Infidels (Bob Dylan album)

Infidels (1983) is an album by Bob Dylan, which reunited the artist with Mark Knopfler, who had played on 1979's Slow Train Coming.

Infidels was initially considered a reversion from the overtly religious songs found on his previous three albums, but many now view the album as including subtler extensions of his religious themes.

The critical and commercial reaction was the strongest for Dylan in years, with the album reaching #20 US and going gold, and #9 in the UK. It also provided him with his last chart hit, "Sweetheart Like You".

Infidels was the first Dylan album to be entirely recorded digitally, embracing then-current production techniques.

Although hailed as a "return to form", Infidels has become infamous amongst fans of Dylan's work for what it failed to include - most notably, the stunning "Blind Willie McTell", which, while recorded with the rest of the Infidels tracks, was left off and would remain unreleased until 1991.

The Recording Sessions

Critics and historians often make a note of Infidels' polished, tasteful production. One of the main contributors to the album's overall sound is Mark Knopfler, best known as the guitarist from Dire Straits. Dylan wanted to produce the album himself, but feeling that technology had passed him by, he approached a number of contemporary artists who were more at home in a modern recording studio. David Bowie, Frank Zappa, and Elvis Costello were all approached before Dylan hired Knopfler.

Knopfler later admitted it was difficult to produce Dylan. "You see people working in different ways, and it's good for you. You have to learn to adapt to the way different people work. Yes, it was strange at times with Bob. One of the great parts about production is that it demonstrates to you that you have to be flexible. Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing. You have to be sensitive and flexible, and it's fun. I'd say I was more disciplined. But I think Bob is much more disciplined as a writer of lyrics, as a poet. He's an absolute genius. As a singer - absolute genius. But musically, I think it’s a lot more basic. The music just tends to be a vehicle for that poetry."

Once Knopfler was aboard, the two quickly assembled a team of accomplished musicians. Knopfler's own tough and flinty guitar tone was paired with Mick Taylor's; formerly the lead guitarist with the Blues Breakers and, more famously, the Rolling Stones, Taylor was best known for his fluid, melodic improvisations that were firmly placed in the blues tradition. Having been introduced to Mick Taylor the previous summer, Dylan had developed a friendship with Taylor that resulted in Taylor hearing the Infidels material first during the months leading up to the April sessions.

Knopfler said about the instrument he plays on Infidels: "I still haven't got a flat-top wooden acoustic, because I've never found one that was as good as the two best flat tops I ever played. One...was a hand-built Greco that Rudy Pensa, of Rudy's Music Stop lent me. I used...the Greco on Infidels."

Knopfler suggested Alan Clark for keyboards as well as engineer Neil Dorfsman, both of whom were hired. According to Knopfler, it was Dylan's ideas to recruit Robbie Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar as the rhythm section. Best known as Sly & Robbie, Shakespeare and Dunbar were famed reggae producers who were major recording artists in their own right. An unlikely but inspired mix, the chemistry between these players is largely responsible for the album's sweet, pop-bent while maintaining a tough, rocking core.

"Bob's musical ability is limited, in terms of being able to play a guitar or a piano," said Knopfler. "It's rudimentary, but it doesn't affect his variety, his sense of melody, his singing. It's all there. In fact, some of the things he plays on piano while he's singing are lovely, even though they're rudimentary. That all demonstrates the fact that you don't have to be a great technician. It's the same old story: If something is played with soul, that's what's important."

The Songs

Though Infidels is often cited as a return to secular work (following a trio of albums heavily influenced by born-again Christianity), many of the songs recorded during the Infidels sessions are filled with Biblical references and strong religious imagery. The most explicit example of this can be found on the opening track, "Jokerman."

A surreal epic, "Jokerman" contains a number of lines referencing the Bible (almost 30), many of which are listed here: http://web.utk.edu/~wparr/commlyrics1983.html

A number of critics have also called "Jokerman" a sly political protest, addressed to a "manipulator of crowds...a dream twister." Underneath the obtuse Biblical references are words weary of populists who are all surface ("Michelangelo could've carved your features") and more about action than thinking through the complexities ("fools rush in where angels fear to tread").

The second track, "Sweetheart Like You," is sung to a fictitious woman. One line ("...a woman like you should be at home/That's where you belong/Taking care of somebody nice/Who don't know how to do you wrong") is sometimes criticized as sexist, while others perceive it as a warning about ambition as the singer tells the listener not to succumb to their cruel surroundings. The song can also be perceived as a song about the temptation of Christ. One line is sung, "They say in your father's house there's many mansions/ Each one of them got a fireproof floor" (see John 14:2). Also, the singer refers to the "cute hat" of the sweetheart (a possible reference to Christ's crown of thorns), and that there is "only one step down" to the "land of permanent bliss" (a plea for Christ to come down from the cross).

