WITH ‘SLOW TRAIN COMING’ BOB DYLAN FORETOLD TODAY 43 YEARS AGO
I've been a Bob Dylan fan since I first heard him in the early 60s and one of my favorite albums is the one that Jerry Wilson writes about in the post below. If you haven't listened to the album you've got a real treat waiting for you.
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Art’s true test lies not in the immediate but in the decades and centuries following its creation. Time is a tremendous truth-teller. It sifts the here and now, separating creative wheat from chaff and allowing only that of lasting value to remain. A relatively recent example would be how little demand there is to resurrect popular songs from 1924. George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” presented the same year, remains a staple of modern classical music.
With this in mind, a glance at today’s headlines demonstrates how some 43 years after its release, Bob Dylan’s “Slow Train Coming” maintains relevancy and vitality. Without getting into the usual distraction of debating Dylan’s singing, which even his most ardent fans admit is an acquired taste, the songs themselves demand attention as they detail what was then and remains the same now.
At the release of “Slow Train Coming,” there was so much furor over Dylan becoming a Christian that much of what he said in the lyrics was overlooked by fans and detractors alike. Few debated the album’s musical strength, a mixture of blues, folk, and gospel, with solid contributions by guitarist Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame. The words were then, and are now, the proverbial two-edged sword.
We start with the album’s first track, “Gotta Serve Somebody.” Aside from being Dylan’s most recent Top 40 hit, the song is reminiscent of Christian rock’s founding father Larry Norman’s “Righteous Rocker #1” from earlier in the decade as it recites a lengthy list of people, places, and positions, nailing one and all with the chorus:
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeedYou’re gonna have to serve somebodyWell, it may be the devil or it may be the LordBut you’re gonna have to serve somebody
An aside. Dylan performed “Gotta Serve Somebody” during the 1980 Grammys, winning the award for Best Make Rock Vocal Performance. It was his first Grammy as a solo artist.
Dylan drives the point further home in the album’s second song, “Precious Angel”:
Now there’s spiritual warfare and flesh and blood breaking downYa either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral groundThe enemy is subtle, how be it we are so deceivedWhen the truth’s in our hearts and we still don’t believe?
These and numerous other Christ-based notes aside, Dylan wasn’t content with limiting himself to spiritual observations. He went there politically. Remember that the album came out during the Carter administration, an era uncomfortably parallel to the present day with the noticeable exception that Jimmy Carter was at least a decent human being, unlike the White House’s current usurper … er, occupant.
The album’s title track contains sharp commentary:
All that foreign oil controlling American soilLook around you, it’s just bound to make you embarrassedSheiks walkin’ around like kingsWearing fancy jewels and nose ringsDeciding America’s future from Amsterdam and to ParisAnd there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend
Not much has changed, has it?
Dylan went further:
Big-time negotiators, false healers and woman haters
Dylan Mulvaney and promoters of male athletes competing as women, anyone?
Masters of the bluff and masters of the propositionBut the enemy I seeWears a cloak of decencyAll nonbelievers and men stealers talkin’ in the name of religion
How many times in the present day have we seen progressives claim to be doing what they are doing in the name of God? However, fear not, for God is not mocked without consequence.
And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend
Dylan had more in store, as “When You Gonna Wake Up?” superbly details.
Counterfeit philosophies have polluted all of your thoughtsKarl Marx has got ya by the throat, Henry Kissinger’s got you tied up in knots
Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schoolsYou got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules
When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake upWhen you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?
Pornography in schools? Yes there is. Are lawbreakers making rules? Have you seen Congress lately?
Bob Dylan’s words rang true in 1979, and they ring even truer today. But again, fear not.
The iron hand it ain’t no match for the iron rodThe strongest wall will crumble and fall to a mighty GodFor all those who have eyes and all those who have earsIt is only He who can reduce me to tearsDon’t you cry and don’t you die and don’t you burnFor like a thief in the night, He’ll replace wrong with rightWhen He returns