Bob Dylan: 1978-1989, Both Ends Of The Rainbow DVD Review

Posted by Mitch Michaels on 07.01.2008

Music journalists and musical collaborators take a look at Bob Dylan in the 1980s, as he struggled with Jesus, poor album reviews and a lack of clear direction…

My Story
I first started listening to Bob Dylan while I was still in high school, I believe after hearing “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” on the awesome Forrest Gump soundtrack. From that point forward, my brother and I amassed a huge Dylan album collection in just a few short years. From standards like Freewheelin’ to unappreciated classics like Oh Mercy to forgettable detours like John Wesley Harding to bootlegs like Dylan’s set from the tepid Woodstock ’94, we just could not get enough Bob Dylan. Each song was both a revelation and a mystery. A triumph and a tragedy. From the silliness of “Quinn The Eskimo” to the piano-driven truth of “Paths Of Victory”, Bob Dylan just has a way of making songs that are BIG, with big ideas, big hooks and big aspirations.

But as anybody from the past four decades or so would attest to, being a Bob Dylan fan is tough. I caught Dylan live after Time Out Of Mind in 1999 and it was the most disappointing show I’d ever seen. A mixture of dull arrangements and an air of just not caring took a musician I’d grown to idolize and scarred my perception of him for years. Of course, I wasn’t the first to be disappointed by a Dylan concert. Or even outraged. Both Ends Of The Rainbow attempts to talk about another period where Dylan stumped many of his fans.

Its Story
If you don’t know Bob Dylan, THE most influential musician in the last 50 years, then try this:

“Blowin' in the Wind”
“Don't Think Twice, It's All Right”
“Masters of War”
“The Times They Are A-Changin’”
“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”
“It Ain't Me Babe”
“Subterranean Homesick Blues”
“Mr. Tambourine Man”
“It's All Over Now, Baby Blue”
“It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)”
“Maggie's Farm”
“Like a Rolling Stone”
“Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues”
“I Want You”
“Just Like a Woman”
“One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)”
“All Along the Watchtower”
“I'll Be Your Baby Tonight”
“Lay Lady Lay”
“The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)”
“If Not for You”
“I Shall Be Released”
“You Ain't Going Nowhere”
“Knockin' on Heaven's Door”
“Idiot Wind”
“Tangled Up in Blue”

Now, if there are any songs on this list that you somehow don’t know, take a moment, find them, listen to them, and come back. That pretty much brings you through Dylan’s first decade or so and his best-loved material. The message: from the 60’s to the mid-70’s, Bob Dylan was the fucking master. A genius. He defined folk music, redefined rock music, and gained public attention through both his politically charged protest songs and his gentle, sometimes humorous love songs.

The release of 1975’s #1 album Blood On The Tracks was seen as a major comeback for Dylan. It marked his return to longtime label Columbia Records after a brief turn at Asylum, as well as a return to serious recording after spending much of the early 70’s restlessly searching for a new sound and a new inspiration. Blood also marked the end of a great tour with fellow rockers The Band, which was, at the time, the most successful rock tour of all time.

Following his time with The Band, Dylan revamped things for his next tour. Traveling with several Greenwich Village cohorts (like Joan Baez), Dylan’s raucous and unorthodox Rolling Thunder Revue Tour became the hot ticket in 1975 and 1976. The shows saw Dylan release Desire, his third #1 album, the stellar live set Hard Rain, and the 4-hour labor of love concert film Renaldo And Clara.

For all the greatness of the Rolling Thunder Revue, the exact opposite could be said of Dylan’s next turn. In 1978, Bob released Street Legal, an album that couldn’t be further from the raw rock ‘n’ roll of his previous work, with a big, slick back that featured a brass section and a gaggle of female back-up singers. Street Legal was universally panned, as was the supporting tour, which even spawned the mind-numbing double live set At Budokan, an album that featured Dylan giving many of his best-loved classics the “big band” treatment.

When the dust settled from the Street Legal experiment settled, Dylan confounded the music world again, this time denouncing his Jewish lineage in favor of Christianity. The religious turn yielded a string of three Christian-themed albums (Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot Of Love), which were released to declining reviews (though Slow Train is a pretty decent record, and it peaked at #3 on the Billboard Pop Chart). The albums were supported by live shows that featured ONLY the new gospel tunes, a move that disappointed Dylan’s already reeling fan base.

Following the release of Shot Of Love, rumors began to surface that a trip to Israel had reverted Dylan away from his Christian fervor. Seemingly confirming this, Dylan released Infidels in 1983, an album that featured his return to secular music.

The years following Infidels were signified by big tours and not-so-big albums. 1985’s Empire Burlesque didn’t do so well commercially with its synthesizers and drum machine beats, but the career retrospective, 5-LP Biograph box set scored huge that year. Dylan’s long tours featuring Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and, later, The Grateful Dead as his backing units have grown to legend, even if the new material Dylan was putting out at the time (Knocked Out Loaded, Down In The Groove) didn’t do so hot.