More than a few critics felt Infidels betrayed a strong, strange dislike for space travel, and it can be heard on the first few lines of "License To Kill." ("Oh, man has invented his doom/First step was touching the moon.") A harsh indictment accusing mankind of imperialism and a predilection for violence, the song deals specifically with mankind’s relationship to the environment, either on a political scale or a scientific one.

The song "Neighborhood Bully" is a thinly-disguised song defending Israel's foreign policy. In the first nine stanzas, Dylan defends Israel by offering up several justifications, whereas in the last two stanzas, the accuser asks questions to an imaginary audience. In the fourth stanza, Dylan references a historical event that led to further quarrels between Israel and Iraq. This event occurred on June 7, 1981, when Israel bombed a nuclear reactor near Baghdad. Most of the world condemned Israel's attack while Israel claimed that the plant was involved in the production of nuclear weapons that would have been used against them.

Another song, "Union Sundown," is another political protest against lowest bidding sweatshops overseas. The song indicates a vague sympathy with the working class while criticizing union bosses as well as American consumers who buy cheap, foreign-made goods. The fourth verse also makes another unusual reference against space travel, as well. ("They used to grow food in Kansas/Now they want to grow it on the moon and eat it raw.")

Because Dylan never spoke clearly about his religious views during this period, it's difficult to explain his intentions in the recording of Infidels. With a chorus based upon the dictum "Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of Light" (2 Corinthians 11:14), the religious content in "Man Of Peace" has been open to debate. The last verse, in which Dylan sings "Somewhere Mama's weeping for her blue-eyed boy/She's holding them little white shoes and that little broken toy," has been interpreted as a reference to one of the children slaughtered in Bethlehem by Herod, who was trying to find and kill the baby Jesus. The next lines ("And he's following a star/The same one them three men followed from the East./I hear that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.") have also been seen as another reference to Herod, who told the wise men that he wanted to come worship the child too (i.e., he was searching for the child for a peaceful reason) when in fact he was going to murder the child, all of which is told in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter Two. Like "Jokerman," "Man Of Peace" continued Dylan's fascination with Revelation and the battle to separate false messiahs assuming Christ-like attributes from the one true Messiah.

"I And I," according to author/critic Tim Riley, "updates the Dylan mythos. Even though it substitutes self-pity for the [pessimism found throughout Infidels], you can't ignore it as a Dylan spyglass: 'Someone else is speakin' with my mouth, but I'm listening only to my heart/I've made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot.'

"Dylan's relationship with himself has always been at the heart of his best work - the way the man who was born Robert Zimmerman communes with the songs, odyssey, and mystique of Bob Dylan. But 'I and I' is perhaps the only song to take this subject on as an artistic issue...without giving up very much of his true self, he conveys the distance he feels between his inner identity and the public face he wears." (from Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary)

On an album filled with topical numbers and brooding self-examination, Infidels' closer, "Don't Fall Apart On Me Tonight," stands out as a pure love song. On past albums like John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, Dylan closed with love songs sung to the narrator's partner, and that tradition is continued with "Don't Fall Apart On Me Tonight," with a pleading chorus that asks "Don't fall apart on me tonight, I just don't think that I could handle it./Don't fall apart on me tonight, Yesterday's just a memory, Tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be/And I need you, yeah, you tonight."

Outtakes

As with most Dylan albums, outtakes and rough mixes from Infidels were eventually bootlegged, but the album garnered considerable controversy over the years regarding its final selection of songs.

By June of 1983, Dylan and Knopfler had set a preliminary sequence of nine songs, including two songs that were ultimately omitted: "Foot Of Pride" and "Blind Willie McTell." Other notable outtakes like "Someone's Got A Hold Of My Heart" (later re-written and re-recorded for Empire Burlesque) were recorded during these sessions, but only "Foot Of Pride" and "Blind Willie McTell" received serious consideration for possible inclusion.

"Blind Willie McTell" is perhaps the most heatedly discussed outtake in Dylan's catalog. "On the surface, 'Blind Willie McTell' is about the landscape of the blues," writes Tim Riley, "and the figures Dylan pays respects to on his 1962 debut. But it's also about the landscape of pop, and how an aging persona like Dylan might feel as he casts his experienced gaze over the road he's walked. Always skeptical about the quality of his own voice, he didn't release 'Blind Willie McTell' at first because he didn't feel his tribute lived up to its sources. The irony here is that his own insecurity about living up to his imagined blues ideal becomes a subject in itself. 'Nobody sings the blues like Blind Willie McTell' becomes a way of saying how Dylan feels displaced not just by the industry...but by the music he calls home." Clinton Heylin gives "Blind Willie McTell" a more ambitious interpretation, describing it as "the world's eulogy, sung by an old bluesman recast as St. John the Divine."

