Bob Dylan: "Lenny Bruce"

17 September 1981

"There can be few people in any walk of life who are getting a worse press than Bob Dylan. No-one ever has a good word for him; mainly, it seems, because of his religious views."

— Tim de Lisle

Bob Dylan has spent the bulk of his sixty years as a recording artist being praised as a genius spokesperson of his generation while also being trashed for changes in style, unexpected creative u-turns and the odd time he misspoke. Some of his fiercest critics also happen to be some of his biggest fans. Part of getting into the man involves dealing with some ghastly compositions, poor production work and an acceptance of the fact that there's no way to like all of it.

So, Tim de Lisle's observation about Dylan's evangelical Christianity being the main source of people's derision to his Bobness is missing something. Had he not found the Lord some three years earlier, fans would've surely found something else to howl with protest over. Had he not subjected secular audiences to nothing but devotional material then the press would've found other avenues with which to crap all over him. Dylan couldn't win except for the fact that he was Dylan and had been winning all along.

It may not have been apparent at the time but Dylan was moving away from Christianity by 1982. Shot of Love was the third of his religious trilogy but it was the first to include material with no connection to Jesus. I previously wrote in this space that it was his evangelical material that was much more convincing — with, as I have said before, "Every Grain of Sand" the  stand-out — and I stand by this but with a minor caveat: in "Lenny Bruce" he expresses a sacredness hitherto unheard since his conversion.

I'm still not a big fan of this song. I hated its inane lyrics like "never did get any Golden Globe awards, never made it to Synanon" then and time and maturity haven't warmed me to them in the last four years. I observed that the "whole thing reads like random jottings" and I suppose I wasn't wrong considering he admitted to having written it in five minutes. It's safe to say that the Bard didn't put his usual amount of care into this piece.

Still, the gospel influence makes it one of the more devotional works of the era. If Dylan did achieve peace and contentment after joining the Vineyard Movement he didn't express it through the medium of his songs. His passion had returned but he seemed angrier than ever. It was only when paying tribute to a foul-mouthed, drug-addicted Jewish comedian that he could demonstrate a loving, charitable side that, notably, he seemed incapable of giving even to Christ.

Which just goes to show that while Christianity was able to rescue him from the depths of despair and self-loathing, it wasn't destined to be a long-term priority in his life. It was at around the time of Shot of Love that Dylan began to re-introduce old favourites of the non-devotional variety to his live shows. "Lenny Bruce" represents him trying to reclaim that same territory in his freshly recorded work. To make it about a figure who was at his peak while the young "Song and Dance Man" was on the rise is of no small significance.

But who is he alluding to with the line "more of an outlaw than you ever were"? Is he attacking himself for being a middle-class boy who dressed up, affected an accent and fooled the patrons of every New York City cafe by pretending to be a rebel from the old west? Even if he had once been an outlaw in his youth, he was now over forty, a millionaire and had been cramming Jesus down the throats of everyone who paid good money to see him: hardly the kind of behaviour befitting a fugitive from the law. 

And this is where we begin to see a return to the Dylan of old. He had always run away from the 'voice of a generation' tag with songs such as "All I Really Want to Do", "Mr Tambourine Man" and "My Back Pages" (it's a cliche I know but my interest in Dylan is intrinsically linked to The Byrds) address his desire to be regarded as an artist rather than as a spokesperson. With "Lenny Bruce" he informs his audience — a good twenty years too late if should be noted — that the real deal had been there all along while they had been following a false idol. Bruce better represented all those things that they had seen in Dylan. "It Ain't Me Babe" was something he tried explaining to his fans all the way back in the sixties; and now in the eighties he was gently reminding them that it still wasn't him.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Depche Mode: "Just Can't Get Enough"

A supposed classic of the eighties but I'm not sure what it has done to deserve this status beyond the annoyingly memorable chorus. Then again, de Lisle doesn't consider it to be as memorable as predecessor hit "New Life" (how does that one go again?). Vince Clarke's final single with the group (he must not have had his imminent departure in mind when he composed it), the Basildonians were getting the remnants of pure pop out of their systems so they were able to move towards darker material in the years ahead, which would be a welcome change. Leaving their old sound behind to those with a better grasp of it was for the best since repeating the words 'just can't get enough' ad nauseam does not a great pop song make. As Patrick Humphries famously summed it up in his review in the Melody Maker, "I can, you will".

(Click here to read the original review)

Bob Dylan: "Lenny Bruce"

17 September 1981

"There can be few people in any walk of life who are getting a worse press than Bob Dylan...mainly, it seems, because of his religious views."

