The album cover of 1978’s Street-Legal catches Bob Dylan at the bottom of a Santa Monica stoop. His jacket is crumpled in his right hand, his left arm akimbo as he cranes his neck to peek down the street. He seems to be either waiting for his lift to arrive or trying to figure out which direction to head next. In the years just prior, Dylan had mined the depths of a broken heart with unprecedented vulnerability on the devastating Blood on the Tracks and scored a second consecutive #1 album with Desire’s folk-rock tales of true crime, grave-robbing, and exploding islands. However, Street-Legal, recorded in four short days between the early legs of Dylan’s ‘78 world tour, shared little in common with those studio triumphs. Despondent over the failure of his experimental film, Renaldo and Clara, and weary from the stresses of multiple knock-down, drag-out custody battles, Dylan and his touring band instead leaned into an expanded pop sound that American audiences, particularly critics, weren’t ready to embrace. Lost in fair criticisms of rushed recording and sloppy production (since remastered) waits a fascinating chance to hear Dylan tinkering with new elements on a batch of songs that leaves a few more pints of blood on the tracks.
As “Changing of the Guards” fades in with Alan Pasqua’s familiar, swirling organ, listeners soon realize that they are otherwise hearing, as a Monty Python interlude might say, something completely different. The gospel-style backing vocals of trio Carolyn Dennis, JoAnn Harris, and Helena Springs “oooh” behind Dylan’s stanzas and echo unlikely lines dealing in “renegade priests” and a “cold-blooded moon.” King Crimson drummer Ian Wallace pounds out a rolling, thudding beat, and Steve Douglas blows sax for the first time ever on a Dylan album between verses. Several accounts suggest that Dylan had been “all shook up” over the recent death of Elvis Presley and wanted to emulate the range of the King’s large backing bands. On Street-Legal’s sprawling opening cut, we now find the artist best known for strumming an acoustic guitar with a harmonica around his neck singing cryptically of romance, betrayal, and desperation with an R&B band and female backing singers. It’s no wonder that listeners might’ve been struck dumb for a moment (or a couple decades) and required a few verses to appreciate that these foreign elements, including some flubs, are driving the drama just as much as Dylan’s “corkscrew to the heart” imagery of “stitches still mending ‘neath a heart-shaped tattoo.”
Much of the fascination—and some of the frustration—of Street-Legal springs from witnessing Dylan trying to meld the artist listeners had come to know with the sounds he aimed to explore. It works more times than not. There’s more than a bit of “Meet Me in the Morning” in the lustful blues of “New Pony,” Billy Cross’ guitar burning through the fields as Dylan trots out the longheld bluesman trope of talking about women like horses. Douglas’ grimey sax outro adds salaciousness, and the backing refrain asking, “How much longer?” (perhaps until the latest filly needs put out of her misery) only seems to spur on Dylan’s ribald naughtiness. The fact that we now know his current squeeze, Springs, and future wife Dennis are backing him only heightens the intrigue. “We Better Talk This Over” reminds us that nobody parts ways quite like Dylan. “Why should we go on watching each other through a telescope?” he asks his future ex, concluding that “we’ll only hang ourselves on all this tangled rope.” Though framing himself as the pragmatist, the deceived, and, consequently, the bigger man, there’s more slick, big-city attorney than country lawyer in his painstaking case for calling it quits. Pasqua’s country piano and Cross’ wagon-wheel guitarwork turn this split into a rollicking barn-dance breakup, the backing vocals sounding surprisingly in two-step with this outlaw-country style.
Other concoctions on Street-Legal don’t quite blend ingredients together as smoothly. If the driving saxophone on the record’s other epic, “Changing of the Guards,” acts like a gust of wind blowing the dust off a book full of ancient tales glowing to be pored over, then the waltzing, renaissance-fair whimsy of Douglas’ sax on “No Time to Think” makes us want to slam the text shut. Nowhere on the album are Dylan’s lyrics more ambitious or the phrasing more captivating, yet it all quickly feels aimless, and the droning, word-bank rhymes of the pre-chorus exhaust the ear before we can even get to the impressive vocal crescendos at the end of each verse. Similarly, the winds on “Is Your Love in Vain?,” including Steve Madaio’s trumpet, feel stale and rote as Dylan, burned before by love, exhibits caution this time around. “Alright, I’ll take a chance/ I will fall in love with you,” he sings in a wary, transactional tone, a cadence that might work better if the music supporting him sounded more like a tentative tip-toe than a trudging brass march to the marital gallows.
