Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy

The 1980s were not kind to Bob Dylan.  He ended the 1970s having made a good album (Slow Train Coming – 1979) after his conversion to Christianity.  The rest of what followed wasn’t so good.  He recorded six more albums [Saved (1980), Shot of Love (1981), Infidels (1983), Empire Burlesque (1985), Knocked Out Loaded (1986), Down in the Groove (1988)], only one of which was any good [Infidels].  He toured with the Grateful Dead in 1987, from which emerged an album [Dylan & the Dead] that wasn’t very good either.  But during this time Bob Dylan injured his hand in what he called a freak accident.  He had lost inspiration.  He didn't feel any connection to his own songs.  He wanted to retire.  He never expected to write any more songs.  In 1988 there was a flicker [and a very funny one at that] of Dylan at his best.  It came in the form of a very funny spoof of Bruce Springsteen on the first Traveling Wilburys album – Tweeter and the Monkey Man.  Then one night, alone at his kitchen table, the muse found him.   He started to write twenty verses of a song called "Political World."  It was the first of about twenty songs [by his estimate] he would write.

Before he knew it, Dylan had a bunch of songs.  One night while having dinner with Bono, Bono asked Dylan if he had any unrecorded songs.  He showed Bono what he had, and told him he wasn't sure if he was going to make any more records because doing so didn't come as easily to him as it had in the past.  Bono recommended Daniel Lanois to Dylan.  Lanois had done some pretty remarkable records – Peter Gabriel’s So, U2’s The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree, Robbie Robertson’s self-titled solo debut.  Lanois liked to work in New Orleans.  He recorded his own Arcadie there.  He did the Neville Brothers' Yellow Moon there.  That album had two Dylan songs - With God On Our Side and Hollis Brown.  Dylan heard his songs done the Neville way, as recorded by Lanois.  He liked what he heard and hired Lanois.  When it came time to record Oh Mercy, Lanois set up a little studio in a Victorian mansion near a cemetery in New Orleans.

Dylan described the recording of What Was It You Wanted in great detail in Chronicles.  He wrote a lot about that particular song, but what he said about it could be applied to all of Oh Mercy - "The way the microphones are placed makes the atmosphere seem to be texturally rich, jet lagged and loaded - Quaaludes, misty.  It starts mixed and cooked in a pot like a gumbo, right from the downbeat, dreamy and ambiguous.  Danny's sonic atmosphere makes it sound like some mysterious, silent land.  The production gyrates and moves with all kinds of layered rhythms..."  It definitely doesn’t sound like a 1980s album [electronic drums, synthesizers, no bass, etc].  There’s a lot of reverb on Oh Mercy, but at least it’s applied to real instruments played by real musicians.

Political World - This was the first song he wrote for Oh Mercy.  It originally had twenty verses.  It's a one-chord vamp (Fm#) with no chorus, no bridges.  Each verse starts with the phrase "we live in a political world..." and then he lists everything that he sees is wrong with this political world.  It starts Oh Mercy with a fairly fast tempo, but after listening to the rest of the album it turns out to be only one of two songs that don’t wallow in Daniel Lanois’ murk.

Where Teardrops Fall - This ballad is a three-chord country waltz.  It has a slide guitar part that sounds like George Harrison [it isn't him - it's Daniel Lanois playing a lap steel].  Rockin' Dopsie and His Cajun Band recorded this one.  It has a surprise ending - a saxophone solo!

Everything Is Broken – The other up-tempo song on Oh Mercy, this is a list of broken things in Dylan's world.  "I thought of all the best things in the world, the things I had a great affection for.  Sometimes it might be a place, a place to start an evening from and go all night, but then these places become broken, too, and can't be pieced back together… Something just breaks and gives no warning.  Sometimes your dearest possession.  It's beastly hard to fix anything."

Ring Them Bells – Dylan goes to church.  This is something I would have expected him to do during his Christian period [i.e. before Infidels].  But this one song is better than his three Christian albums put together.

