Personnel: Bob Dylan (vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano); Scarlet Rivera (violin); Dominic Cortese (accordion); Howie Wyeth (drums); Emmylou Harris, Ronee Blakley, Steven Soles, Rob Stoner (background vocals).

Liner Note Author: Allen Ginsberg.

Recording information: Quadrophonic Sound.

Photographer: Ruth Bernal.

DESIRE was the studio realization of the Rolling Thunder revue's sound. The musicians involved in this mid-'70s Dylan project were more than a backup band; they forged a distinctive musical vision, loose and swirling, the perfect aural equivalent of the traveling gypsy/carnival image they affected onstage. Drummer Howie Wyeth, who possessed an uncannily sympathetic ear for accompanying singer-songwriters, and violinist Scarlet Rivera, built their careers on the foundation of the Rolling Thunder band.

Many critics balked at Dylan's lyrical collaborations with Jacques Levy on this album, but their reservations were just glorified xenophobia. Levy's flowing, colloquial style suited Dylan's music and delivery perfectly, and the two produced several gems. "Isis" is an exotic tale of intrigue that turns out to be a unique love story. "Hurricane" breathlessly tells the true story of Ruben Carter, a boxer framed for murder and acquitted years after DESIRE's release. It still stands as one of Dylan's most exciting, emotional tunes.

If Blood on the Tracks was an unapologetically intimate affair, Desire is unwieldy and messy, the deliberate work of a collective. And while Bob Dylan directly addresses his crumbling relationship with his wife, Sara, on the final track, Desire is hardly as personal as its predecessor, finding Dylan returning to topical songwriting and folk tales for the core of the record. It's all over the map, as far as songwriting goes, and so is it musically, capturing Dylan at the beginning of the Rolling Thunder Revue era, which was more notable for its chaos than its music. And, so it's only fitting that Desire fits that description as well, as it careens between surging folk-rock, Mideastern dirges, skipping pop, and epic narratives. It's little surprise that Desire doesn't quite gel, yet it retains its own character -- really, there's no other place where Dylan tried as many different styles, as many weird detours, as he does here. And, there's something to be said for its rambling, sprawling character, which has a charm of its own. Even so, the record would have been assisted by a more consistent set of songs; there are some masterpieces here, though: "Hurricane" is the best-known, but the effervescent "Mozambique" is Dylan at his breeziest, "Sara" at his most nakedly emotional, and "Isis" is one of his very best songs of the '70s, a hypnotic, contemporized spin on a classic fable. This may not add up to a masterpiece, but it does result in one of his most fascinating records of the '70s and '80s -- more intriguing, lyrically and musically, than most of his latter-day affairs. [In 2003, Columbia/Legacy reissued 15 selected titles from Dylan's catalog as hybrid SACDs, playable in both regular CD players and Super Audio CD players. Each title is packaged as a digipak, containing the full original artwork. On each of the titles, and on each of the layers, the remastered sound is spectacular, a considerable upgrade from the initial CD pressings.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine