In the autumn of 1978, Bob Dylan began performing a new version of “Tangled Up in Blue.” In addition to a complete melodic makeover, he updated a lyric that had previously referenced an unnamed Italian poet to address a more specific source text: “She opened up the Bible and started quoting it to me/Jeremiah, Chapter 13, Verses 21 and 33.” Debuted during the tour behind his directionless Street Legal LP, his new arrangement of the beloved track offered a glimpse at Dylan’s next reinvention: You can hear a white light starting to seep in.
Right around that time, Dylan introduced a new song to his band called “Slow Train Coming.” That track appears in four vastly different versions on Trouble No More, the fascinating new Bootleg Series release covering his fruitful but polarizing era as an evangelical Christian songwriter between 1979 and 1981. The earliest rendition on the collection stems from his ’78 tour rehearsals when the verses were not yet finalized and Dylan mostly just hammered in the chorus: “There’s a slow/Slow train coming/Around the bend,” he sings over and over again as his backing vocalists’ performance grows increasingly dramatic with each repetition. It’s a stirring, uncanny document of an artist discovering his new sound—an ominous take on gospel to which he’d devote himself for the next three years.
“Slow Train Coming” would become the title track to the first entry in Dylan’s “Christian trilogy.” These albums, which draw on the grainy, burnt-out blues sound he’d adopt more fully in the 21st century, remain the most mysterious items in one of rock music’s deepest, most daunting discographies. On principle alone, they turned off multitudes of fans who once admired Dylan’s staunch individualism and leftist politics. But, for Dylan, they signified a rebirth, both creatively and personally. By the end of the decade, his longevity as a rock icon was unprecedented: Elvis was gone; the Beatles had been broken up as long they’d been around; the “new Dylans,” like Springsteen, were now welcoming their own disciples. When the “old Dylan”—just pushing 40—found himself uninspired on what had become known as his “Las Vegas Tour,” the Bible offered a way forward, even if it didn’t provide the answers he might have wanted.
For the most part, the songs on Trouble No More do not reflect the hope or contentment usually associated with praise music. They are as venomous and full of doom as Dylan’s more celebrated writing on war, politics, or love. Neither as warm and embracing as Cat Stevens’ nor as spiritually wise as Leonard Cohen’s, Dylan’s religious work seems to come from a place of fear—borderline paranoia. Inspired by the best-selling Hal Lindsey book The Late Great Planet Earth, he constantly pairs his acceptance of Jesus with warnings of an imminent apocalypse. In a catchy song called “Precious Angel,” propelled by a bouncy, pinched Mark Knopfler guitar riff, he looks to the future and sings of “darkness that will fall from on high/When men will beg God to kill them and they won’t be able to die.” In many songs, Dylan quotes directly from the Bible. In others, he sings as first-person “I,” instructing “you” to follow his lead and make a change or risk facing unthinkable consequences: a strange play on the messianic presence he’d assumed in the lives of his fans. “I told you the answer was blowing in the wind, and it was,” he allegedly announced at a show, “I told you the times they were a-changing, and they did. And I’m telling you Christ is coming back—and he is!”
To perform this material live, Dylan pressed reset on his songbook, ignoring the nearly two decades of work that preceded Slow Train Coming. He was debuting new music at every concert—songs that would eventually appear on the sharply focused Saved in 1980 and the more eclectic Shot of Love the following year. In the absence of his hits, he fleshed out setlists with faithful covers of devotional songs like Dallas Holm’s “Rise Again” and hymns performed by a four-person gospel choir who toured with him. Fans were perplexed. Throughout a stunning San Francisco performance of “Pressing On,” one of his finest gospel songs, the audience remains silent. They refuse to clap along during the a capella break, inadvertently bringing the hard-won battle in its lyrics to life. There’s a captivating tension in hearing an artist so revered, so evangelized, preach to empty seats—an energy that pervades the set and makes this one of Dylan’s most haunting and vulnerable collections of music.
Trouble No More exists in several editions. The most comprehensive set includes two live shows from the era; two discs of tour highlights; two discs of outtakes and rarities; and a bizarre concert film interrupted by newly filmed scenes of actor Michael Shannon reciting sermons in a vacant church (likely in the absence of Dylan’s own between-song sermons, which have mysteriously and perhaps mercifully been edited out). These recordings beat out their studio counterparts at nearly every turn. Stemming largely from live shows and rehearsals, they avoid the tinny production and glossy pastiche of the records, highlighting this era’s latent strengths: the unnerving conviction in Dylan’s vocals, his killer backing band, and, most of all, the underlying strength of the material.
Songs that previously felt like hidden gems in Dylan’s catalog become centerpieces. A live rendition of “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar” features bombastic, blazing guitar solos from guest performer Carlos Santana as Dylan spits his way through the lyrics, making its surreal narrative even more impassioned. “When He Returns,” the closing track on Slow Train Coming, appears in stark, definitive form, on solo piano and organ at a 1980 show in Toronto. Dylan’s voice sounds beautiful, fanatical, and somewhat insane, which is exactly how this material should be delivered.
Unlike other editions of the Bootleg Series exploring Dylan’s mythically productive studio sessions, the outtakes are not the main draw here. The slow, stately “Making a Liar Out of Me” comes closest to a lost classic, though the band’s performance is too tentative for it to truly transcend. Less ambitious tracks like “Ain’t Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody” and “Ain’t No Man Righteous, No Not One” are pleasant but steer close to Schoolhouse Rock! levels of singalong didacticism. While Dylan was writing prolifically at this time, his relentless output felt more like a search for the right words as opposed to an overflow of inspiration. For the most part, the best songs all ended up on the albums. What’s more interesting is how the material evolved from its early forms to the studio renditions and onto the stage. With key tracks appearing in multiple incarnations, the set examines how Dylan reapproached this material the longer he lived with it: how “Gotta Serve Somebody” ascended from a bitter confession to a twisted roll call, or how the livestock in “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” slowly disassembled over the course of the tour.
By 1981, Dylan eased up on his evangelism. He introduced decidedly secular new material to his shows—like the excellent “Caribbean Wind” and the not-so-excellent “Lenny Bruce”—and welcomed back old favorites like “Maggie’s Farm” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” Soon, he would disown this entire era. He abandoned its material in later setlists and denied he’d ever even been a Christian, citing it as just another example of the media’s unfair insistence on labeling him at every turn. “I mean, nobody cares what Billy Joel’s religious views are,” he spat at one interviewer, who could have responded by pointing out that Billy Joel never wrote a song called “Property of Jesus.” Regardless of his true beliefs, Trouble No More offers living proof of Dylan’s commitment at the time. Across these 102 tracks, he sounds as devoted to his work as ever, puncturing a style of music built to offer definitive answers with his own heavy brand of cosmic nihilism.
The era came to a close with “Every Grain of Sand,” the final track on Shot of Love. Allegedly written fully-formed at the piano in the summer of 1980, it remains one of his most powerful compositions: If the sole purpose of his religious search was to lead him here, then the journey was worth it. The track appears twice on Trouble No More, as an intimate rehearsal midway through the tour and a full-band performance on its very last night, before he took a three-year break from live shows and mostly abandoned religious music (at least until his 2009 curio Christmas in the Heart). Between those two takes, Dylan’s voice lowered and the song’s pace slowed, trading its epiphanic intensity for a comforting sense of foresight and calm. Together, they summarize the story told throughout Trouble No More: one man’s path from fear to acceptance, obsession to understanding, getting born and pressing on.
