BBC4 Bob Dylan: Trouble No More - ARENA (2017)

 In 1979, Bob Dylan released 'Slow Train Coming', an album of strictly devotional songs. He declared he had found God and had been undergoing regular training and Bible study with The Vineyard Movement a neocharismatic evangelical Christian consortium of independent Protestant churches that arose out of the Calvary Chapel movement following the teaching of John Wimber for some 3-5 months.  For the following two years, accompanied by a unique collective of musicians including a bemused Mark Knopfler and the finest gospel singers as backing, he toured with a repertoire solely of songs expressing this new-found faith.

I was going to review in detail one of the Dylan programmes I hadn’t seen before on the so far disappointing BBC schedule tribute for his 80th. However the ‘god bothering’ phase is well covered elsewhere. No sign yet of Scorsese  ‘No Direction Home’ let alone The Rolling Thunder Review but that would have cost money I am guessing let alone any BBC department actually trying to approach Dylan with the idea of even trying talking to him at 80 (wherefore I’m Not There, Renaldo & Clara even The Last Waltz, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid or even Concert For Bangladesh instead of these half baked and frankly bonkers list of documentaries)  . . .. . but the story of ‘Bob Dylan: Trouble No More’ is so wide of the mark I researched the ‘born again’ phase of Bob’s career and I find it it really well covered by Wikipedia alone let alone other blog spots and articles and I suggest you read that if still interested . The point is it is not at all a case of ‘Trouble No More’ but Trouble In Mind still as he seems to me to have been in very deep, deep trouble. 

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail 

Poisoned in the bushes an' blown out on the trail     

'Shelter From The Storm' Bob Dylan 

 Bob’s punishing schedule of a world tour post Rolling Thunder around the late 70’s really showed him suffering from what we would now call nervous exhaustion or what in common parlance then would have been called a nervous breakdown (not a term I like or use).  Recently divorced from Sara, the love of his life and mother of his five children (one adopted daughter from Sara’s previous marriage) it must have been excruciatingly hard for Bob to come to terms with alongside a punishing touring schedule. 

The facts are that nothing (or next to) of this period really of two years and two albums ( Slow Train Coming & Saved) still stand or signify in the maestro’s canon to this day. The re-release of the Bootleg Series bearing the same name Bob Dylan 'Trouble No More' The 13th Bootleg series 1979-1981 covers it well enough and as Bootleg series goes is less than essential. I don’t include the third album for reasons I will try to explain. That it was a difficult time is a given. Disastrous in terms of audiences and album sales somehow strangely less so, Bobs prolific outpouring at this time is curiously unfiltered and yet I don’t include the third album in 'Shot Of Love' because of the emergence of the secular song again (despite 'Every Grain Of Sand' being amongst his best written songs IMHO) “Heart Of Mine”, and "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar” not to mention “Lenny Bruce” or “In The Summertime” and the discarding of the previous album's gospel flavoured band in favour of a more rock oriented ensemble including Ringo and even Ronnie Wood for pity’s sake leaving off outtakes the calibre of 'Caribbean Wind' this was no ‘Saved’ despite the presence of the bible thumping “Property of Jesus”

Bob by his friend the filmmaker Howard Alk who died in Bob's studio Rundown Studios in Santa Monica of a heroin overdose and believed by many including his two ex-wives to be suicide. This had a profound affect on Dylan who was thrust deeper into depression by the loss of his friend in early 1982

Even Lennon shortly before he was shot dead by the psychopath Chapman responded to Dylan's browbeating 'Gotta Serve Somebody' with a bootleg song never really officially released 'Serve Yourself!"

Hear the voice of self doubt in his songwriting and it’s welcome questioning returning from the didactic, hectoring and evangelical:

“I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea

Sometimes I turn and there's someone there; 

sometimes it's only me”

 The additional sermonising between takes read by an actor (why IS that?) a series of sermons between the songs, all specially written for the film by Luc Sante and ‘preached’ by Oscar-nominated actor Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water, Boardwalk Empire etc) is almost offensive given the context of the evangelical preaching tone steeped is it is in an attack on a vulnerable, burned out Bobby. It is at face value an advert for organised religion whereas it could have been an expose or exploration of how organised  evangelicals take advantage of the weak and the famous alike. A missed opportunity and no mistake. Praise be, sing Glory Hallelujah!

BBC Arena - BOB DYLAN: TROUBLE NO MORE - iPlayer

The Preacher!