Customer Reviews

Saved

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Dylan's "Christian" phase (Slow Train Coming, Saved, Shot of Love, Infidels) produced some of his very best music. "Saved" is the most "gospel-y" of the four, and redefines the gospel genre in the same way he had successively done for folk, rock, and country (and later did for blues). If in-your-face Christianity makes you uncomfortable, you won't like this album, but anyone who likes gospel music (or any sort of Christian music) must not miss it.

The only reason it doesn't get 5 stars is that it's not for everybody. Dylan is in a musical groove here that is as compelling as in his great trilogy from the mid-70's (Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks, Desire). "Shot of Love" had greater individual songs (Property of Jesus, Lenny Bruce, The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar, Every Grain of Sand), and "Infidels" was more varied and complex, and "Slow Train Coming" was more of a revelation, but "Saved" is the most consistent of the four and the one which works best as a coherent whole.

For this reason, I don't like to single out songs, because they're all excellent and have a cumulative impact. The lyrics are clear, powerful, and theologically both sound and deep ("What Can I Do For You?" and "Saving Grace" showing particular originality). Dylan's vocals are full of such unmistakable joy, thanksgiving, love of God, and concern for humanity that it's impossible for any Christian not to be deeply moved.

The backing band is terrific, with creative arrangements and notable piano playing from Spooner Oldham. Dylan's female background singers, led by Clydie King, have been criticized by some for their over-the-top enthusiasm on his other records from the period, but here their gospelly flair is perfect.

After 1983 Dylan moved away from overtly Christian music. His change in musical style has led some to conclude he's lost his faith, but it's clear from many songs on 1989's "Oh Mercy", 1993's "World Gone Wrong", and 1997's "Time Out of Mind", as well as the old gospel songs he sings in concerts sometimes, that God is still with him and he's still "Pressing On".

When Dylan produced Slow Train Coming a lot of people thought that it was a brief 'spiritual' phase he was going through. However when Saved was produced it horrified the secular music world as he had obviously fallen victim to the christian faith. John Lennon called him a traitor to his own jewish people and concert goers threw food at him when he refused to sing songs from older albums. I remember walking past record stores who were almost giving the cassette of Saved away (well, for .95 cents anyway). Yet it remains Dylans most rockiest,clearest and arguably his most passionate album he has ever produced. I absolutely love it and always go back to playing it. Time has shown that it was a 'phase' for Dylan, and when I went to a concert of his in 1986 with Tom Petty, all his passion had gone..he didn't seem to know who he was or what he was singing about(the critics had a field day). His obviously has come back since then, but I remember this album as a pinnacle of a singer who gave up his dignity and reputation to follow his heart...and isn't that where all good music comes from?

What do you need to know?

Should I bolster Dylan's incredible reputation as an incredible songwriter? Should I tell you that he wrote a Christian rock album based on his own genuine faith at the time? Will you buy the album if I tell you it is among my favorite Christian albums, along with Phil Keaggy's (great guitarist with a Paul McCartney voice) and Larry Norman's (singer-songwriter with a folk-blues flavor) groundbreaking work?

Listen to the clips. Dig the blues and black gospel influences. Groove with it. You like Dylan. Of course you do. Even critics of Christianity claim this to be among his best works. When you get into it and feel the verve of his sincerity and depth, you're bound to agree that as a Dylan fan, you have not been disappointed. You'll find he was hardly fundamentalist in his theology, but rich with a complex faith that charged that he should be living out what he was singing about. Nothing namby-pamby is going on here.

The same Dylan who wrote, "The Times They Are A-Changin" wrote every word of "Saved."

If matters of faith cause you to tremble, join the ranks of pop music fans. If spiritual questing, search for meaning and the desire to believe in something that matters in your real life is part of what makes a classic song, buy this CD.

For the less timid, dust off your family Bible and find out he's pulling much of his lyrics straight from Scripture. Check out "Slow Train Coming" or "Shot of Love" to hear more of his work in this genre. If you find out Christian rock is more than Stryper, Amy Grant and jazzed-up versions of "Amazing Grace," boldly go where Christian rock has gone before, and search the net for "In Another Land" or "Only Visiting This Planet" by Norman, or any of Keaggy's stuff.

