40 Years Later: Revisiting Bob Dylan’s Transitional ‘Shot Of Love’ LP

With some small but nonetheless significant modifications, Bob Dylan’s Shot of Love (released 8/10/81) would’ve turned out to be one of the more substantial entries in his discography. As it stands now, though, four decades since its release, the Nobel Laureate’s twenty-first studio album is almost as threadbare in substance as in sonics.

Changes to the record’s tracklisting would have rendered this record the Bard’s secession from the gospel phase of his career rather than just a bridge back into more secular topics of his songs (more rather than less) completed  by the much superior Infidels two years later. That transition had actually begun before Shot of Love late in 1980 and would continue after the LP was released when a greater cross-section of vintage material began to populate the tour setlists (dubbed “The Musical Retrospective Tour”). Still, it’s more pertinent to note the superlative all-around nature of the superlative 1983 album has as much to do with the concentrated focus on writing and recording as its predecessor suffers for the very lack of the very same qualities.

As described in almost painful detail by author Clinton Heylin in Trouble In Mind: Bob Dylan’s Gospel Years, it’s a fact that Dylan’s general sense of purpose had become more diffuse as he slowly but surely began to vacate his Christian mindset. Certainly, there was an upside to that particular exodus: with the aforementioned range of material, his concerts became markedly more memorable, especially as they were performed by a lineup including a certifiably excellent (if relatively unknown) guitarist, Steve Ripley, and, at certain stages, long-time collaborator and keyboardist Al Kooper: it was more than just a little symbolic to note the presence of the man who had infused Bob’s mid-Sixties breakthrough with the signature sound of organ on “Like A Rolling Stone” off Highway 61 Revisited, 

Live at Earls Court, London, June 27, 1981 as contained in The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981 Deluxe Edition  Trouble No More, is a prime example of Dylan shows at the time. The scintillating likes of such concerts were receiving accolades definitely not tendered Saved, the follow-up LP to Slow Train Coming, the inaugural release in this religious phase that itself received such well-deserved recognition for much the same reason as Infidels: top-notch production courtesy Jerry Wexler combined with the presence of stellar players like Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler (who in fact produced the excellent followup to the erratic 1981 work)

With another extensive tour in the offing, Dylan was more than a little distracted, perhaps as much with tour prep as the thoughts of his changing outlook as, in turn, making a record at the behest of his Columbia Records label: dual sources of pressure internal and external served to undermine the writing and recording sessions as expressions of creative inspiration. Nevertheless, as a testament to Bob’s self-renewing artistry, within the clutch of originals that fell in and out of sequence for the record, there are three certifiably superlative compositions the inclusion of which would’ve turned the record into an estimable piece of work. 

As is, the result of fitful recordings, at a number of studio locations, with varying production personnel, leave this a largely sloppy affair. Songs like “Heart of Mine” would benefit from more rigorous arrangements and musicianship, but even under those improved circumstances, the slight nature of the songs would leak through. In contrast, the one choice tune part of the original ten appears at the conclusion of the record, intentionally or not, positioned as the benediction it sounds like: “Every Grain of Sand” is a metaphysical meditation, its mysterious air sourced as well as nurtured through Bob’s steadfast emotional vocal plus his emphatic piano playing: it is gospel music of the highest order without the usual trappings of the genre.

That tune’s companion pieces are similarly evocative, each in its own way. “Caribbean Wind” did not appear publicly until the 1985 box set Biograph and finds its author grappling with the effects his memory of the past has on his present (and by extension, his future); imagery both real and illusory is couched in a purposefully structured and well-paced arrangement that mirrors the outline of the long verses and the refrain containing its title phrase. In contrast to that sleek but intricate recording, “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar” is one of the most straightforward not to mention raucous rockers in the Dylan oeuvre, a blues shuffle carrying a surreal array of people and places not unlike the similarly conceived “Highway 61 Revisited” of 1965.

Originally released only as a 45-rpm single, this number was eventually added to later versions of Shot of Love on CD. Placed at or near the mid-point of a reconfigured Shot of Love as it subsequently was, with “Wind” as the introductory track and “Grain” still in position at the end, Bob Dylan would’ve offered the world an eye (and ear)-opening set of songs sufficient to reconfigure an artistic persona somewhat tainted by the confounding dogma of the previous two years. As it is, this is an album of material as bereft of depth as its audio: songs such as “Property of Jesus” are the work of a songwriter composing out of duty and habit, the audio of the recordings lacking the clarity an abiding sense of purpose would impart to the writing. 

Technically speaking too, the large thin mix, bereft of much presence, is hardly the most astute work of engineer Chuck Plotkin, who had previously collaborated with the meticulous likes of Bruce Springsteen. Such quality (or lack thereof) is, however, much but more in line with the pedigree of Bumps Blackwell who had produced (sic) the Fifties recordings by Little Richard, one of Bob’s early musical heroes. Yet pristine sound might not even be enough for “Watered Down Love,” the title song and “Lenny Bruce” to gain depth: it belies recognition of the sophisticated compositional concepts of their three much superior counterparts to state the Bard’s mind was too often elsewhere to concentrate sufficiently much more often, a mental and spiritual state understandable in such a transitional moment, but no less harmful to the execution of this album.

Bob may well have realized his faux pas, at least according to Surviving in a Ruthless World: Bob Dylan’s Voyage to Infidels Terry Gans’ exhaustive exploration of the sequence of events leading to Bob’s next studio effort. Even more insight and information arrive in the form of Springtime In New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 (1980-1985): homing in on this very period, this installment in the ongoing archival effort reaffirms (as if that was necessary) that this supremely iconoclastic artist maintains loyalty to his muse that does not abide the conventional distinction(s) of the recording artist. For Dylan, the often superfluous machinations of the studio process nevertheless offer at least the potential means to illuminate the essence of his compositions.