Both "Foot Of Pride" and "Blind Willie McTell" were dropped from consideration soon after Mark Knopfler ended his involvement with the album. In later years, Knopfler claimed that "Infidels would have been a better record if I had mixed the thing, but I had to go on tour in Germany, and then Bob had a weird thing with CBS, where he had to deliver records to them at a certain time and I was away in Europe...Some of [Infidels] is like listening to roughs. Maybe Bob thought I'd rushed things beause I was in a hurry to leave, but I offered to finish it after one tour. Instead, he got the engineer to do the final mix."

Dylan spent roughly a month on remixing and overdubbing, holding a number of sessions in June rerecording vocal tracks using newly rewritten lyrics. During this time, he decided to cast aside "Foot Of Pride" and "Blind Willie McTell," replacing them with "Union Sundown."

Aftermath

While Infidels was better received than its predecessor, Shot of Love, Graham Lock of New Musical Express still referred to Dylan as "a culturally spent force...a confused man trying to rekindle old fires." Rolling Stone and The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wasn't impressed either, writing that Dylan had "turned into a hateful crackpot. Worse than his equation of Jews with Zionists with the Likud or his utterly muddled disquisition on international labor is the ital Hasidism that inspires no less than three superstitious attacks on space travel. God knows (and I use that phrase advisedly) how far off the deep end he'll go if John Glenn becomes president."

But even the skeptics found some merit in Infidels. In the same review, Christgau wrote, "All the wonted care Dylan has put into this album shows...His distaste for the daughters of Satan has gained complexity of tone--neither dismissive nor vituperative, he addresses women with a solicitousness that's strangely chilling, as if he knows what a self-serving hypocrite he's being, but only subliminally. At times I even feel sorry for him, just as he intends." Indeed, critics were unanimous in praising the overall sound, "one case where the streamlined production doesn't seem to work against the rugged authority he can still command as a singer," wrote Tim Riley. Music critic Bill Wyman conceded that "the songs are mature and complex."

Infidels would place tenth on The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for 1983, Dylan's highest placement since 1975 when The Basement Tapes placed #1 and Blood on the Tracks placed #4. Years later, when outtakes like "Someone's Got A Hold Of My Heart," "Blind Willie McTell," and "Foot Of Pride" began to circulate, the album's stature would in some ways grow, becoming a missed opportunity at a potential masterpiece to some critics like Rob Bowman and Clinton Heylin.

Without a tour in 1983, Infidels still generated modest sales, selling consistently through the Christmas shopping season. CBS even produced a music video for "Sweetheart Like You," Dylan's first in the MTV era. It was followed by a second video for "Jokerman," which CBS issued as a single in February of 1984.

Meanwhile, Dylan spent the fall of 1983 recording demos and various songs at his home in Malibu, California. Rather than work alone, Dylan brought in a number of young musicians, including Charlie Sexton, drummer Charlie Quintana, and guitarist J.J. Holliday. As Heylin notes, "this was Dylan's first real dalliance with third-generation American rock & rollers." These informal sessions set the stage for Dylan's first public performances since 1981.

Late Night with David Letterman had only aired since 1982, but the groundbreaking, critically-acclaimed talk show was already a hit on late night television. After months of phone calls, Dylan agreed to appear on Late Night, and on March 22, 1984, he appeared with Quintana, Holliday, and bassist Tony Marisco. With his band of post-punk musicians, Dylan performed three songs: Sonny Boy Williamson's "Don't Start Me Talking," "Jokerman," and "License To Kill." Rather than stick with the original album arrangements, Dylan dramatically re-arranged "Jokerman" and "License To Kill," delivering what many consider to be his finest television performance ever.

Dylan would soon dissolve his impromptu band after their one performance on Late Night, but within a few months, Dylan would begin his first tour since 1981, and from that compile his next record.

Track listing

All songs by Bob Dylan.

"Jokerman" – 6:12
"Sweetheart Like You" – 4:31
"Neighborhood Bully" – 4:33
"License To Kill" – 3:31
"Man Of Peace" – 6:27
"Union Sundown" – 5:21
"I And I" – 5:10
"Don't Fall Apart On Me Tonight" – 5:54

Personnel

Bob Dylan - Guitar, Harmonica, Keyboards, Vocals
Sly Dunbar - Drums, Percussion
Robbie Shakespeare - Bass
Mick Taylor - Guitar
Mark Knopfler - Guitar
Alan Clark (keyboardist) - Keyboards
Clydie King - Vocals on "Union Sundown"