Album: Shot of Love
Recorded: March-May 1981
Released: August 1981
Songs / length: 9 / 40:15
Second-rate songwriting. Low-grade production. Half-hearted vocals. Cheesy album cover. I'm not going to try and valiantly defend what is clearly one of Dylan's worst studio album releases. With less of the overtly gospel sound of his two previous records, and heralding the re-introduction of secular material, Shot of Love might have raised hopes among hardcore Dylan fans of a return to form. How disappointed they must have been; if anything, the two non-Christian songs – Heart of Mine and Lenny Bruce – are arguably two of the worst on the album, which is only partially redeemed by a couple of middling Dylan efforts and the sublime Every Grain of Sand.
Between finishing the recording of Shot of Love in May 1981, and the album's release in August, Dylan had set off on his first European tour for 3 years, and would no doubt have been stung by the sight of many empty seats at his concerts. Even though he was now mixing religious and secular material in his live shows, as is the case on Shot of Love, it seems the damage to his reputation was already done.
One of the oddities about Dylan in this period, apart from his inconsistent output, is that he often consciously left his best material off his LP releases. Why, for instance on Shot of Love, did he include dreadful tracks like Dead Man, Dead Man and Trouble and exclude The Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar and Caribbean Wind? The omission was partially addressed on the CD and vinyl reissues of 1985, which include the upbeat and lively The Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar in a larger 10-song track listing, but it was still too late to rescue what is an underwhelming album.
As for the songs on the original 9-track record – my LP version has a back cover photo of Dylan looking meaningfully at a rose and a biblical inscription from Matthew 11:25 – the title track Shot of Love does have some redeeming qualities, but is let down by poor production. I'm also not sure why Dylan choose the particular version of Heart of Mine that appears on the record, though the fact it's the one that involves Ringo Starr on drums and tom toms, and Ron Wood on guitar, might have been crucial. These musical lapses of judgment are a feature of Dylan in this era, and the cliche-riddled lyrics of Heart of Mine are a low point on the record.
Property of Jesus is one of the album's few truly evangelical songs, and the track is musically stronger than many others on the record, notably Lenny Bruce, which lacks melody and zip but is a sincere tribute to the great comedian. Portraying Bruce as a victim who spoke the truth, with almost Christ-like associations ("He just showed the wise men of his day to be nothing more than fools"), Dylan shows his reverence but there's little in the song about how funny Bruce could be.
Ending side 1, the soulful Watered-Down Love is a decent song, while In The Summertime on side 2 also has its moments, though Dylan's lazy attempt to sing the chorus lets it down. Other than that, only Every Grain of Sand is worth your time on side 2, an improvement not just in terms of songwriting, but also vocally and musically. Many critics have pointed to the William Blake associations in the poetic lyrics, notably the stanza from Blake's work Auguries of Innocence, which he wrote shortly before Songs of Innocence:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
This verse brings to mind a sentence I read as a kid (probably in one of my favourite childhood reads, The Usborne Book of Facts and Lists), which is that there are "more atoms in a grain of sand than there are grains of sand on a beach". This helped me to visualise the complexity of organic matter in a way that Blake was able to do instinctively, though I think his poetic intent here is to show how a grain of sand can be a world unto itself, with its own epic story across space and time, if only we have the imagination to see it. Dylan's poetic intent isn't quite so cosmic, with some of the lyrics showing his creationist tendency to see God's hand in creation ("I can see the Master’s hand / in every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand"), but for the most part the song finds Dylan imploring himself not to fall back into his bad old ways, to avoid temptation and learn greater self-reliance ("Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me").
Album rating: D+
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