Columbia 33893
Producer: None listed
Track listing: Hurricane / Isis / Mozambique / One More Cup of Coffee / Joey / Romance in Durango / Block Diamond Bay / Sara
February 7, 1976
5 weeks
For Desire, the most important singer-songwriter of the rock era tried something new: he turned to a collaborator. In the summer of 1975, Bob Dylan shared a new song called “Isis,” co-written by Jacques Levy, an Off-Broadway actor and songwriter who had collaborated with Roger McGuinn, formerly of the Byrds. Levy offered the feedback that Dylan was searching for and a partnership was struck up.
Levy wasn’t the only newcomer to the Dylan camp on Desire, as a number of musicians, most of whom the singer-songwriter had never played with, appeared at the Columbia Studios in New York in 1975 when the Desire recording sessions commenced.
Among those present were Eric Clapton, Dave Mason, Yvonne Elliman, a British R&B band called Kokomo, Emmylou Harris, and Scarlet Rivera. The latter was a violinist who hooked up with Dylan purely by chance. “I met him while walking down the street in the East Village,” says Rivera. “He saw me walking with my violin case and he struck up a conversation with me.” It was a thrill for Rivera, a longtime Dylan fan, who found herself accompanying her idol in the studio a few weeks after that meeting.
One of the first cuts Dylan and company attempted to tackle for the album was “Hurricane,” an ode to boxer and convicted murderer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Says Rivera, “It was approached several different ways, with back-up singers and without.” But Dylan still wasn’t happy with the results. “There was a decision made about which way to go, with a big-group sound or a small-band approach,” Rivera recalls. Ultimately, Dylan went with the small unit, which included Rivera, bassist Rob Stoner, drummer Howie Wyeth, and back-up singer Emmylou Harris.
“The sessions were outrageous,” Rivera says. “There were really no rehearsals. There was just a rundown of the songs and once the song structure was understood, the red [recording] light went on.”
Once again Dylan was going for feel, rather than studio polish. In fact, there is no producer credit on the album, although Dylan’s longtime Columbia Records A&R man Don DeVito was present. “It was all very spontaneous,” says Rivera. “He wanted very unpolished and unaffected performances. He was really looking for lots of heart and genuine expression, as opposed to precision playing and a flawless performance.”
The material on the album ranged from “Joey,” written about notorious New York mobster Joey Gallo, to “Sara,” a last-minute addition to the album that was performed live in the studio and directed toward Dylan’s estranged wife, possibly in an attempt to reconcile with her.
While Sara may not have been swayed by the song and Desire, the public was. In its third week on the chart, the album became Dylan’s third chart-topper.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of February 7, 1976
1. Desire, Bob Dylan
2. Still Crazy After All These Years, Paul Simon
3. Gratitude, Earth, Wind & Fire
4. Chicago IX — Chicago’s Greatest Hits, Chicago
5. Tryin’ to Get the Feelin’, Barry Manilow