Several highlights on Street-Legal showcase Bob Dylan’s knack for stepping into an adjacent genre and not missing a single brilliant beat. Single “Baby, Stop Crying” could be spinning on any oldies station as it tumbles into a soft landing with the singer offering a hand to an old love against better judgment. Douglas’ sax once again fuels the choruses with Pasqua’s organ acting as a parachute after Dylan hits his emotional breaking point (“It’s tearing up my mind!”). The backing singers perfectly balance out his gruff, nasal pleas with their own gospel-flavored call-and-response, soaring high notes, and de-escalating “ooh-oohs.” As unexpected as this left turn might initially be, never does Dylan sound like he’s out of his element or not in complete control. The tight, perfect pop of “True Love Tends to Forget” finds Dylan equal parts skeptical, smitten, and resigned to be with a woman who makes “every day of the year like playin’ Russian roulette.” Far from everyone’s cup of coffee, Dylan’s voice, powerful and emotive, can’t be denied as he truly leans in here, driving the proceedings the same way guitar and saxophone do on other numbers. It all works so well that the extra victory laps through the chorus at song’s end feel more than justified.
No song on Street-Legal sears itself into the imagination quite like “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power).” As we attempt to deconstruct and make sense of these songs, “Señor…” slouches along as its own mysterious, mythical creature. It’s vague in its narration (the search for a lost love), concrete in its detail (iron crosses, flashing rings, and dragon tails, oh my), and utterly unnerving in its execution. A menacing veil lowers from the opening, fidgeting percussion and muted sax as the confusion steadily thickens around Dylan and his titular guide. Subtleties, like David Mansfield’s shivering mandolin, and the choice to let the backing trio haunt like a portentous wind rather than echo or punctuate add to the palpable tension. Dylan’s character work here can’t be overlooked either. As his protagonist’s frustration grows from not being able to get straight answers, we hear Dylan’s vocals turn from determined, if weary, to flat-out exasperated as he finally wails, “This place don’t make sense to me no more!” It’s a conclusion that feels downright autobiographical given the turmoil in his life at the time.
“Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)” not only closes out Street-Legal but feels like the culmination of all that’s come before it. As the clopping percussion takes our hand on this nocturnal romp through the head and the heart and perhaps beyond, we don’t quite recognize the street signs until that familiar saxophone hits the curb. It’s a testament to just how much we’ve bought in to Dylan’s vision by the end of Street-Legal. “There’s a long-distance train rolling through the rain/ Tears on the letter I write,” sings Dylan before introducing the woman he’s seeking out. Critics have argued about the autobiographical nature of the song and whether Dylan’s journey is romantic, internal, or spiritual, but he’s definitely tangled up in one shade of blue or another. However, what’s far more clear is just how loose and fluid Dylan sounds here with this band behind him. Not since “Hurricane,” or maybe even “Tangled Up in Blue,” has the singer appeared as dialed in and confident as a storyteller, with the sounds we’ve heard across Street-Legal fleshing out this cinematic tale and leaving the listener exhilarated and joyfully exhausted by the song’s “Hey, hey, hey, hey” fade-out.
There very well might exist an alternative timeline in which the musical avenue Dylan travels down on Street-Legal leads to a destination more fans can agree on. Alas, his 1978 world tour, disparagingly dubbed the “Alimony Tour,” did more to dilute than champion the burgeoning sound found on this album. While Dylan and an expanded version of his studio band sprinkled in songs from Street-Legal across the remaining dates, including regularly posting “Changing of the Guards” as set closer, these inclusions took a backseat to the sometimes-inspired, more-often-cartoonish re-workings of familiar classics—most famously documented on Bob Dylan at Budokan. By the end of the ‘78 tour, Dylan had been “born again,” and the gospel elements he had drawn from on Street-Legal took a far more literal turn as he made a leap of faith into what’s now known as his Christian trilogy of albums. Stuck between a pair of masterpieces and a religious awakening, Dylan’s 18th album tends to get squeezed out of most conversations about his essential recordings. Nearly half a century later, listeners have begun to get street-smart to the fact that Street-Legal captures a still-fearless artist unafraid to take musical risks as his personal life comes crashing down around him.
