Bob Dylan – Infidels
(original mix by soniclovenoize)
Side A:
1. Jokerman
2. Someone’s Got A Hold Of My Heart
3. Neighborhood Bully
4. License To Kill
5. Blind Willie McTell
Side B:
6. Man of Peace
7. Foot of Pride
8. I and I
9. Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight
Bob Dylan, what the hell were you
thinking? This is what we asked him all
through the 1980s. Coming off a trilogy
of non-secular music that is frankly off-putting and of little inventive
substance, Bob Dylan returned to the studio in 1983 with Dire Straits
mastermind Mark Knopfler as producer to mark Dylan’s comeback album to secular
music. Infidels was intended as a return to his idiosyncratic poetic acrobatics
and interesting song structures with a lean, meat-and-potatoes rock band
production (in contrast to his overproduced slew of post-Desire albums)… Or so we thought.
What we got instead was
stereotype mainstream early 80s mixing and some of Dylan’s best songs of the
decade left on the cutting room floor, mostly due to Knopfler’s early exit from
the album, leaving Dylan to finish it himself and make rather disastrous
creative choices. Infidels could have
been the best album of his post-Desire era and, while admittedly not a masterpiece,
could have been on par with his much stronger albums John Wesley Harding, Nashville
Skyline or Desire (or at least certainly superior to New Morning, Planet Waves
or Street Legal anyways). But after all these years, can Infidels be
saved? I believe it can. This is a reconstruction of the album that
Infidels could have been, utilizing alternate “drier” rough mixes and the early
tracklist of the album. And yes, it
includes the unreleased full-band version of “Bind Willie McTell” which is a
50% improvement in itself.
Dylan recorded a bulk of material
for his supposed comeback album throughout April and May of 1983, new originals, random covers and aimless jams alike. At the
conclusion of the sessions, Dylan and Knopfler had compiled a rough mix of an album that contained nine songs: “Blind Willie McTell”, “Don’t Fall Apart On Me
Tonight”, “Foot of Pride”, “I and I”, “Jokerman”, “Neighborhood Bully”, “License
To Kill”, “Man of Peace” and “Sweetheart Like You.” Knopfler’s story was that he was forced to
leave the sessions early because of touring obligations and offered to create a
final mix of the album upon his return.
Dylan declined, insisting that his label needed the final mix immediately
and he choose to create the final mix himself with the studio’s house
engineer. It was at this point in time
that “Foot of Pride” and “Blind Willie McTell”, the later unanimously hailed as
one of the best songs of Dylan’s career let alone the decade, was dropped from
the album and replaced by inane “Union Sundown”. Dylan also helped himself to additional now-antiquated
production giving the whole album the slick 1980s rock 'gleam' that makes Infidels
sound incredibly dated. He also
rerecorded vocals for a number of tracks, specifically giving “Jokerman”
a new vocal that sounds as if Dylan is falling asleep at the mic. Why he did this, no one knows; some believe
Dylan made artistic choices that were intentionally counter-intuitive and contrary
to his inner circle’s recommendations. Some believe he's mad. Either
way, that was the Infidels that was released, without Knopfler’s valuable final input.
The first step in my
reconstruction is to fix the dated 80s production and utilize alternate mixes
for all of the songs. We are lucky
enough to have excellent quality rough mixes of almost all the serious
contenders for the album, taken from the bootleg Outfidel Intakes, which
apparently received a recent 24-bit remaster by a fan using CEDAR mastering
software (kudos to their fantastic job).
These mixes all lack the overdubs Dylan and Knopfler made, as well as
the annoying mixing techniques Dylan oversaw himself in June. They are all straight-forward basic tracks
with a rather drier, grittier and often more upfront vocal track. While the typical 80s-rock sound is inescapable
for Infidels no matter how you cut it (it was recorded with the Dire Straits
guitar sound and a reggae rhythm section!), these mixes allow the songs to
breathe and is closer to Knopfler’s alleged original intent for the sound of
the album.
Next we sequence the tracks utilizing
the stronger songs that were cut from the released version, replacing the
weaker ones. While we don’t have the
specific track order, we do know what songs were on the original tracklist. If we make the assumption that the songs were
in the same basic order as on the officially released album, then we are left
with the seven Infidels tracks (minus “Union Sundown”) that require “Blind
Willie McTell” and “Foot of Pride” to fill in the gaps to make two sides of an
LP. If the fantastic full-band electric
version of “Blind Willie McTell” (as opposed to the longer, acoustic version
found on The Bootleg Series 1-3) is placed on side A and “Foot of Pride” on
side B, we are left with two 23-minute sides.
This must be more than a coincidence!
Thus “Foot of Pride” effectively replaced “Union Sundown” on side B, and
the band-take of “Blind Willie McTell” is a powerful closer to side A. I believe this was Knopfler’s original tracklist.
One final adjustment made that
admittedly was not on Knopfler’s theoretical rough mix is a result of my own
creative license, and that is the replacing of the clichéd dullard “Sweetheart
Like You” with the slightly more interesting fan favorite “Someone’s Got A Hold
Of My Heart”, another Why-was-this-left-off-the-album!?-track. It was not on Knopfler’s rough running order,
presumably because Dylan never thought it was finished; the fact that the song
was later rewritten several times and completely simplified into Empire
Burlesque’s atrocious “Tight Connection To My Heart” seems to validate this assertion. But I hear nothing wrong with this basic-rock
alternate version used here (as opposed to the dismal radio-friendly version found on
The Bootleg Series 1-3) but it keeps a better momentum for side A and is a great upgrade to the trite “Sweetheart Like
You”, a song that truly deserved to be dropped from the album.
Is Infidels truly a good Dylan
album? Honestly, we are unsure because its
praise is grounded solely in its historical context rather than the quality of
the actual material: it’s not a Christian Dylan album and it’s not complete
shit. But my presented original mix reconstruction will
hopefully demonstrate that it could have been a highlight of his later career—if
you don’t completely loathe 1980s mainstream rock that is, which Infidels certainly is
and always be. But now it can be a bit
less of that, for what it’s worth, and we can hear the songs for what they are,
rather than just hearing the time that they existed in.
Sources used:
Bob Dylan – Outfidel Intakes (bootleg)
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*md5, artwork and tracknotes included
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included