Not quite from Highway 61 to Saved (there’s a lengthy discussion of the pre-Highway Lay Down Your Weary Tune and a lengthier look at 1997’s Time Out Of Mind), this also isn’t quite the book that Dylan’s gospel period deserves.
When Dylan embraced Christianity in the late 70s/early 80s, many were more outraged than when he plugged in. How dare he embrace that most right wing and conservative of lifestyles? It wasn’t so for Webb, who at that point in his life was as Evangelical as Dylan. The problem is, in his attempts to reclaim Dylan from overburdening leftist analysis (recently www.rightwingbob.com has also championed this cause), Webb goes too far in the other direction, making this book often as plagued by tunnel-vision as the left-wing interpretations.
Interesting points are raised (how many of us have given thought to Dylan’s premillennialist bent?), but this is often too scholarly, or gives too much over to Evangelical history. Context is fine, but in a book clocking in at less than 200 pages, cutting to the chase is better. Somewhere between this, Christopher Ricks’ Dylan’s Visions Of Sin and a handful of other works, there’s a good Dylan-as- Evangelist book out there, someone just needs to write it.
