Bob and the Great Conversion

Second only to going electric, Bob Dylan’s out-of-the-blue conversion to fundamentalist Christianity in 1979 had a seismic effect on the musical world. Everyone was used to Dylan reinventing himself by then, from acoustic folk roots to protest to metaphysical explorations (My Back Pages) to trippy folk to full blown electric blues with surreal lyrics to country squire to a confessional break-up record to a gypsy caravan revue to a Las Vegas-y big band but no one, and I mean no one, except those closest to him at the time, would have ever thought Bob’s next incarnation would be as a musical fire and brimstone Christian preacher.

The walls shook, fans were befuddled, the cool hip liberal thinking iconoclast had turned himself over to the button-down, blinders-on, right-leaning ideology of fundamentalism. Goddamn.

But it wasn’t ideological with Bob, it was the result of a direct and profound personal experience. It occured as many born-again incidents occur, in a time of extreme personal stress and disorientation, what with his marriage crumbling and in a difficult financial situation because of his being gutted in a celebrity divorce. Jesus came to him in his hotel room in Tucson, Dylan saying he experienced “a presence in the room that couldn’t have been anybody but Jesus. Jesus put his hand on me. It was a physical thing. I felt it. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble. The glory of the Lord knocked me down and picked me up.”

I have my own theory about just what happens in these kind of phenomena. Whatever came to his hotel room was indeed a force, from within him, from without, a combination of the two and real, but something other than Jesus. I wrote about these experiences in the article linked here - The Phenomena of the Interceding Celestial Christ. My belief is, basically, that Jesus was most likely a purely mythical figure. Maybe, possibly, a wandering sage. But a god? No. God no.

Belief, however, is powerful thing. I believe in it. And I believe in the songs Bob wrote during that time, believe in them as great testaments to gospel music, powerful, soulful songs. “When He Returns,” has a spine tingling, tour-de-force vocal performance that astounds me every time I hear it. The conviction and depth of feeling in the song is piercing. That the subject matter is something I don’t believe in doesn’t matter - I believe in Dylan’s belief at the time he sang it, as a human expression. A prayer that yearns for a rightness in this world of wrongs.

“Gotta Serve Somebody” is a very astute look at hypocrisy, at the parts we play in the world, high to low, how one is to fundamentally (no pun intended) live one’s life. If instead he’d said, ‘you gotta serve something, the good or the bad, but you gotta serve something,’ no one probably would have complained. But that isn’t as catchy. Essentially, if you take away the ideological trappings, it’s the same thing.

When you remove the Bob quotient from the songs, they stand out even more as the great gospel songs they are. The album of cover songs, Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan, testifies to this, majestically. Dottie People’s rendition of “I Believe in You,” is church, with her oohhhs and hoots, and sounds as authentically gospel as it gets. “Pressing On,” by the Chicago Mass Choir gives me the chills, lead singer and choir, you feel like you’re there in the pews in a swaying congregation, hands in the air, lifted up by the voices enveloping you.

I went to a baptism of a friend’s baby once, at a Baptist Church. The service went on for three hours, and with the testifying, the music and the preacher, it was electrifying. And exhausting, in a good way. Afterward, they asked some of us who were guests what we thought, how we felt, and I said if I’d come there ten years earlier I’d probably be a Baptist.

Belief is a powerful thing, and like I said, I believe in it. I honor what was at one time Dylan’s belief, the same way I appreciate the truths to be found within each musical journey he’s taken.