BOB DYLAN
Springtime In New York: The Bootleg Series, Volume 16,1980–1985 SONY LEGACY
A deep dive into Dylan’s less celebrated waters reveals a fair few pearls.
By Allan Jones
8/10
KEN REGAN
Dylan in1981: facing a dismal reception
BEHOLD Bob Dylan’s ’80s, that blighted hour. No-one could really argue if you described it as largely a time of muddle and waste, lit up here and there by occasional flashes of the inspiration Dylan seemed previously to have had on speed dial but which was now mostly dodging his calls. The records he made then are testament to that – the versions of them he released, anyway. There were six studio albums across those years, and Springtime In New York – in its fullest iteration, a 5CD set with 57 tracks – focuses on the first three, Shot Of Love, Infidels and Empire Burlesque. All of them were shadows of the albums they could have been – the outtakes are a testament to that. All those orphaned tracks, recorded and discarded, sprung eventually from extended archival jail time by the liberating hand of the Bootleg Series.