I fully recommend this album.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

I tried much too hard to like this album when it was first released, back in 1980. I preferred the thematic content to the actual music which was just where I was at that time in my life. Since then I've experienced changing tastes in music and other things (maybe just getting older). The thing I now value in music above all else is sincerity and passion. That is the raw material from which an artist can produce genuinely meaningful work. I realise now that what I really like about this album is it's spontenaity and exuberance. The vocal performances of Dylan and his amazing backup singers are passionate, heartfelt and intense. The band is road-roughened and ready to deliver what sounds like a live recording of very few takes. In remaining true to the spirit of the original Afro-American gospel sound, I have no doubt that Dylan - always deeply respectful of his musical mentors, pays tribute to the many great known & unknown performers of this wonderful genre. It's pure and unadulterated gospel music but it's also uncompromising and unrestrained rock & roll. I believe it to be up with his very best.

Mr. Dylan's most strictly "Christian" album is not bad. Musically, it is quite stirring in places. Dylan's voice is deteriorating here, but his enthusiasm for the "message" he's trying to convey is always touching. He really sounds like a man who's been saved from "the fiery pit" in the nick of time.

In a way, SAVED is Dylan's "gospel" equivalent to NASHVILLE SKYLINE, his "country" album. He immersed himself in a genre, turned out some good-to-passable songs in the new idiom, then moved on to other things. Much of the criticism of Dylan's gospel work reeks of hypocrisy. Rock music "experts" like Dave Marsh did chastise Mr. Dylan for buying into a prepackaged ideology and trying to force it onto an unwilling public, while simultaneously lavishing their worthless praise on dead, quasi-literate black men like Blind Willie Johnson and Blind Gary Davis, both of whom sang almost nothing but gospel on street corners. (See the ROLLING STONE RECORD GUIDES of the 1980s.) So what if Dylan resembles more Blind Willie Johnson than he does Blind Willie McTell? Judge the music, not the man. Furthermore, the ideology of the "protest song" movement is fixed for all time, for anyone to adopt and make his own, if only to sell records to a target audience and make a name for himself - as Dylan did when he was young.

SAVED isn't a failure because it's a Christian album from end to end, or because its maker was an icon of the "counterculture." The problem with SAVED, I think, is that it was somewhat hastily thrown together between two evangelical tours, and poorly recorded at that. Dylan's lyrics on SAVED are atypically focused and straightforward, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. "Are You Ready?" sounds like a Chick tract [crass evangelical comic books, strategically placed in rest rooms and telephone booths] set to music, though somehow it's one of Dylan's best gospel numbers, a nasty mid-tempo groove similar to "Gotta Serve Somebody" but far more threatening in tone. "Solid Rock" is also very much "by the Book," lyrically, and likewise more compelling on the basis of its music. "Solid Rock" and "Pressing On" hammer home one of Dylan's favorite themes, that of the struggle to maintain spiritual correctness against the contrary forces of persecution, ridicule, and one's own weakness. That's another potentially off-putting aspect of SAVED and Dylan's gospel work in general - the singer frankly anticipates these "enemies" and flaunts his struggle against them, as though he's doomed to suffer the tortures of the damned for his correct beliefs. The album opens with a traditional tune, "Satisfied Mind," but Dylan sounds anything but satisfied most of the time. The one "upbeat" tune is the title track; when the singer chants "I'm so glad," you can almost hear the smile on his face.

In the period from STREET LEGAL (1978) to INFIDELS (1983), SAVED is the least eccentric Dylan album, and it's more raw and undisciplined (in a good way) than the rest. Unfortunately, the original mix doesn't do justice to the music on this album. If SAVED ever gets a remix & the SACD treatment accorded to STREET LEGAL and some other Dylan manifestos, it will get more of the respect it deserves.

The great thing about Saved is the fact that in these songs, Dylan is actually singing about something as opposed to tossing off stream of consciousness babble or wallowing in cynicism. And on purely musical terms his band performs at least as well as the music he made with The Band or his current hot lineup. The backup singers on Saved bring out every bit of gospel soul in these songs and Dylan actually sings. Gone is the blaring yelling of the early 70's and the constant nasal whine that has become the Dylan cliche voice had not yet set in. Raving atheists should avoid this and all gospel music. All others will find that this is one of the best albums Dylan has ever produced.

