FactualMystical crises of artists (2/6). In the summer of 1979, the icon of the counter-culture made public his conversion to “born again” Christianity with the album “Slow Train Coming”.
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“If you want rock ‘n’ roll, just go see Kiss!” “ This is the scathing response made by Bob Dylan, on November 26, 1979, to an unwelcome person well known to spectators: the one (never the one) who takes advantage of a silence to bellow. « Rock’n’roll ! ». Except that that night, in Tempe (Arizona), the American singer is not in the mood to joke. If he took Kiss as a counter-model, it may be because the painted group is home to Gene Simmons, a fire and fake blood eater nicknamed “the Demon.” And Dylan, then 38, is fighting an uncompromising fight against Satan. In the name of Christ.
A crusade which is not without causing tensions in the theaters of 2000 seats where the icon of the counter-culture sings. The world was officially informed of Robert Zimmerman’s conversion in August, with the release of his album Slow Train Coming, nine devotional songs, in a pocket showing a man armed with a pickaxe in the shape of a cross. Three months earlier, in the Washington Post, Pastor Kenn Gulliksen revealed that Bob Dylan had joined his church, the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, in the San Fernando Valley, California.
This “vineyard” is linked to “born again” evangelism, which was growing in the second half of the 1970s, the most famous follower of which is the tenant of the White House, Jimmy Carter. The movement is reaching the world of entertainment, which abandons its gurus. In Dylan’s case, this experience of “rebirth” by the “Breath of the Spirit”, referring to a passage from the Gospel according to Saint John, strangely echoes a line in the song It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), published in 1965: “He who is not busy being born is busy dying”.
“I had always read the Bible, but I only considered it literature”, are Dylan au Los Angeles Times in November 1980. The fans who attended, from November 1979, the first concerts of the North American tour accompanying Slow Train Coming, quatorze dates au Warfield Theatre de San Francisco, quickly understand that the Book is no longer just a source of metaphors for the poet. “Offered with the permission of Jesus Christ”, the evening begins with spirituals performed by a squad of choristers. The headliner then appears in rocker clothes, black leather and a three-day beard, Fender Stratocaster slung over his shoulder, but she has removed from the repertoire any title that “The Lord does [lui] not ordered to sing “. Might as well make a cross on Like a Rolling Stone. Only the content of Slow Train Coming, to which are added the novelties which will constitute the following album, Saved (June 1980), even more anchored in gospel.
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