— Tim de Lisle

Christian rock is something that is almost impossible to listen to if you're an outsider. I'm sure it sounds absolutely brilliant to believers, especially if you happen to be a Bible-bashing, abortion clinic picketing, homosexual-hating zealot, but to us godless types it's low on creativity, humourless, self-righteous and limited to awfully narrow subject matter. It's also, obviously though no less crucially, made by Christians who have hopefully carved out a nice, lucrative place for themselves on the evangelical circuit. In short, they needn't bother performing for secular audiences and for all I know many of them are high on creativity, full of humour and not the least bit self-righteous, all the while covering a myriad of topics far beyond their lord and saviour. Perhaps I'll find out for myself at some point. For now, we'll have to make due with artists who dabbled in what the Louvin Brothers called "the Christian Life" and for that I'm grateful that one the finest songwriters who ever lived was once a churchey. Take a bow, Bob Dylan.

For the purposes of this entry I have delved into Dylan's born-again period, listening to the album trilogy Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love (from which "Lenny Bruce" was taken) as well as some of the recent collection The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More. It may be trite to say but this isn't exactly his most fertile period. Far from being along the creative lines of the likes of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit", "Tombstone Blues" or "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts", even his best track from the time, the strangely unreleased "Ain't Gonna Go to Hell (for Anybody)", is more along the lines of likable but lighter fare such as "One More Night" or "Mozambique": by no means an account of the man's lyrical facility although certainly ample evidence for what underrated melodies he carve out.

Slow Train Coming is generally regarded as the high point (relatively speaking) of his evangelical phase and it's a passable release. While I've never cared much for the sentiment, "Gotta Serve Somebody" is just about the best Dylan ever got at espousing Jesus without letting his muse wilt away. Worryingly, though, he descends into scriptural cliché on other numbers and the slickness of the production actually seems to mask the slightness of the material. The little Dylan had to say at the time ended up being said on Slow Train which left its follow-up, Saved, bereft of purpose beyond quoting from the Good Book in song. Which then brings us to Shot of Love, a mixed bag of gospel and his first secular tunes since prior to his conversion. Far from his new material giving him a shot of vitality, if anything it's the batch of devotional works — particularly the outstanding "Every Grain of Sand" — that manage to be far more convincing than the tedious bar band rock. Could he have begun to turn his back on Christianity just as it was beginning to bare fruit? "The constant wonder of [Dylan's] career," observed Ian MacDonald, "is that a man so often close to spiritual breakthrough so consistently winds up bumping his head on the ceiling of his own ego".

Finally we come to "Lenny Bruce" itself. I can't say that I agree with Tim de Lisle who describes it as a "poignant, simple ballad" in his Smash Hits review. It's fascinating in its own way but only because it may well contain the clumsiest lyrics of Dylan's career. Opening reasonably enough with "Lenny Bruce is dead but his ghost lives on and on", it quickly goes off the rails in the very next line: "Never did get any Golden Globe awards, never made it to Synanon". I don't want to get bogged down too much by details but are those really such vital points to be making? Never took home a poor-cousin Academy Award and never joined criminal cult detox program, yeah that's too bad. The whole thing reads like random jottings covering everything from an anecdote about sharing a cab with him to curious observations about how he "never robbed any churches, nor cut off any babies heads". Way to lavish our Len with praise there Bobby.

But then just what was Dylan doing composing a tribute to a 'sick' Jewish comedian at the height of being immersed Christianity anyway? The Dylanologist in me reckons that he's consciously or unconsciously attempting to claw his way back to his heyday, to a 1963 when Lenny Bruce was shocking audiences with rapid-fire rants about race at the hungry i club and when Bob Dylan was stunning audiences with his intricate lyrics at the Philharmonic Hall. Either that or he's building up Bruce in order to besmirch his own legacy — and, by extension, his fans. ("More of an outlaw than you ever were" is surely aimed at someone)

Of course there is a third possibility. Bob Dylan may have been a Christian — he may still be one for all we know — but he was never a Christian rock star. He had plenty more material to cover. He just needed to find his way back home.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Rickie Lee Jones: "Woody & Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking"

I have a good friend who's a very talented songwriter and I once had the privilege of having him play a private concert for myself and a small number of people. He introduced one number by saying that it had originally been called "O Witness" which he then changed it to "Whisky Orchard" before he finally settled on "Gold Star". "And then you wrote the song?" I wittily, if rather annoyingly, chimed in. Rickie Lee Jones has always struck me as the sort of person who would come up with a funky song title and then force herself to come up with an appropriate song to work around it. Thus, "Woody & Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking". Had squaresville Jesus boy Bob Dylan had any desire to reclaim his hipness he could've done a lot worse than to have followed the lead of Jones. An effortless, jazzy, finger-snapping, toe-tapping, scat-filled piece, this is just the sort of thing that brings groovy cats and trailer park dirtbags together.