Stobgopper’s ‘I Made a Playlist:’Late Career Dylan, Vol. 1

Late career is an amorphous idea.

For the purposes of this exercise, I draw the line in chalk:

Chalk outline of a dancer next to an electric guitar on pavement.

Somewhere past where I think the peak occurred, but not deep enough into the post-Imperial phase to lose the thread.

By this criteria, I’ll mark Dylan’s late career as coming right after the holy trinity of Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love:

Because of all the people you know, I’m the least prepared to discuss Scripture.

This puts us in the early ’80s, almost a decade out from Blood on the Tracks, with Bob navigating his 40s and more than 20 albums in. Still out there, far to the horizon, the odd bits, lullabies, traditional folk covers, the American Songbook, Christmas in the Heart.

Note: Included at the end of each blurb is a couplet from one of the respective album’s cuts, to remind us the man is a Nobel Laureate.

Infidels
1983

I thought—and probably wasn’t the only one—Knopfler was a good fit for producing this one, being ‘Dylanesque’ himself.

It didn’t work out.

‘Neighborhood Bully,’ while satisfyingly spry, espouses a Zionist viewpoint that lands even less comfortably today. OTOH, ‘Sweetheart Like You’ is a top-5 moment for me, and ‘Don’t Fall Apart on Me Again’ treads that pleasantly familiar ground of a forlorn man pleading with a woman to stay and save him as only Dylan and his writerly toolbox can.

No more mud cake creatures lying’ in your arms
What about that millionaire with the drumsticks in his pants?

"Bob Dylan's 'Empire Burlesque' album cover featuring a pensive pose in a stylish blazer."

Empire Burlesque
1985

The album cover makes Dylan look like a member of the band at the pool party in La La Land, giving the whole thing the unmistakable sheen of existing in its own era and nowhere else.

‘Tight Connection to My Heart’ has a Morrison knock-off vibe (albeit a good one). I like the idea of ‘When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky,’ but the album’s version is performed and produced as if a cover by a-ha. Better to seek out the one he cut with Roy Bittan and Steve Van Zandt. At least that sounds like a Springsteen cover (albeit a good one).

He bought the American dream but it put him in debt
Only game he could play was Russian roulette

Knocked Out Loaded
1986

A couple of things: was the title of this album a description of the circumstances of its making?

And then, much like the Beach Boys and Endless Summer, Biograph hit the market between the previous release and this one. Comparisons were made, mostly dire.

Luckily, oh so luckily, Dylan and Sam Shepard also birthed the magnificent ‘Brownsville Girl’ and it immediately entered the pantheon. In an alternative timeline, I’m making a playlist of Bob’s late career through the lens of his long-form epics. Otherwise, Little Junior Parker’s ‘You Wanna Ramble’ shakes with energy.

The only thing we knew for sure about Henry Porter
Is that his name wasn’t Henry Porter

Down in the Groove
1988

The title suggests we finally get a taste of reggae Dylan, as much as Street-Legal should have been a Lou Reed collab and Planet Waves his utopian manifesto.

But no.

Critical evaluation of this album is all over the place, if the place is ten feet underground: it’s been compared, unfavorably (!), to Self Portrait. Overly harsh, methinks.

We do get an interesting collection of side players. ‘Silvio,’ the lone single, rolls by on a silky (ahem) groove spiced with mandolin and Grateful Dead harmonies. ‘Death Is Not the End’ dirges along with hip hoppers Full Force providing angelic background vocals. A curio that’s slapdashed by an artist who slapdashes with the best of them.