40 Years Later: Bob Dylan Rebounds With ’80s Period Gem ‘Infidels’

While Bob Dylan’s Infidels (released 10/27/83) was hailed as a return to form in many quarters upon its release forty years ago, positive responses didn’t completely dominate the reaction. In fact, the Nobel Laureate himself was one of those dissatisfied, at least in the interim directly following Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler’s departure from the recording sessions to meet touring obligations with his own band.

At that point, Dylan himself began to tinker with the nine tracks he and his co-producer had at least tentatively agreed upon by the time of the latter’s exit, the aftermath of which was rewriting lyrics, overdubbing, and remixing. The end result was the removal of two cuts and the addition of one, hardly an equitable trade-off in both the short term and long. 

The inclusion of “Blind Willie McTell” and “Foot of Pride” would’ve provided a more direct link between Infidels and the (mostly) secular reflections of 1981, Shot Love. Meanwhile, “Union Sundown” only furthered the impression of a man so out of touch with the times that in “License to Kill,” he posited the notion ‘…man has invented his doom…the first step was touching the moon…’

And then there was the latent sexism tainting “Sweetheart Like You” and the otherwise fitting melancholy mood of the closer “Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight,” themes that would belie the self-righteous and accusatory tone of the album title.

The ‘original’ track sequence circulated in fairly short order after Infidels‘ release, along with a raft of outtakes and alternate versions of other Dylan originals and covers from the New York Power Station sessions. Meantime, in the ensuing four decades, the LP has been subject to revisionism from various perspectives, including the musicianship and production thereof.

Little question Knopfler’s guitar on the “Don’t Fall Apart…” closer is a bit too recognizable for its own good. But Mick Taylor’s spindly guitar lines spun off from a slide as on the aforementioned paean to organized labor, provide continuity to the bare-bones approach of Dylan’s previous album; the ex-Rolling Stone’s musicianship also counters the somewhat dated Eighties sound of drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare (while also ratifying the former Bluesbreaker of John Mayall’s touring with Bob as depicted on ’84’s Real Live).

Various versions of the two deleted cuts also hint at how much stronger an album Infidels might’ve been in any number of different forms. For instance, the take of ‘Willie” with just Dylan on piano and vocals, otherwise accompanied only by Knopfler on acoustic guitar, would substantiate Dylan’s own theory on songwriting as he espoused it in the mid-Sixties: he was writing about himself even if and when he didn’t realize it (not just during the metaphysics here of “I And I”). 

There’s a desolate intimacy to that recording, an atmosphere hardly so pervasive as in the slightly more upbeat version featuring the quintet of musicians sans the composer of “Sultans of Swing.” But that cut, like the sextet rendition of “Foot” recorded two weeks later (including the unobtrusive ornamentation from Straits’ Alan Clark on keyboards), would definitely offset to a great degree the gloss of the album as originally released (the overly-polished sheen of which is redolent on the SACD of 2003). 

Hearing the continuation of Dylan’s recordings of this period, as collected on The Bootleg Series Volume 16: Springtime In New York 1980-1985, it’s clear he had the nucleus of ‘that thin…wild mercury sound’ he had sought around the time of 1966’s Blonde On Blonde (upon which he mused in a 1978 interview with Ron Rosenbaum). 

The potency of Dylan’s singing at its best is in line with the superior performances of the most colorful writing too. Phrasing so reminiscent of the mid-Sixties period it borders on caricature during that latter’s “Man of Peace,” he more often than not sounds unusually abandoned, as if he’s discovering the meaning of the words he’s combined in the very act of singing them (perhaps even to his dismay at times like “Sweetheart”).

Of course, that may not be so far from the truth. Bob was in an extremely fertile state of mind during this time and while he may have taken craftsmanship too far in composing, and then reworking ‘finished’ recordings in the later stages, that protracted attention only bespeaks his own contemplation of possibilities for Infidels. 

Much as he was searching for a voice and style during his time in Woodstock with The Band that gave us The Basement Tapes and John Wesley Harding, so too was Dylan seeking the means to reflect the world around him four decades ago as he continued his emigration from the born-again Christian phase of Slow Train Coming and Saved. 

Bob Dylan’s self-professed quandary about how to make an album that fits the mid-Eighties era seems to overthink in retrospect, especially considering the wealth of material he had to work with for his twenty-second studio album. Accordingly, Bob’s decision to hand over final mixes to Arthur Baker for the follow-up, 1985’s Empire Burlesque, may be an egregious faux pas second only to the editing of its predecessor.

To be fair, it’s never an easy task to correctly discern the essential truths arising from efforts devoted to writing, recording, and producing full-length albums. Yet it’s a plateau of great achievement to which Bob Dylan rose with no little success in the new millennium, with 2001’s ‘Love And Theft’ and beyond. 

That ascent, however, occurred only after two collaborations with Daniel Lanois, on 1989’s Oh Mercy and Time Out Of Mind eight years later. And his progress was interrupted by the execrable likes of Knocked Out Loaded and Down in the Groove in the ’86 and ’88 respectively, not to mention some erratic movement in the 2000s such as Modern Times. 

Amidst all the various pondering applied to his work in general, it’s worth wondering if, in fact, The Bard from Minnesota would not have learned so fast or so thoroughly in this regard without the effort he expended, to greater or lesser success, on Infidels.