"Springtime in New York" by Bob Dylan: These songs could have shaped the sound of the eighties

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Bob Dylan in the eighties: he hesitates, he floats, he ultimately makes the wrong decisions

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Sony Music

Bob Dylan and the 1980s - a misunderstanding, if not a catastrophe. At least on the surface. Christian fundamentalism, hardly any concerts, a rocked-down tour of Germany in 1984, and then this controversial appearance on Live Aid 1986 ... Bob Dylan may have been the god of cool in the sixties, and he may still have succeeded in the seventies with albums like "Blood on the Tracks" (1975) and "Desire" (1976) to be able to navigate his star safely in the sky.

But at the beginning of the eighties, more precisely: in the spring of 1983, everything was on the brink. How different everything could have turned out is what »Springtime in New York« is about, a new box of songs that Bob Dylan recorded between 1980 and 1985 but never released. And there are quite a few. The “deluxe” version of this box contains a total of 57 songs on five CDs.

The problem with the eighties: Bob Dylan, the future Nobel laureate in literature, cannot decide: does he want to publish Christian songs? Or rather songs of a search for meaning in Judaism. Spontaneously recorded tracks? Or sound monsters polished in the studio? He hesitates, he maneuvers, he ultimately makes the wrong decisions. Instead of starting into the eighties like Prince, Michael Jackson or Bruce Springsteen, Dylan released an album with the handbrake on with the ambiguous title "Infidels" - Infidels. The unbelievers - as is well known, when in doubt they are always "the other", you rarely mean yourself.

On »Infidels« Dylan sings about the ghosts of the Caribbean, about porous relationships between lovers who lose sight of each other, but also about relationships between people and the state or about how people fall in the wake of emerging neoliberalism and globalization the wheels are coming. Above all, a world is addressed in which people no longer have an internal compass.

In the hard rocking song "Neighborhood Bully", Dylan, who until a few years before had sung repeatedly about civil rights and judicial scandals, even used even harsher words against "the pacifists" who question Israel's right to self-defense with their peace chatter. Failure to meet expectations and dare to try new things may have been Dylan's hallmark in the past. With »Infidels« he took the game to a self-destructive, iconoclastic level.

In fact, »Infidels«, as suggested by a bootleg entitled »Outfidels« soon after the record was released, was above all an album of missed opportunities.

Other artists could have built entire careers from the songs that didn't end up on the album, their lyrics and melodies were so lyrical, human, divine and convincing - songs like "Too Late," "Foot of Pride," and "Blind Willie McTell ", Which is one of the ten most important songs in the Dylan canon today," Tell Me "or" Lord Protect My Child ".

The presence of an absence could be felt in the grooves of the Infidels record.

Loss of faith and spiritual home

Nevertheless, the album received benevolent criticism in 1983. It was praised that Dylan had returned from Christian fundamentalism to the secular, and the sound of the album was praised - an aseptic sound with traces of reggae that was shaped by the sound understanding of co-producer Mark Knopfler. The latter was to become a superstar with his band Dire Straits only a year later with the release of the album "Brothers in Arms".

And Dylan?

He gave interviews in which he mainly expressed how much he struggled with the new times - the glitz and glamor of the early eighties, the will to consume, life on credit, the loss of spirituality and faith.

Bob Dylan was actually on a similar spiritual journey as the Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky, who epically addressed the loss of faith and a spiritual home in his last two films, "Nostalghia" and "Sacrifice".

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That said, Bob Dylan probably already knew what he wanted, but times had changed too much.

In November 1981, Republican Ronald Reagan was elected 40th President of the United States, including by millions of young voters.

The era of neoliberalism and yuppies, an epoch in which egoism became socially acceptable, was ushering in.

Half a year earlier, MTV had gone on the air;

The triumphant advance of the music video also meant a new form of visibility for musicians, their hairstyles, their body language and their style of clothing, who had previously not had to stage themselves except at concerts.

With the advent of the music video, a new pop sound was created, the smoothly polished sound of the eighties, which replaced the mangy rock of the seventies. What about Bob Dylan? At this point in time, he had lived for about two decades with the heavy burden of being a "living legend". His last three albums were evangelistic gospel albums. At recruiting events for the Born Again Christians in the United States, Dylan songs like "Blowin 'in the Wind" were played to get young people interested in the Bible.

»Springtime in New York« now delivers the tracks that were once held back, with the help of which every listener can curate their own »Infidels« album. It is no understatement to say that this does justice to one of the great (lost) albums of the 1980s. The box appears as part of "The Bootleg Series", launched exactly 30 years ago by Columbia Legacy, a series of archive publications by Bob Dylan that has now grown to 16 episodes, which brings together discarded and lost recordings of the singer. Similar to jazz-relevant live recordings by musicians that have been re-edited with a time delay and provided with in-depth accompanying texts and allow new perspectives on familiar things, Dylan's »Bootleg Series« is a kind of alternative notation,which describes a parallel musical development of the singer behind the scenes.

While a narrative strand of the »Bootleg Series« is devoted to moments of musical history and the creative process behind some of Dylan's canonized recordings (from Vol. 12, »The Cutting Edge, 1965-1966« and Vol. 11, »The Basement Tapes Complete «boxes with 18 and 6 CDs respectively), shed light on other epochs that were overshadowed by Dylan's main work in the past due to a sloppy publication policy - such as» Another Self Portrait, 1969-1971 «or» Trouble No More, 1979- 1981 «covering Dylan's Christian phase.

The now published 16th episode falls into the latter category.

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Bob Dylan

Springtime in New York: the Bootleg Series Vol. 16

Label: Sony Music

Label: Sony Music

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In addition to the central block of songs, from which an alternative »Infidels« album could have been created, »Springtime in New York« also includes the productions that immediately preceded and followed the album.

Two whole CDs deal with the outtakes of his album "Shot of Love", another CD with the preparations for the album "Empire Burlesque".

Even with these recordings, it is difficult to understand why one or the other was not used back then to artistically enhance the albums.

Both are considered transitional works with too many mediocre songs and a sound that seems to be turned upside down.

Without explicitly stipulating how this trilogy on Dylan's early eighties albums could have actually looked, »Springtime in New York« paints the image of a restless artist driven by a search for meaning who is still capable of the greatest throws. But he withdrew his trust in these songs, presumably in view of the immense effort that would have been necessary to fix them. With that he lost sight of the goal. Now, almost 40 years later, it's finally clearer.