"Out of the darkness and into the light"

Almost a quarter of a century ago came Bob Dylan's album Slow Train Coming. That was about the time I began to take Dylan seriously. I enjoyed this.

.... By the late 1970s, he had begun spending time at the Vineyard Fellowship, a Pentecostal group of Biblical literalists in the San Fernando Valley. At Vineyard, Dylan attended a regular Bible class and a 14-week advanced discipleship training course. For some, Dylan’s attraction to this particularly severe expression of Protestantism has always been more puzzling than any broader interest he might have taken in Christianity....

...[I]n a suite in Tucson, Arizona, in November 1978, that would determine Dylan’s metaphysical and creative direction over the next half-decade or so. “Jesus put his hand on me,” he told the reporter Karen Hughes the following year. “It was a physical thing. I felt it. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble.” In interviews, he started talking about waiting on God in much the same kind of mystical vein that Simone Weil might have adopted. In his pocket (or so he said), he had kept a silver cross a fan had thrown to him on stage. ....

Dylan has one of the least polished voices in contemporary music, and this is sometimes taken to mean it’s his least attractive quality—adequate to the musical task at hand, sure, though hardly his finest asset. But one could just as easily argue, as Tim Grierson has done, that it’s one of his most dexterous strengths, its obvious imperfections notwithstanding. Certainly, the unpredictable phrasing and elasticised timbre, along with his obvious familiarity with the rhythms of the King James Bible, serve him well. ....

Dylan usually makes a point of finishing his albums on a note of hope or despair, more often than not with sparse instrumentation. “When He Returns,” the record’s closer, sells it on both fronts. Just the singer accompanied by Barry Beckett on a yellow-toothed piano, its stately notes hanging in the air like the scent of magnolia. The song ushers the listener out of the recording with its most overtly emotional expression of personal religious belief. ....

...[T]he actual music itself is still fantastic—jauntily arranged, sonically eccentric, jittery and menacing at times, incredibly ambitious, and rhythmically exuberant. Above all, Slow Train Coming really is the story of one guy’s flaming journey out of the darkness and into the light—or, if you insist, in precisely the opposite direction—bringing it all back home with feeling and a pedal-stomping style. Unhinged? Maybe. Inspired? Indisputably. .... (more)

A Larry Norman cover of Dylan's "When He Returns."

David Cohen, "In the Spirit of the Lord," Quillette, August 3, 2023.