be the most underrated album in Dylan's oeuvre.

Another Dylan masterpiece.

On Street Legal, Dylan follows up his two magnificent mid-70's acoustic ballad based masterpieces (BOTT & Desire) with - once again - a stylistic u-turn. ("Changing of the Guard" indeed). While the music, stylistically (and in some cases, the lyrics) foreshadows his early 80's Christian era work, I consider this album - with its rock/R&B/blues based sound and accompanying mesmerizing lyrics - almost as if Bob were picking up from where he left off in 1966 on Blonde on Blonde. (It's his first full all rock album since then.) Bob's lyric writing style here (for the most part) seem to return to the "vomitific" word collage style of his mid-60's work. Most of the tracks on this album move and bounce to an R & B rhythm with fully fleshed out tunes delivered by a strong backing band. (Several of the songs have a 60's soul feel and remind me of the Temptations or Four Tops. Some songs - "New Pony", "Dark Heat" - venture into the territory of hard rock.) And you can really hang your hat on the melodocism here. The lyrics are delightfully classic Dylan - although - in keeping with the trend of his post Blonde on Blonde work - rather serious and lacking humour. This is his first post-divorce album and thematically, it can almost be regarded as BOTT Part II - even moreso than Desire. Most of the songs here deal with his marriage breakup and divorce, albeit more cryptically than on BOTT and Desire. Like BOTT, there is pain, anger and regret here (but with a more upbeat tempo - i.e. "Where Are You Tonight".) And some songs seem directed at a new love interest. His singing on this album is - quite simply - among the best of his career. (Check out when he sings the line "Ohhh, where are you tonight?" on the final track - no doubt a direct melodic lift of "Awww, how does it feel?" from a certain mid-60's tune that you may recall.) This album seems to get overlooked and lost between his mid-70's acoustic masterpieces and his Christian era albums. But don't make that mistake - because this one is a sleeper that stands the test of time. None of the songs wear with time the way, for instance, Oh, Sister and Joey do on Desire. (I'm not saying they're bad songs, just that - as great as they are - I have tired of them.) Every song on Street Legal still sounds great to me. I highly recommend this album - after 25 years I return to it quite often - female backing singers nothwithstanding!

By No Means His Worst Album

Dylan goes Vegas! Well, it's an experiment that sort of works, despite the fact that only three or four of these songs are the kind that you'd gladly listen to out of context. The rest feature some seriously misogynistic lyrics and unadventurous music. "Changing of the Guards" is Dylan jerking off to a deck of tarot cards and delivering a mad howl of a vocal performance (minus a croak during the final verse) atop the steady rhythms of his big band and a gaggle of female backup singers. "Senor" remains one of the creepiest performances in the Dylan canon, a rare occasion on Street-Legal in which the music complements the lyrics rather than overwhelming them. And although "Where Are You Tonight?" sounds suspiciously like "Like a Rolling Stone" (try singing "how does it feel?" along with the title line, and listen to that organ!), it's a hell of a closer. "Baby Stop Crying" was a hit in England, and suitably hooky, but the lyric is ho-hum.



The rest of it? Well, there's a reason Street-Legal doesn't show up on those lists of "Greatest Bob Dylan Albums Ever!" but it has a mysterious charm that separates it from the rest of Dylan's work. For all the bitterness of the lyrics, they're still interesting on paper (an unusual case where one might GAIN something by separating the words from the music), and Dylan works some fantastic lines into even the more boring numbers: "Don't keep me knockin' about from Mexico to Tibet," from "True Love Tends to Forget," for instance. But the big band too often obscures the lyrics, resulting in a tendency for the differences in the songs to become blurred.



Oddly, I find myself bringing Street-Legal on road trips quite frequently, to the point that I probably play it more often than any other Dylan album. Even if it's not a spectacular record, it can at least serve a utilitarian purpose.

One of Dylan's most underrated...