Man in the Long Black Coat – Of all the songs on Oh Mercy, this one is the one that best evokes the atmosphere of swampy mystery that is Louisiana.  Not all is well where the song takes place.   This song is full of Southern imagery - Crickets are chirpin' the water is high… a soft cotton dress on the line hangin' dry…African trees bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze…There's smoke on the water…Tree trunks uprooted beneath the high crescent moon.  The music is as swampy as it gets on Oh Mercy.  Who was this guy, and why did the woman in the song run off with him?

Most of the Time - This is a song about an ex-flame from long ago that he still can’t get out of his head.  He tells his listener that he’s doing fine without her “most of the time.”  But is he really?  I don’t think he is.  The Oh Mercy version of this song sounds like it could be from a U2 album, which isn’t surprising given the Daniel Lanois connection.  There’s an alternate version with just guitar/vocal/harmonica on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 – Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989–2006 – I like it better.

What Good Am I? – Dylan’s examination of self-worth doesn’t really do much for me.  This song is at such a languid pace that I think Dylan discovered a cure for insomnia.

Disease of Conceit - According to Dylan, "events might trigger a song - sometimes they might start a motor."  The event in question here was Jimmy Swaggart getting caught with a prostitute.   It’s an “ok” song, but I could do without it.

What Was It You Wanted – Dylan wrote at length about this particular song in Chronicles - "If you've ever been the object of curiosity, then you know what this song is about.  It doesn't need much explanation…  Songs like this are strange.  They don't make good companions."  What do I think?  He could be asking his audience what they expect of him.  He could be asking a lover the same question.  The lyrics are ambiguous enough to keep you guessing to whom the question is being asked.

Shooting Star – This is a simple song about lost love, a theme Dylan returns to many times on subsequent albums.  It’s an excellent ballad, and pretty too.
Dylan had more songs for Oh Mercy than he needed.  Four songs emerged on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs.  One is tempted to play Monday morning quarterback and judge for himself whether Dylan chose the right songs to comprise Oh Mercy.

God Knows and Born in Time - Early versions of these songs were recorded for Oh Mercy but later re-recorded for Under the Red Sky.  The outtake versions on Tell Tale Signs are very good.  Why Dylan didn't include them on Oh Mercy is a mystery to me.  Perhaps his problems with making records were so acute that maybe he knew he had an abundance of good songs for Oh Mercy and saved them for later.  That being said, these versions are better than what came out on Under the Red Sky.   

Dignity - demo first recorded with just Brian Stoltz, Willie Green and Malcolm Burn.  Numerous takes were done with Rockin' Dopsie and His Cajun Band.  The more they recorded it, the less satisfied Dylan and Lanois were with the results.  Dylan said "an ambience of texture and atmosphere" was what the song needed, but those qualities eluded them for Dignity.  "Whatever promise Dan had seen in the song was beaten into a bloody mess."  It's a shame they abandoned the song.  The finished version on Greatest Hits Volume 3 would have fit right in with the rest of Oh Mercy.

Series of Dreams - The catalyst for writing this song was the death of Pistol Pete Maravich.  This song has plenty of ambience created by four guitar players.  This also appeared on Greatest Hits Volume 3 as well as the first installment of Dylan's Bootleg series.  It too would have fit nicely on Oh Mercy.

At the time of its release in 1989, Oh Mercy was widely acclaimed by critics as a return to form.  But as Dylan said in Chronicles, good reviews are nice but they don’t sell records [I’m paraphrasing].  It’s a pretty good album, but I think with a couple of additions and deletions it could have been better.  What would I delete?  I would delete What Good Am I? and Disease of Conceit.  God Knows and Born in Time would slot fairly well in their place.  Dignity and Series of Dreams would be even better, but they didn’t finish them in time.  Series of Dreams could have been a good way to finish the album, but it didn’t.  If Dylan & Co. had finished those songs, Oh Mercy could be mentioned in the same breath as Blood on the Tracks or “Love & Theft.”  Instead, Oh Mercy is just Dylan’s best album of the 1980s.  It proved that creatively Dylan wasn’t dead yet.  It is worth having in your Dylan collection.