Making the Case for Bob Dylan’s Initially-Maligned 1978 Album ‘Street-Legal’

It feels like there are three types of Bob Dylan albums. There are the undisputed masterpieces, like Blood on the Tracks or Blonde on Blonde. And there are the head-scratchers that even the faithful have a hard time defending, such as Self Portrait or Under the Red Sky. Finally, there are those that ignite furious debate as to their merits. Do they fall below the high standards Dylan has set over the years? Or are they just as great as the classics, but have just been unfairly maligned?

Street-Legal, released by Dylan in 1978, is definitely one of those debate-igniters. When it was released, many of the same critics who had lauded Dylan’s previous few records found it to be overblown and muddled. Yet it has been the subject of much retrospective scrutiny over the years by folks who feel those original reviews missed the boat. We’re of the opinion that it’s an overlooked gem, and we’re here to tell you why.

Bob-Bashing

Bob Dylan came into the release of Street-Legal on one of the hottest streaks of his career. His 1975 album Blood on the Tracks reasserted his status as the world’s preeminent singer/songwriter. In 1976, Desire, an album full of epic story songs, found him paving new ground with incredible results. Many expected the new record to continue in that vein. 

For the most part, it wasn’t to be—at least if you read the reviews. Greil Marcus, who had often championed Dylan’s work, called the record “dead air” in the pages of Rolling Stone. The famously caustic Robert Christgau called it Dylan’s “Neil Diamond masquerade.” Most other reviews echoed those sentiments with different prose.

What was behind the vitriol? Well, many critics objected to Dylan’s new sound. After the impassioned folk of Blood on the Tracks and the slippery exotics on Desire, Street-Legal found Dylan going for a kind of big-band rock sound. It wasn’t entirely different from what contemporaries like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger were doing around the same time, but many didn’t feel it fit Dylan.

There were claims of sexism aimed at the track “Is Your Love in Vain?” And there were also claims that the mix let the album down. Street-Legal suffered these slings and arrows and then largely fell off the Dylan radar, because his next album, Slow Train Coming, signaled the beginning of his “Born Again” period, and gave the journalists and fans an entirely new persona and sound to consider.

[RELATED: 5 Albums That Capture the Essence of Bob Dylan]

Revisiting the Street

Let’s answer some of those complaints. While we can’t speak for the original mix, the reissues of the album, in many different formats, sound crisp and bright, one of Dylan’s most musically forceful records. 

The sexism claims indulge in the fallacy that the songwriter is promoting every emotion or thought expressed in their songs. Even if the narrator in “Is Your Love in Vain?” might sound like a little bit of a caveman for being concerned about the cooking and sewing abilities of his intended, that doesn’t mean Dylan feels the same. Besides, what really comes through in the song is the narrator’s touching tentativeness to put himself out there for his heart to potentially be broken.

Finally, it’s our opinion that the musical settings for these songs actually add to the drama and urgency of Dylan’s narratives. Opening track “Changing of the Guard” drips with portent and mystery, Dylan placing himself both inside and outside the tumult of the song as both participant and prophet while the horns rain all around him. Amidst the backing vocalists and brass of “Baby, Stop Crying,” Dylan does his best Otis Redding, nasally emoting and seeming to have the time of his life. “True Love Tends to Forget” and “We Better Talk This Over” also deal with matters of the heart, with Dylan sounding open-hearted and vulnerable.

On “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power),” Dylan concocts a kind of metaphysical Western scenario, his narrator and his companion trapped in a seemingly un-winnable situation, but prepared to go down swinging nonetheless. Son, this ain’t a dream no more, it’s the real thing, his narrator is warned in the song. You get the feeling that Dylan was trying to impart some vigilance on his audience. 

Street-Legal saves the best for last. “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)” starts with a tear-stained letter and sends the narrator off on a journey that includes several seedy characters, strip clubs, and kickboxing brawls. Dylan howls to anyone who’ll listen, If you don’t believe there’s a price / For this sweet paradise / Just remind me to show you the scars. Neither the wild lyrical details nor the soaring music can distract from the heartache at the center of the track.

Maybe the initial reaction to the album was the natural inclination to take someone down a peg after they’ve been too high. Or maybe it wasn’t what people expected of Dylan at that time, and they couldn’t quite wrap their heads around it. If you’re new to the record, we suggest you give it a shot. Street-Legal isn’t a misfire or just another Dylan album in a long string of them. It’s the work of a guy who was still operating very much at the top of his game, impervious to those waiting for him to fall.

Photo by David Redfern/Redferns