Not only is this CD typical of Bob Dylan's exquisitely expressive poetry and passionately "unorthodox" vocal delivery style--perfectly [dramatically] communicating his emotions and message at any given time, it also broadcasts Bob's heartfelt warmth, no, excitement in his (then-new) etherial intimacy with his God.
The lyrics are perfectly suited to the scores;there is not one mediocre song in the mix! Along with ballads and rockier types are extremely creative "modulations." Sheer Dylan delight!

Bob Dylan may have lost a lot of fans when he "went Christian," but his music improved. Saved is one of his best albums, although it is not as good as Slow Train. (And I would argue the lyrics on Slow Train are also superior, particular When He Returns; but the lyrics on Saved are not lacking--they just contain more refrains and less commentary/introspection). This is amazing rock 'n roll that is capable of expressing the power of Christianity in the way your typcial "Chrsitian musician" is not.

You don't want to miss this one: classic rock with r'n'b and gospel tendencies underpinning sound biblical doctrine. Dylan says he was blinded by the " /born already ruined/ Stone cold /as I stepped out of the womb. By His grace I have been touched, by His Word I have been healed, By His hand I've been delivered, by His Spirit I've been sealed; I've been saved By the Blood of the Lamb..." Dylan puts the blame where it belongs: the fallen state of man. And then, with a flourish that would make the apostle Paul smile, Dylan puts the credit for the cure squarely where it belongs: the grace of God. The biblical theme is very strong here. Actually, Dylan seems more concerned with the prominence of the Bible in his thought than does the Vineyard movement that was instrumental in his conversion. Dylan's is no signs-and-wonders-gospel. "Many try to stop me, shake me up in my mind Say, "Prove to me that He is Lord, show me a sign. What kind of sign they need when it all come from within?" Dylan shows more concern for the "quiet man of the heart" than for a religion of miraculous display. Two other cuts should be mentioned here. "Covenant Woman" explores the role of romantic love in the context of a life of faith. The next cut-the heartfelt "What Can I Do For You?"-is, to borrow a multi-platinum phrase from elsewhere, a lovesong for a Savior. Dylan paints the theme of love with broad strokes. Too bad Mark Knoppfler and Pick Withers didn't show up for these sessions as they did on "Slow Train." (After all, isn't it possible that "Precious Angel" is actually the apex of Dire Straits?) But, no matter. This album rocks. If you can imagine John Calvin fronting a rock-and-roll band-and who can't? (lol)-then you should get "Saved."

In the early days of Dylan's career, it took Joan Baez's ANY DAY NOW (ASIN/B000000EKG) and other folk rockers to reveal to people the amazing lyrical nature of Dylan's melodies, which were often concealed behind his now-famous "raunching and rheuming voice" (Tom Wolfe.) Interestingly, once his musicality is discovered, that voice is found to reveal more with its vulnerability and transparency. You don't want anyone else but Dylan to sing, "How does it feeeel.." or "Seeeerve somebody."

SAVED is stuck in the blind spot for many reviewers. This time it is not the voice, but the testimony (to use the Christian word.) And the negative reviews are hiding behind pecksniffian dismissal of the songs' "lack of musicality" or "lyrical depth" or other phrases that seem to have been stolen from a smarmy NPR review. I can prove it: take a listen to the album GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY: THE GOSPEL SONGS OF BOB DYLAN (ASIN/B00008NGAJ) by the likes of Aaron Neville, Dottie Peoples, Sounds Of Blackness, or Rance Allen. Listen to Saved, Pressing On, Are You Ready - and tell me that there is ANY lack of musical variety and beauty (as well as joy and inspriration) or lyrical insight!

Then, of course, return and listen to Dylan do the same songs. Who else can touch the ache of the heart, speaking to its maker, "What can I do for you?" or praise Him for a "covenant woman?" or the committment to keep "pressing on."

This is a fantastic album. By the way, on the GOSPEL SONGS CZD, Dylan covers his own Change My Way Of Thinking, that will blow you socks off.