Ancient footsteps, like the motion of the sea

Bob Dylan’s Gospel Music

In 1979 Bob Dylan became a born again Christian, and worse, released three albums of songs about God. About this perceived betrayal, I was too young to have an opinion; it was part of a lore I learned much later. In my teenage years I’d drive four hours north to visit my uncle Roy, not a “real” uncle, a close friend of my parents. He was a child of the ‘60s, with a massive record collection. I learned from him to hold by the edges and to clean the disk before playing, and I remember him shouting “Woo Woo!” as he introduced me to The Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” We’d lounge in his lounge as if time would never end. He told me he’d stuck with Dylan through the weak albums in the ‘70s, but the Christian thing, that was the end. I entered adulthood thinking that listening to Christian-period Dylan was a kind of sacrilege.