45 Years Later – Revisiting Bob Dylan’s Switch To A More “Polished” Sound On ‘Street Legal’

Forty-five years of hindsight at least partially illuminates why Bob Dylan’s Street Legal suffered such a negative response in the short term upon its release as well as in some extended retrospect. The man’s eighteenth studio album followed the objectively brilliant Blood On The Tracks in 1974, while that album’s successor, Desire, though not nearly so sharp, benefitted from much of its material being played on the ballyhooed Rolling Thunder Revue in the months just prior to its January 1976 release. 

In that timeline, the 1978 LP was/is a direct extension of the mostly bedraggled but sometimes brilliant second leg of the tour (from whence came the TV special and Hard Rain album). Plus, within this period, Dylan was dealing with the fallout of his divorce plus the completion of his film (from late 1975) Renaldo and Clara: who wouldn’t sound overworked and tired under the circumstances?

The thin and murky audio, as originally ‘produced’ by Don DeVito, compelled that man to revisit the nine tracks in 1999 to remix the album with modern, digital techniques; it did indeed improve the sonic definition, resulting in a richer overall sound that helped highlight both Dylan’s singing of his often impenetrable lyrics as well as the machinations of his band (further improvements of clarity and depth came in the form of a 2003 SACD reissue ).

In keeping with its tumultuous conception and execution, as well as its checkered history of public response, it should come as no surprise that Street Legal foreshadows more recent work of the man’s. A hard lesson in self-production that benefited The Nobel Laureate when he came to more fully assume the role himself some two decades-plus later, the dense verbiage of superficially straightforward songs like the fitting closer “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat),” recalls nothing so much as his most recent, 2020’s Rough And Rowdy Ways.

The inordinate length of some numbers, such as the eight minutes plus of “No Time To Think,” challenges the musicians in the forty-some-year-old sessions. Missing among that number was bassist Rob Stoner, the de facto band leader for much of the Rolling Thunder tours as well as an overseas road jaunt early in 1978; with the lineup of accompanists in flux and no assertive leader in the studio, the lack of varied color and pep in the decoration of the arrangements is certainly understandable if not acceptable. 

Add to those wrinkles the fact Street Legal was recorded in something of a rush. Over the course of just four days, before a previously-scheduled tour, the makeshift Santa Monica rehearsal/studio space of Bob’s dubbed ‘Rundown’ required the use of a remote recording truck; going for a live sound for the sake of expediency, proved to be just another misstep in a series of them.

Improved sonics in later releases thus can’t compensate for the turgid likes of “New Pony” as a recording in and of itself. The repetitive background vocals only amplify the sluggishness, one so pervasive even the gutsy saxophone of the famed Steve Douglas (one of the Los Angeles session men known as the Wrecking Crew) can’t compensate. 

“True Love Tends to Forget” features the only solo section to speak of over the course of these fifty minutes and, with the sole instrumental fillips allowed on “No Time to Think” consisting of some quick piano fills from Alan Pasqua, the leaden nature of the performances most often sound like the work of an ensemble just learning the material (which for all intents and purposes it was). 

An exception to that unfortunate rule is the upbeat opening of chiming electric guitars on “Baby Stop Crying.” But the effect quickly dissipates, presenting a detriment to properly discerning Dylan’s lyrics (there was no printout on the original LP sleeve, nor is there one on the aforementioned reissue). Perhaps the otherwise overweening similarity of mid-tempo material as that and “Is You Love In Vain?” is simply symptomatic of the defensive emotional frustration in such compositions.

If it were not for the more imagistic likes of “Changing of the Guards” and “Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)”–both of which are brimming (overfull?) with religio-mystical word-play–Street Legal would be little more than a bitter rant. Yet the challenging density of that verbiage can on occasion provide a distraction from the often near-immobile musicianship. 

In marked contrast, the fairly nimble twisting and turning by the band during “We Better Talk This Over” sets up the aforementioned finale. With its ebb and flow of organ recalling nothing so much as the halcyon sounds of Sixties Dylan in the form of “Like A Rolling Stone,” it’s an appropriate finishing touch, suggesting as it does The Bard of Minnesota hasn’t departed all that far from that style.

More importantly, however, this isolated glimmer of vigor also hints at how much Street Legal suffered from the lack of thorough preparation guitarist Michel Bloomfield applied prior to sessions for 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited (or how much producer Tom Wilson’s expertise also benefited the project). 

Bob Dylan would attain relative commercial success with this last album prior to his religious conversion, that turning point represented by the following year’s Slow Train Coming. Not exactly novel happenstance over the course of the icon’s career, the cross-purposes and nascent conflicts of that particular crossroad become all the more clear by revisiting this forty-five-year-old LP.