"Another Side of Bob Dylan", "Bringing It All Back Home", "Nashville Skyline", "Self-Portrait", "Street Legal"... what do these Dylan albums have in common? They've all been brickbatted by some fans and critics as "trash", "unsophisticated", "sellout", or simply met with a "What was he thinking?!?!?" Truth is, "Street Legal" carries on the oft-praised and oft-maligned Dylan tradition of reinvention as well as any of the other albums listed above. Dylan does reinvent himself. He's done it for 40 years, and he's still doing it. "Street Legal" represents just one more of these events in Dylan's repertoire.



In 1978 Dylan brought out the big, really big band ("Bob and his Large Band" would have been a good sub-title presaging Lyle Lovett by a decade or two). Gospel-esque backup singers, saxophones, a BIG production, and long songs with sometimes cryptic almost mythical sounding lyrics about embittered love or abuses of power. Once again, "Street Legal" sounds unlike anything Dylan recorded before or since. Why did he go in this direction? The theories abound: Dylan wanted to emulate Neil Diamond's stage act; Dylan wanted a cozy career in Las Vegas next to the Rat Pack; Dylan found inspiration from Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band. The real reasons were likely more prosaic. Dylan's "Chronicles, Volume 1" hints that the 1970s and 1980s were extremely rough times for him musically. The scene just didn't seem to inspire him anymore. So perhaps he was just trying out new things, as he's done his entire career. Whatever the reason, the results made for a very unique Dylan album.



"Street Legal" contains undeniable energy. Not to mention some great songs. "Changing of the Guards" and "Señor(Tales of Yankee Power)" belong in the Dylan Hall of Great Songs. Still, the arrangement can at times sound sloppy (the drums sometimes plod along and the backing vocalists go out of synch, etc), and some have complained that Dylan wasn't into this album, or too coked up to notice its flaws. But Dylan, like Neil Young, has always been at his best and most passionate with a warts and all approach to recording and performance. Who could imagine a completely "slick" Dylan album where every note gets placed perfectly? Part of his legacy is the unprocessed sincerity that comes through in his voice and instrumentation. His earlier "great" albums (from the 1960s) contained spontaneous moments of laughter, hissing sibilance, microphone pops, missed timing, the occassional fretted note, etc. No one complains about the "flaws" on those albums. But for some reason critics find similar imperfections on "Street Legal" unforgivable. Dylan never really wavered from his one or two take philosophy for a reason. And it's part of what makes Dylan's music what it is. And once again, "Street Legal" showcases this unforgettable side of Dylan. The flaws are more than forgivable considering the energy this album puts out.



In some ways the remaster may have redeemed this album. Many early reviews complained about the muddy and incomprehensible sound of the original 1978 release. Muddled sound can destroy any great music. In any case, someone performed some great clean up, because this CD release sounds crisp with well-separated instrumentation. In fact, it sounds incredible.



So just ignore the bizarre photo of Dylan on the back cover (the one where he actually looks ready for Vegas stardom). And don't let the road-weary alley-inhabiting unkept Dylan on the cover make you think this album is full of raw acousticly-jaded music. This one's different. Just like all of the other ones.

Painfully intriguing

Dylan's voice is terrible, the production atrocious (trumpets, Vegas backing singers) and some songs unbelievably poor. 'Baby Stop Crying' is so bad it makes me cry. Somehow it got to No. 10 in the UK charts. However, the three tracks that make this album worth buying are The Changing of the Guards, We Better Talk This Over, and the last one. Plus 'Is Your Love In Vain' has a drunk karaoke charm. A reviewer for Rolling Stone said on this album Dylan sounds "utterly false" and he does most of the time. However his marriage was over and he was coked up and in despair. In this way this album is a fascinating album, a car crash - interesting for all the wrong reasons. Try Time Out Of Mind, Oh Mercy, Blood on the Tracks, or Love and Theft if you want to explore that dark and scary world beyond 60's Dylan, 'Blood on the Tracks' Dylan and 'Desire' Dylan. His voice on this album.... urgh *shudders*