On November 9th of 1980, after having conducted three “Gospel Tours” (where he and his band played only his new gospel songs or other explicit songs of faith in Jesus), Bob Dylan began a new tour in San Francisco at the Warfield Theater, and re-introduced songs from his back pages into his set. Round about in the middle of his 12 night residency at the Warfield, Dylan did an interview backstage at one of the shows with Paul Vincent of the local KMEL radio station. Some snippets from that here (and audio snippets at this link):

Q: Some critics have not been kind as a result of the last two albums, because of the religious content. Does that surprise you?

Dylan: Well –

Q: For example, they have said, some have said that you’re proselytizing … is Jesus Christ the answer for all of us, in your mind?

Dylan: Yeah, uh, that’s — I would say that, uh huh. In order to — y’know what we’re talking about is the nature of God and I think you have to, ah, in order to go to God you have to go through Jesus, yeah, you have to understand that. You have to have experience with that.

Q: Would you like to have us come away from your shows hopefully thinking more deeply in that direction?

Dylan: Oh boy, I don’t know. Y’know, I don’t get into what people feel as they leave the shows, uh –

Q: You’re not preaching to us?

Dylan: No, no, I’m not … [pause] … I could do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but right now I’m just content to play these shows. I don’t have a — this is a stage show we’re doing. It’s not a salvation ceremony.

Later in the interview:

Q: Your religious beliefs may stay the same. Do you forsee continuing recording songs of that nature for very much longer?

Dylan: Well, [inaudible] the way things change now, I don’t know what’s gonna change out of this, which way it’s gonna go. I’m sure it’s gonna have some changing. You can’t record every album and have it be a Saved type album, because that’s, y’know you don’t get that many kind of songs all in a row like that. So I’m sure it would be some difference, but I couldn’t say what it would be.

You might get two things from this interview. One, an idea of why Dylan wasn’t too fond of being in a position where he was expected to provide off-the-cuff answers to theological type questions. I mean, even assuming that you believe that Jesus is the only source of salvation (as yours-truly does) the question of how he provides that salvation — and to whom — is one maybe not best answered by a singer put on-the-spot backstage shortly before a gig. (And the final answer can presumably only be dispensed by the Man Himself.)

And two: that even at this point in time, when he had one more “Gospel” record still to write and record (1981’s Shot of Love), Dylan was capable of anticipating a point at which he would no longer be writing songs that overtly made declarations of faith. Dylan’s oft-stated point of view is that the songs “come” to him, as in, “you don’t get too many kind of songs in a row like that.” Even though there were some more to come, he figured they wouldn’t keep coming in that nature forever.

He figured right, of-course.

Also in 1980, he was interviewed by Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times and said (referring to his old songs from the 1960s and 1970s):

Those songs weren’t anti-God at all. I wasn’t sure about that for a while … I love those songs. They’re still a part of me.

About 5 years later, after two “secular” albums, Infidels and Empire Burlesque, Dylan had this exchange in an interview with Bill Flanagan:

Q: You integrate your faith into the songs more subtly now than at the time of Slow Train Coming.

Dylan: Now I’m just writing from instinct. I do that most of the time anyway. I just write from instinct and however it comes out is how it comes out. Other people can make of it what they choose to. But for me I can’t expound too much on what I’m doing because I really don’t have any idea what I’m doing. But I’ll tell you one thing, if you’re talking just on a scriptural type of thing, there’s no way I could write anything that would be scripturally incorrect. I mean, I’m not going to put forth any ideas that aren’t scripturally true. I might reverse them, or make them come out a different way, but I’m not going to say anything that’s just totally wrong, that there’s not a law for.

Somehow Bill Flanagan didn’t follow up on that rather astounding statement, to see if Dylan would explain exactly what he meant. Though, in a way, it’s clear enough.

The interesting thing, as ever, to me, is the degree to which Dylan is not really the “man of many faces,” or the ever-changing chameleon, as he’s generally characterized by the media and many big-time critics, but is, instead, remarkably consistent through the years. He also plainly sees that same thread of consistency in his own work.

And from Cardiff, Wales, in the year 2000, here’s a sample of Dylan’s rather gorgeous live re-working of his 1997 song, Tryin’ To Get To Heaven.

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A fine book on what is publicly known about Dylan’s spiritual journey is of-course Scott Marshall’s “Restless Pilgrim.”

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