While most of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid‘s soundtrack seemed to be more of the directionless confusion of Dylan’s early seventies, there was one song that stood out amongst the instrumentals and multiple versions of the plot summary song: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door. This song not only jolted Bob out of this creative malaise, but also reignited the public’s interest.
Maybe his kid was finally old enough, or maybe he was just bored of being home all the time, but in 1974 Dylan decided to go back on tour. While he had done two or three one-off shows in the meantime, this would be Bob’s first tour since the ’66 motorcycle crash. Once again using The Band (who were now stars in their own right) as his backing group, Tour ’74 was going to be the must-see event of the year. So, Dylan quickly recorded Planet Waves beforehand so he would have something to sell along the way. While not a great record, it was certainly less of a confusing mess than any he had done since the sixties. Plus it included Forever Young, a song so good he couldn’t decide how to arrange it and put it on the album twice.
The tour was a big success financially, but kind of disappointing creatively – especially to Dylan. But it did get him out of the house. Which did get him in trouble with the wife, Sara, who left him. That in turn inspired his deeply personal Blood On The Tracks. Which resulted in Sara coming back to him. But Dylan didn’t want to make the same mistakes on this next tour, which was dubbed “The Rolling Thunder Revenue.” Instead of a well-planned highly commercialized affair, this would be more of a merry ragtag gang of traveling performers, wandering aimless and pitching their circus tent where they may. As usual, an album who quickly recorded to sell at shows, but Desire had its lyrics mostly co-written by playwright Jacques Leavy to keep them from being as personal as his last album.
The tour was going to include many of his old Greenwich village compatriots, included ex Joan Baez. To keep Sara from getting jealous (or himself from getting tempted) he brought his wife along under the pretense of filming a movie as chaotic and brilliant as the tour itself. The resultant film, the four-hour Renaldo & Clara was certainly chaotic, but nowhere as coherent as the tour. Even with Sam Sheppard along for the ride supposedly “writing” the movie. Plus, Sara finally had enough and divorced Dylan. The resultant movie flop and alimony left Bob in a financial hole. So he was ready to do whatever was needed to increase his cash flow again
Enter “Vegas Dylan” – it’s Bob with a horn section and trio of backing singers doing slick, if somewhat perverse arrangement of his greatest hits. A pre-tour album called Street Legal was recorded using this new big backing band. While the horn section ultimately got whittled down to a single saxophonist, the gospel styled vocal trio remained. This is important because one of these singer was a true died-in-the-wool Gospel singer and a devout Christian too. Dylan’s perverse fascination with the one woman who wasn’t interested in him, would ultimately lead to the next series of albums… Bob Dylan becomes born again.