London Interview - July 1981

This disc preserves a rare, extended radio conversation between Bob Dylan and WNEW-FM's Dave Herman, taped in Dylan's London hotel room the afternoon after the final show of his 1981 European tour at Earl's Court. By his own admission on the accompanying cover letter, Herman considered it only the second time in Dylan's career that he had agreed to a broadcast interview reaching a national audience, making the tape itself a notable artifact of an artist famously guarded with the press. The conversation arrived at a pivotal moment: Dylan was emerging from his contentious "gospel trilogy" period and preparing to release Shot of Love, an album that mixed his newfound Christian convictions with a return to more secular, romantic and reflective songwriting. Interspersed with Herman's questions are three tracks pulled from that forthcoming record - Every Grain of Sand, the title track Shot of Love, and Heart of Mine - giving listeners an early, unfiltered preview of the album alongside Dylan's own comments on his faith, his songwriting and his evolving public persona. Dylan reportedly spent part of the session relaxed and barefoot, strumming a guitar between answers, lending the tape an informal, intimate quality unusual for his public appearances of the era. For collectors and critics, the interview is valued less as a performance than as a rare window into Dylan's mindset at the hinge between his born-again period and the more worldly work that would follow through the 1980s. It has since become a touchstone reference for writers tracing the Shot of Love sessions and Dylan's state of mind during that transitional tour.