Street Legal
| Street Legal | ||||
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| Studio album by Bob Dylan | ||||
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Publication |
June 25, 1978 |
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| Label (s) | Columbia Records | |||
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Format (s) |
LP |
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Title (number) |
9 |
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running time |
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Studio (s) |
Late April to early May 1978 |
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Street Legal is the 18th studio album by US songwriter Bob Dylan . Released in 1978, it stands chronologically between the predecessor Desire (1976) and the 1979 follow-up album Slow Train Coming . Compared to the previous studio albums - especially the critically acclaimed predecessor Desire - Street Legal received disappointing reviews. Well-known pieces are the two singles Changing of the Guards and Baby, Stop Crying and the ballad Señor (Tales of Yankee Power). Biographically, Street Legal stands at the beginning of Dylan's strongly Christian period at the end of the 1970s, which had a particularly formative effect on the three follow-up albums.
Content and background
Street Legal was created against the background of a privately and artistically tense situation. In his private life, Dylan was still suffering from the aftermath of the divorce from his ex-wife Sara in the previous year and the associated arguments about custody of their children. Artistically, Dylan was at the zenith of his career in the mid-1970s. In view of the creatively fruitful cooperation with the formation The Band and numerous other musicians as well as the highly acclaimed 1976 album Desire, which contained the also commercially successful protest song Hurricane as a highlight , the expectations of critics as well as audiences and fans were correspondingly high. After the singer last year was present little in public, he moved in 1978 to focus its activities on expanding the concept of the tour Rolling Thunder Revue in Europe , Japan and other regions. The recordings for Street Legal took place as a stopover - after 22 concerts in Japan at the beginning of the year and an equally exhausting tour in Europe with 91 appearances in the course of the second half of the year - with German premieres at the end of June 1978 in Dortmund's Westfalenhalle and Berlin's Deutschlandhalle .
The recording sessions for Street Legal took place in a highly compressed time frame: between April 25 and May 2, 1978. The recording location was the Rundown Studios in Santa Monica , California . The producer was Don DeVito - a recording professional who had produced numerous other pop and rock greats. Stylistically, the new pieces were clearly marked by gospel and spiritual echoes - an aspect that was also evident in the fact that a background choir with three background singers was involved in the recordings . The compositions were all by Dylan himself. The lyrics of the 9 songs dealt with the previous separation. We Better Talk This Over makes direct reference to the past divorce. True Love Tends to Forget and No Time to Think also deal with the relationship that has ended - a waltz and the longest piece on the record at over eight minutes. Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat) is a piece shaped by surrealist metaphors about the question of what one would like to be or represent in life. The blues-heavy piece New Pony and the spiritual-influenced ballad Is Your Love in Vain? With a strong background choir, the two single releases Changing of the Guards and Baby, Stop Crying also come up. Changing of the Guards, the opening piece of the record, describes a scene rich in visual allusions similar to Lewis Carroll's story Alice in Wonderland . Baby, stop crying is a comfort song. Critics of the album did not see the girl described in the song as the real addressee, but rather Dylan himself. Finally, Señor (Tales of Yankee Power) , a ballad that is also heavily gospel-heavy and slow-moving, addresses a disciple's questions to his master where his journey should actually go.
Reception and criticism
A major point of criticism of Street Legal concerned the immature, sometimes negligently crafted presentation of the new songs. Dylan himself admitted that this criticism was justified in retrospect. As an excuse he listed the tour priorities that were set at the time: “It took us a week to do 'Street Legal'. We mixed it up the next week and brought it out the week after. If we hadn't got that done so quickly, we wouldn't have made a record at all, because we were on the go, wanted to go on tour again. ” German Dylan author Olaf Benzinger also rates German Dylan author Olaf Benzinger as one of the rather weak Dylan studio albums. Benzinger's interim conclusion in the context of his presentation of Dylan's entire oeuvre: "'Street Legal' is certainly the weakest album of this creative phase, and mitigating circumstances such as the colossally exhausting tour and Dylan's mental exhaustion after the final separation from Sara have only limited effect."
