I was never a huge Dylan fan, but appreciated much of his earlier work that got airplay over the years. I even saw him live in concert once in the mid-1980's. I still think it ranks up there as one of the worst shows I've ever seen. The guy on stage that night couldn't care less what the people thought of him, and it showed. I know for many music enthusiasts, their relationship to Dylan is a complicated one.
With that being said, I've started to see through Dylan's idiosyncracies and shortcomings, and have begun to hone in on the Dylan as a creative vessel at his best. In his 60 Minutes interview, he humbly reveals a mystery to his work and his inability to explain how he channeled the songs he did back in the day...
I found this piece of the interview particularly illuminating: one of the best songwriters of a generation can't seem to take credit for what he did. Only a God-loving person would say such a thing. Well, what do you know.
I was partially aware of his Christian conversion over the years, but not to the extent as to how deeply it changed him. Even prior to his conversion, there are many hints in his music as to this movement in his heart. Bishop Robert Barron, an ardent fan, goes into this here...
His real conversion took place in 1978. One night on tour in San Diego, Dylan looked down and saw a cross someone had thrown on stage. He reached down and put it in his pocket, not thinking much about it at the time. As to what happened later that night in his hotel room, he mentioned once to a reporter that he felt his “whole body tremble,” and that “the Lord knocked me down and picked me up.”
It was during the next few years when many of these songs on The Bootleg Series Vol. 13 got recorded. These well-crafted gospel-inspired songs have an intensity to them that I've rarely heard Dylan radiate. Clearly, he was in some sort of exalted state, and had the caliber of a band to accompany it.
Interestingly so, Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller fame, and a vocal atheist) writes the liner notes for The Bootleg Series Vol. 13. Jillette claims Dylan's Christian period was his best musically, and has no doubt of the conversion that influenced it. In a recent interview he says, “I mean if there were a God, and God was to reach me on judgement day, God could say to me, 'Penn, I gave you Dylan in '79 and you still turned your back on me. I gave you Dylan!'”
Ha! He certainly did...