In 1988, following his much-talked-about shows with Petty and The Dead, Dylan embarked on “The Never Ending Tour”, a show that he’s continuing on today. Bob ended the 80’s on a high note with the stellar Oh Mercy record, an album that critics hailed as his best since the seminal Blood On The Tracks.

Though Oh Mercy was seen as the return of Dylan, it would be another eight years before he would make good on that promise, as many of his 90’s releases were just as bland and uninspired as his post-religious work. Thankfully, the universally praised Time Out Of Mind, which found Bob dealing with his own mortality, brought back the genius that everyone had been waiting for. Since then, each Dylan release has been an event, culminating in 2006’s Modern Times, which took Dylan to #1 on the Billboard charts for the first time in 30 years.

Recently, a DVD was put together reviewing the albums and appearances from Dylan’s dark period of the 1980’s.

The DVD
On June 10, 2008, Chrome Dreams released Bob Dylan: 1978-1989, Both Ends Of The Rainbow on DVD. The film is in standard format and features stereo surround sound. The feature is unrated with a runtime of 127 minutes.


The Credits

Cast:
Interviews with
Chuck Plotkin (Producer, Shot Of Love)
Toby Scott (First Engineer, Shot Of Love)
Josh Abbey (Chief Engineer, Infidels & Empire Burlesque)
Malcolm Burn (Assistant Producer, Oh Mercy)
Mark Howard (First Engineer, Oh Mercy)
Ted Perlman (Lead Guitarist, Empire Burlesque)
Sly & Robbie (Musical Collaborators, Infidels)
Ira Ingber (Guitarist, Empire Burlesque & Knocked Out Loaded)
Scott Marshall (Dylan author)
Clinton Heylin (Dylan author)
Robert Christgau (Music journalist)
Anthony De Curtis (ex-Rolling Stone editor)
Nigel Williamson (Dylan author)
Johnny Rogan (Music journalist, Dylan author)
Derek Barker (Music journalist)

The Feature: 6.5
Both Ends Of The Rainbow covers Bob Dylan’s output and public life from 1978 to 1989, some of his toughest years in the music business. Though Dylan had returned with a lot of promise in the mid-70’s with Blood On The Tracks and the #1 hit Desire, 1978’s Street Legal was universally panned. As a proven commodity, Dylan could have easily pulled out of the poor sales and reviews, but instead, he baffled fans when he turned to Christianity. With the release of 1979’s Slow Train Coming, Dylan would use both his concerts and albums from the next few years to spread the word of Jesus.

Bob’s Christian period is covered extensively on Both Ends Of The Rainbow, but unfortunately, it’s too biased to take seriously. The anti-religious sentiment from the contributors is often too clear, and rather than look at the albums objectively (and Slow Train Coming, Shot Of Love and even Saved do have some amazing bright spots), the interviewees tend to laugh at Dylan, prove how much they DON’T understand about Dylan’s conversion (for one, it wasn’t about RELIGION at all - it was about Jesus as savior), and nitpick everything from the song ordering to the album art.

This section of the DVD (nearly the first hour) got a little mind-numbing because of its one-sidedness. There are good reviews out there for Dylan’s religious trilogy (especially Slow Train Coming), so where is the voice of reason on this?

Fortunately, things pick up a lot more as Dylan comes out of the “rock as testimony” frame of thinking and into the mid-80’s. For Dylan’s much less inspiring 80’s records, many real contributors are interviewed, men who were actually there with Dylan as the music was being made and not buying the records and just listening. The line-up of studio personnel adds plenty of Dylan stories and an insight into how Bob was making records in the 80’s. The revelation that Bob was still chasing radio success years after he even needed to was particularly interesting, as were the comments Bob had made about being unhappy working with Mark Knopfler, who was a hot rock commodity at the time.

The DVD wraps up with Bob Dylan’s horrid Live Aid appearance that unintentionally founded Farm Aid, and then the commercial reintroduction of Oh Mercy. If you have two hours and are a big Dylan fan, this won’t be time wasted, as there’s plenty of ground covered in this flick and enough depth to please even the most knowledgeable Dylan fans.

The Extras: 6.0
Both Ends Of The Rainboy has a few special features. There’s an eight minute feature built around an interview Dylan did with a radio station at the beginning of his Christian period. This would have been really great if it were unedited, but the addition of commentary by journalist Derek Barker makes it seem like just an outtake from a part of the movie that was already too long. There are also biographies on all of the interviewees and a little ad about Chrome Dreams Entertainment.

The 411: Bob Dylan: Both Ends Of The Rainbow is a very informative piece in its brightest moments. Interviews with several of the folks who were in studio as Dylan recorded some of his worst material provide insight into what was going through Bob’s mind and what exactly went wrong with Dylan in the 1980’s. The first half of the film is dedicated to Bob’s Christian trilogy of records, and this segment can get a little tedious as a bevy of journalists nitpick the album to death without ever delving into WHY Bob Dylan was making that kind of music at the time, or what he was trying to say. Still, the second half makes up for it, and if you are a huge Dylan fan, you’ll find this interesting.

Final Score:  6.5   [ Average ]