Desire (Bob Dylan album)

The Desire sessions yielded a number of outtakes, but only one of these outtakes received any serious consideration. Written from the point of view of someone "despairing, isolated, [and] lost", "Abandoned Love" debuted as an impromptu performance at the Other End on July 3, 1975. Clinton Heylin wrote that the song suggested Dylan's self-confidence as an artist had returned, but that he still faced problems in his marriage. Originally intended for the album, it was ultimately replaced by "Joey." "Abandoned Love" would not see official release until 1985 when a finished take was issued on the boxed-set retrospective, Biograph. Its first and only live performance at the Other End circulates as a highly prized recording among collectors.

Another song, "Rita May (sometimes spelled as "Rita Mae")," was issued on a single-only release. It is an up tempo song, that some listeners believe to be a tribute to lesbian writer Rita Mae Brown. It was later covered by Jerry Lee Lewis on his self-titled album, issued in 1979.

Two other recordings were later released upon other albums. "Catfish," a tribute to future Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Hunter (better known as Catfish Hunter), and "Golden Loom" were officially released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 in 1991.

The album opens with "Hurricane", arguably the most popular song on Desire. It protests the conviction of former middleweight boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter for a triple murder in 1966, arguing for his innocence. In 1976, Carter won a second trial, but was again convicted of the triple murder. Carter was eventually released in 1985 after United States District Court Judge Haddon Lee Sarokin (who declined to hear Dylan's song when his family offered it to him) ruled that he had not received a fair trial and state prosecutors decided not to try Carter a third time.

Dylan had been inspired to write it after reading Carter's autobiography, The Sixteenth Round, which Carter had sent to Dylan because of his prior commitment to the civil rights struggle.

Prior to the album's release, this track was re-recorded due to some potentially libelous lyrics, which Dylan re-wrote. For this more uptempo album version, the harmony part was sung by Ronee Blakley, leaving the earlier track w Emmylou Harris unreleased.

During the fall tour preceding Desire's release, Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue played a benefit concert for Carter in New York City's Madison Square Garden. The following year, they played another benefit at Houston, Texas's Astrodome. Dylan met with Carter on December 5, 1975, and performed a concert in Clinton State Prison, in which Carter took to the stage, to address the press. Among those present were representatives of People Magazine who ran an article about Dylan and Carter on December 22 of the same year.

New Jersey prosecutors said that they would not try Rubin (Hurricane) Carter and John Artis a third time for a triple-murder in a case that provoked national attention over charges that the authorities had framed both men.

The 21-year legal conflict ended in effect when the Acting Passaic County Prosecutor, John P. Goceljak, filed a four-page application in the county courthouse in Paterson to dismiss all charges against the two men.

"It is just not legally feasible to sustain a prosecution, and not practical after almost 22 years to be trying anyone," Attorney General W. Cary Edwards said in Trenton. Mr. Edwards, whose office participated in the decision, added, "It is time we put this matter to rest once and for all, and I wish Mr. Carter the best of luck and a very productive life."

One of the most celebrated songs on Desire is the symbolic travelogue "Isis". According to music critic Tim Riley, "Isis" tells the story of a young groom who marries his bride before he learns the value of loyalty. Riley wrote that the story told of a man who learns about the love of a woman through the deception of another man and a "quest for riches that resigned itself to the quest for human contact". Also, the protagonist mistakenly believes that his quest is for treasure when an ulterior purpose is at play. When he approaches the tomb, he finds it empty and without any reward. Unbeknownst to him, he was playing a part in a higher story line: the tomb eagerly awaited for the arrival of his companion who dies immediately. When he chucks the body into the empty space, he realizes what a folly this whole adventure has been, and decides to return to the arms of his knowing wife.

"Mozambique" allegedly started as a game, to see how many rhymes for "-ique" Dylan and Levy could find.[5]

"One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)" tells the tale of a girl whose family are drifters, and of the man who must leave her to enter the "valley below". The narrator describes a character who is beautiful: "your eyes are like two jewels in the sky" but for whom the narrator's love and admiration are not reciprocated ("but I don't sense affection no gratitude or love, your loyalty is not to me but to the stars above"). Dylan claimed to have composed the song while visiting the Roma festival in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a French town in the Rhone river delta, in 1975 on his 34th birthday.[6]

The song is a duet between Dylan and Emmylou Harris; as an incidental to its use of the natural minor scale and Dylan's melismatic singing style, it has a Spanish gypsy flavor in the vocal melody. It was performed several times in live concerts in November 1978.[6] The song was used in the 1998 Larry Clark film Another Day in Paradise. It was covered by The White Stripes on their 1999 debut album. Robert Plant covered the song in his 2002 album Dreamland. In 2003, the Sertab Erener cover of the song appeared on the soundtrack of the movie Masked and Anonymous. There is also a version by Roger McGuinn and Calexico for the 2007 film I'm Not There. 80's punk singer Nina Hagen released a version with German lyrics on her 2011 album Volksbeat. Tom Jones covered the song for his 2021 covers album Surrounded by Time.[7]

"Oh, Sister" became a concert favorite during the fall tour preceding Desire's release. Tim Riley noted that it was the first time Dylan had invoked God as a method of wooing a woman, and that with Emmylou Harris, the song became a discourse on the fragility of love. Harris' vocal on the final mix was actually overdubbed a day later, one of the few overdubs made during the Desire sessions.