Street Legal was rated differently by well-known critics of the US music magazine Rolling Stone . Dylan expert Greil Marcus also wrote a highly critical review for the magazine with the tenor that Street Legal musically only recycles ideas and stylistic elements from other songs and artists. However, Marcus listed the contrary assessment of his colleague Dave Mersh in his review . Unlike Marcus, this one rated Street Legal as successful and even above average “joyfull” . Regarding Dylan's overall oeuvre, the tendency is nevertheless to classify Street Legal as a rather weak album or at least contradictingly. Due to the widely differing judgments, the music website stereogum.com lists Street Legal at number 3 of the 10 most controversial Dylan albums - right after Infidels (number 2) and ahead of Oh Mercy (number 4).
Outtakes and cover versions
In contrast to most of Bob Dylan's other studio albums, there are - at least so far - no outtakes; the footage produced during the sessions was either published on Street Legal itself or not at all. So far, three recordings have not been published in the original version. Two of them - Coming from the Heart and Walk Out in the Rain - have since been recorded by Michel Montecrossa and Eric Clapton . The Street Legal production itself was remixed by Don DeVito for the 1999 CD release. The 2003 SACD version has an even better sound balance .
Bob Dylan himself treated street legal song material differently. Changing of the Guards, for example, was only part of the program as part of the 1978 tour. Patti Smith , the alternative rock band The Gaslight Anthem , Frank Black and Michel Montecrossa played the song as a cover version . Señor (Tales of Yankee Power) has been covered by folk musicians Tim O'Brien and Richard Shindell , among others . In addition, foreign interpretations of the piece were used in the two Dylan films Masked and Anonymous (by Jerry Garcia ) and I'm Not There (by Calexico & Willie Nelson ). Is Your Love in Vain? comes in versions by Barb Jungr and Dylan's cover artist Michel Montecrossa. Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat) was re-recorded by the Australian rock band Zimmermen, New Pony by the German singer-songwriter and rock musician Tom Liwa .
Track list
- Changing of the Guards - 6:41 (7:04 remix from 1999)
- New Pony - 4:28
- No Time to Think - 8:19
- Baby Stop Crying - 5:19
- Is Your Love in Vain? - 4:30
- Señor (Tales of Yankee Power) - 5:42
- True Love Tends to Forget - 4:14
- We Better Talk This Over - 4:04
- Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat) - 6:16
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Olaf Benzinger: Bob Dylan. The story of his music. Updated new edition, dtv , Munich 2006/2011, ISBN 978-3-423-34673-3 ; P. 177 ff.
- ↑ Olaf Benzinger: Bob Dylan. The story of his music. Updated new edition, dtv , Munich 2006/2011, ISBN 978-3-423-34673-3 ; P. 182
- ↑ Bob Dylan: Street Legal , Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone, Aug. 24, 1978
- ↑ Bob Dylan: Street Legal , Stephen Thomas Erlewine, allmusic.com, accessed January 1, 2014
- ↑ The 10 Best More-Obscure Bob Dylan Albums: Street Legal (1978) , Timothy Bracy / Elizabeth Bracy, stereogum.com, September 12, 2012
- ↑ according to information in the iTunes Store , accessed on December 31, 2013
literature
- Olaf Benzinger: Bob Dylan. The story of his music. Updated new edition, dtv , Munich 2006/2011, ISBN 978-3-423-34673-3
- Bob Dylan: Chronicles, Volume One. Autobiographical work. Simon & Schuster, New York 2004, ISBN 978-0-7434-7864-9 (English; German by Kathrin Passig and Gerhard Henschel, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 978-3-455-09385-8 ; Kiepenheuer and Witsch , Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-04052-4 ).
Web links
- Street Legal at Allmusic (English)
