50 Years Later: Bob Dylan Goes Exotic & Dramatic With ‘Desire’

It didn’t take five decades to discern how much Bob Dylan’s Desire benefited from its release almost immediately in the wake of the previous autumn’s Rolling Thunder tour. The public fanfare and commercial success accorded the title belied the rough-hewn nature of the nine tracks, the borderline sloppy tenor of which might well have been superseded by the substitution of concert takes from the aforementioned itinerant caravan featuring Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and multiple other famous figures.

As Dylan himself declared early in Martin Scorsese’s 2019 film Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, he wanted to enact a tour less rigid in concept and execution than his 1974 reunion jaunt with the Band.  But at the time of recording Desire–sessions for which were reported as haphazard by more than one participant–he was inspired by his newfound songwriting collaboration earlier in the year with Jacques Levy, co-author of tunes with the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn, most famously “Chestnut Mare” (the only other such creative partnership of his career was with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter for 2009’s Together Through Life).

In addition, Dylan’s sudden impulses in the studio and otherwise included the participation of violinist Scarlet Rivera, discovered in a chance encounter on a New York City street. Besides rendering the lugubrious ode to organized criminal “Joey” listenable, the exotic strains of her instrument were similarly highlighted in arrangements that otherwise sounded like mere sketches, i.e., the picturesque, upbeat likes of “Mozambique” and “Black Diamond Bay.”

It is thus little wonder that hearing the nine tracks of Desire (released 1/5/76) with an extended perspective conjures some of the undeniably anti-climactic air surrounding its first appearance. But listening with such hindsight also begs the question of what a subsequent effort might’ve sounded like with the input of a formal producer for the record; implausible as it now sounds, such a figure might’ve persuaded Dylan to use live takes of the newly-composed material instead of the generally stolid approach afflicting even its most famous song, “Hurricane.”

Bob’s advocacy in song for boxer Ruben Carter (whose murder charges were eventually dismissed) was a regular fixture in the setlists of autumn 1975, stirring memories of its author as the Sixties’ premier social justice warrior. But, as delineated on the fourteen-CD box set Bob Dylan – The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings and its double-disc predecessor, The Bootleg Series Vol. 5, almost every song from the studio effort might also have appeared on an alternate version of Dylan’s seventeenth studio album.

Virtually without exception, numbers like “Isis” crackle with an energy corresponding to the theatrical presentation(s) from the stage, mostly by dint of Bob’s abandoned delivery. But the streamlined unity of his backing band heightens the deeply moving impact of the performances too: prominently featuring Rivera, but also ex-Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson, the ensemble comports itself like its leader, that is, with as much ebullience as self-discipline.

That uplifting atmosphere is in stark contrast to the vicious bitterness permeating another live release titled Hard Rain. Released only nine months after Desire, this cathartic collection (of older material from the Dylan canon) signaled Bob had moved beyond the stimulating activities in which he immersed himself upon returning to live in The Big Apple earlier in the decade.

Yet in a retrospective that takes into account all the circumstances of The Bard’s life at the time, not to mention the subsequent packages of music from the era, Desire might otherwise come across as an obsolete entry in his discography (one of the great ‘lost’ Dylan albums?). That is, if it were not for the ever-so-flattering and iconic front cover portrait of Bob, which so clearly hearkens back to one of the most significant periods of the often tumultuous Dylan career.

The photograph’s direct evocation of the extensive Rolling Stone Magazine coverage from fall ’75 suggests Columbia Records didn’t want to forsake what turned out to be an ideal advance marketing campaign for what is, for all its relative foibles, one of the landmark LPs in Bob’s history.