The longest song of the album is "Joey". A twelve-verse ballad, it describes the life of deceased gangster Joey Gallo and created a substantial amount of controversy when Desire was released. Dylan presents Gallo as an outlaw with morals, in the tradition of songs like Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd". Dylan's Gallo refused to kill innocent people, made peace with black men, and shielded his family when he was about to be shot as they were eating in a restaurant. Many commentators, notably rock critic Lester Bangs, have argued, however, that Gallo was well known as a vicious Mafioso whose documented career was not accurately reflected in the song's lyrics.

The song details the killing of Gallo in Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy, Manhattan, on April 7, 1972. Graphic details of the murder had been published in Donald Goddard's book Joey: A Biography (Harper & Row, 1974), while Gallo's friends, actor Jerry Orbach and his wife Marta, were introduced to Dylan through Levy. Dylan said in 1975 that he had considered Gallo more a hero than a gangster. After hearing Jerry and Marta Orbach talk about Gallo, Dylan and Levy wrote the entire song in one night.

Unlike legendary outlaws like Robin Hood, or historical ones like Jesse James and Billy the Kid, Gallo was not a figure of the distant past nor was he mythologized by tall tales spread by word-of-mouth and the local press. With Gallo's life still prominent in the minds of the public and without favorable media coverage, Dylan's attempt to romanticize Gallo was greeted with an enormous amount of contempt by the press, public officials, and private citizens alike.

Goddard's biography depicted Gallo as a racist who often beat his wife and abused his children, and who had taken part in a brutal gang rape of a young boy while he was in prison. None of these details was mentioned or alluded to in Dylan's "Joey". Instead, the song paints a far more romantic portrait, incorporating a lyric that Gallo "It was true that in his later years he would not carry a gun/'I'm around too many children,' he'd say, 'they should never know of one.'"

Lester Bangs later wrote a scathing response to a question posed by Dylan in the song's chorus: "What made them want to come and blow you away?". In a Village Voice article published on March 7, 1976, Bangs argued that some could have considered there to have been an open contract on Gallo for his shooting of gangster Joe Colombo almost a year previously. Bangs also suggested that two other theories advanced by investigators extremely close to the case showed Gallo attempting to lay claim to territory occupied by other, more powerful mob factions. Despite all the controversy, Clinton Heylin noted that "Joey" remained the one song from Desire to have regularly featured in concert in the nineties.

In an interview with Bill Flanagan for his album Together Through Life in 2009, Dylan said that Jacques Levy wrote the lyrics to "Joey" and that he only sang them.[8]

"Romance in Durango" concerns an outlaw and his lover, on the run in Mexico. Heylin described the song as "the climax to an unmade Sam Peckinpah movie in song", an allusion to the 1973 Peckinpah film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, for which Dylan wrote and performed the score and which was filmed in Durango.

This song has been covered in Italian by singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André as "Avventura a Durango" (using Neapolitan to stand in for the Spanish lyrics in the original song) and in Portuguese by Raimundo Fagner as "Romance no Deserto".

As described by Heylin, "Black Diamond Bay" describes the destruction of a tiny island (following the eruption of a volcano), observed from two perspectives: from a hotel on the island itself and from the narrator's point of view through a television news report. The song essentially describes what the people on the island are doing at the time - often drawing attention to the ironic futility of their actions (for example, one of the islanders is preparing to commit suicide when the volcano erupts and destroys the island). The song also describes the news-watcher's indifference to the catastrophes he hears about on Walter Cronkite's TV newscast, as the narrator goes to get another beer rather than watch the news story about the catastrophe on the island. He says "I never did plan to go anyway to Black Diamond Bay." Joseph Conrad's novel Victory was a major influence on this song, which references many of its themes; the song title, the island, the volcano, the gambling and the Panama hat are all references to Victory. A drawing of Conrad appeared on the back of the album sleeve.

Desire closes with "Sara", arguably Dylan's most public display of his own personal life. An ambitious tribute to his wife, Sara, it is one of Dylan's only songs in which he steps out of his public persona and directly addresses a real person, with striking biographical accuracy. Tim Riley wrote that it was "a fevered cry of loss posing as sincere devotion."

Dylan's marriage was in a turbulent state when he wrote the song. Dylan's estrangement from his wife had led to at least one separation in the previous year. Sara was present at the song's recording session on July 31, 1975; on the same day he recorded two other songs that touched on the subject of marriage: "Isis" and "Abandoned Love". However, in March 1977, Sara Dylan filed for divorce.

In the lyrics of "Sara," Dylan states that he wrote "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" (from Blonde on Blonde) for Sara Dylan.

• John Berg – cover design
• Ruth Bernal – cover photography
• Don DeVito – production
• Stan Kalina – mastering
• Don Meehan – engineering
• Ken Regan – cover art
• Luther Rix – conductor
• Lou Waxman – recording director