Bob Dylan – Hearts of Fire Sessions Review

Where most of the film appearances made by Bob Dylan may be unremarkable, the music of those projects is as he was on screen. Strange, out of his depth and uncomfortable. Uninterested, some may say. Hearts of Fire was never going to rekindle Dylan’s image as a classy standard of the modern times but the studio sessions which preceded the soundtrack release are shocking. Nineteen songs where Dylan asks Eric Clapton and Ronnie Wood to sit in on guitar and drums respectively. Not the most exciting set of songs but the difference made from performance to performance, those little nuggets of wisdom heard in the studio, are inevitable. The trouble for Dylan during this period is not just burnout but this unnecessary desire to keep up with the pop-rock sound, to infiltrate it and make it work. Clapton couldn’t do it for him here, Mark Knopfler gave it a go, but it was all futile. Hearts of Fire Sessions is a showcase of what was going wrong.

Three takes of The Usual kick this compilation off. The third is the best of the trio, a well-rounded and instrumentally slick offering which still pales in comparison to what was to come from Dylan just a few years later. His voice is lost in a shoddy mix but the coarse vocals leave a mark with this one, as opposed to the pedestrian sound of The Usual in its first two takes. A fourth can be heard later on in these sessions but the lack of difference between them implies either Dylan was happy with how they sounded or could not care less. It feels like the latter at times throughout these sessions, as plodding and unremarkable as they are. Some of these songs remain, frankly, awful. The weedy Some Kind of Way sounds like a rejected Talking Heads instrumental and the first of five Had a Dream About You Baby renditions are agony.  

But therein lies the point of a rehearsal set – and why so many clamour about the glory days when Dylan and his sparks of brilliance were heard in the smallest pockets of a studio in New York. We listen in because we hope to hear what made these songs so magical or, in the case of Hearts of Fire, so uninspired. Rockabilly styles and a plodding instrumental certainly do not help the case for this but what becomes clear is the lacklustre mood and atmosphere in the studio at the time. Considering his place in the film as a bad boy of the rock and roll scene, a washed-up caricature more than anything, it is somewhat brutal to have him sound the same when writing and recording the music for it. He succumbs to the times and, in what is arguably a first for Dylan, he becomes a follower and not a leader.  

He sounds keen to play it by the book, accepts there is no notion of creative flair to be had and becomes just another instrument in what should be a meeting of brilliant, creative minds. Clapton and Wood are in there with him but regress into sounding more like uneventful session musicians than anything else. There are minor differences, enough to hear a little flicker of what could be something magical. But the inference of a possible moment is so far removed from anything that happens on these sessions that hearing it is just a trick of the mind. A blanket of indifference coddles this session and nobody who listens to Dylan would hold that against him. Few will even remember Hearts of Fire. It is not exactly obituary name-dropping material.  

Had a Dream About You Baby is such an unfocused piece of work. A generic-sounding piece of the 1980s, a legend trying to claw back the sound which propelled him to fame. In those instances, there comes a vulnerability. Dylan is no stranger to being on the back foot but usually, it gives us his best works. Time Out of Mind or Love and Theft both provide a vision of the future, the progressive sound Dylan could make when up against it. Hearts of Fire is a complete burnout. Listen to the works before and after it. Can anyone be surprised this was the case? At their very best these songs are inoffensive filler for the ears, something to pass the time with. And yet a few surprises may linger. On its fourth take, Had a Dream About You Baby is given a slight funk twist, a little boost of confidence which is what we were all waiting for.  

Few moments of such interesting quality come after that – from the attempt at heartfelt explorations on Old Fives and Dimers Like Me to the brief Had a Dream About You Baby closing the album out. Just when you think Dylan is out of it, past the point of no return, comes a new low which springs him back into action. Hearts of Fire Sessions remains one of those low ebbs which are worth listening to more for what they say about the artist at the time than anything else. Look how far he has come, look at what led him to this. Flickers of instrumental brilliance, though brief and lasting mere seconds, can be felt if you strain for them. Little reminders of what Dylan had achieved before are heartbreaking, but they are no more a disaster than the studio lull at the time, the bounce back into contemporary brilliance was not far off.