''Under the Red Sky'' is the
27th studio album by American singer-songwriter
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
, released on September 10, 1990, by
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...
. It was produced by
Don Was,
David Was, and Dylan (under the pseudonym
Jack Frost).
The album was largely greeted as a disappointing follow-up to 1989's critically acclaimed ''
Oh Mercy''. Most of the criticism was directed at the slick sound of rock producer
Don Was, as well as a handful of tracks that seem rooted in children's
nursery rhymes. It is a rarity in Dylan's catalog for its inclusion of celebrity cameos by
Jimmie Vaughan
Jimmie Vaughan (born March 20, 1951) is an American blues rock guitarist and singer based in Austin, Texas. He is the older brother of the late Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Several notable blues guitarists have had a significant ...
,
Slash
Slash may refer to:
* Slash (punctuation), the "/" character
Arts and entertainment Fictional characters
* Slash (Marvel Comics)
* Slash (''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'')
Music
* Harry Slash & The Slashtones, an American rock band
* Nash ...
,
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, pianist and composer. Commonly nicknamed the "Rocket Man" after his 1972 hit single of the same name, John has led a commercially successful career a ...
,
George Harrison
George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian c ...
,
David Crosby,
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Stephen Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990) was an American musician, best known as the guitarist and frontman of the blues rock trio Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. Although his mainstream career spanned only seven years, ...
, and
Bruce Hornsby.
Dedication
The album is dedicated to "Gabby Goo Goo", now thought to be Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, Dylan's daughter by
Carolyn Dennis
Carolyn Dennis (born April 12, 1954), sometimes known professionally as Carol Dennis or Carol Dennis-Dylan, is an American singer and actress best known for her work with and marriage to Bob Dylan.
Career
Dennis has also sung back-up for Wonderlo ...
, born on January 31, 1986.
Recording
Four songs from the album, "Handy Dandy", "10,000 Men", "God Knows", and "Cat's in the Well", were recorded in a single session in Los Angeles on 6 January 1990, before Dylan commenced a four-week tour. ("Handy Dandy" received overdubs subsequently.) Dylan biographer
Clinton Heylin writes that Dylan finished recording the basic tracks for the album in mid-March 1990, but added new vocals to some tracks the following month, with instrumental overdub sessions extending into May 1990.
Unlike the rest of his discography, the album features numerous guest appearances by established artists, such as
Bruce Hornsby,
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, pianist and composer. Commonly nicknamed the "Rocket Man" after his 1972 hit single of the same name, John has led a commercially successful career a ...
and
George Harrison
George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian c ...
. Additionally, session musicians like pianist
Al Kooper and guitarist
Waddy Wachtel appear throughout the album. The album opener, "Wiggle Wiggle", also features
Slash
Slash may refer to:
* Slash (punctuation), the "/" character
Arts and entertainment Fictional characters
* Slash (Marvel Comics)
* Slash (''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'')
Music
* Harry Slash & The Slashtones, an American rock band
* Nash ...
on guitar, while "10,000 Men" features
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Stephen Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990) was an American musician, best known as the guitarist and frontman of the blues rock trio Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. Although his mainstream career spanned only seven years, ...
. The title track features a "fine guitar solo" by
George Harrison
George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian c ...
; Heylin has called this track an "important song", noting that it has been a staple of Dylan's live performances.
Two songs, "
Born in Time
"Born in Time" is a rock song written by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, who first released the track on September 10, 1990, on his twenty-seventh studio album ''Under the Red Sky''. It is a reworking of a song originally recorded at the ...
" and "God Knows", are reworkings of material originally recorded at the previous year's ''
Oh Mercy'' sessions. Versions of these songs from the ''Oh Mercy'' sessions are included on ''
The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs''.
According to producer
Don Was, there were two outtakes from the album: "Shirley Temple Doesn't Live Here Anymore" (which Dylan co-wrote with Was and
David Weiss) and "Heartland" (which Dylan later sang with
Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelson (born April 29, 1933) is an American country musician. The critical success of the album ''Shotgun Willie'' (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of ''Red Headed Stranger'' (1975) and '' Stardust'' (197 ...
on Nelson's 1993 album ''
Across the Borderline''). "Shirley Temple Doesn't Live Here Anymore" was later recorded by
Don Was's group
Was (Not Was)
Was (Not Was) is an American pop rock group founded in 1979 in Detroit, Michigan, by David Weiss and Don Fagenson, who adopted the stage names David Was and Don Was. Their song catalog features an eclectic mix of pop and rock styles, often fea ...
for their 2008 album ''
Boo!'' as "Mr. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore".
Reception
Dylan has echoed most critics' complaints, telling ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
'' in a 2006 interview that the album's shortcomings resulted from hurried and unfocused recording sessions, due in part to his activity with the
Traveling Wilburys at the time. He also claimed that there were too many people working on the album, and that he was very disillusioned with the recording industry during this period of his career.
Dylan critic Patrick Humphries, author of ''The Complete Guide to the Music of Bob Dylan'', was particularly harsh in his assessment of ''Under the Red Sky'', stating the album "was everything ''
Oh Mercy'' wasn't—sloppily written songs, lazily performed and unimaginatively produced. The first bridge of "2 X 2" ("How much poison did they inhale?") was reminiscent of the menace which pervaded ''Oh Mercy'', but otherwise, where before there had been certainty and sureness, here was confusion and indecision."
Humphries saved his harshest attack for the album's opening song, "Wiggle Wiggle":
The album did have some critical support, particularly from
Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...
of ''
The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...
'', who wrote: "To my astonishment, I think ''Under the Red Sky'' is Dylan's best album in 15 years, a record that may even signal a ridiculously belated if not totally meaningless return to form … It's fabulistic, biblical … the tempos are postpunk like it oughta be, with
enny
Enitan Adepitan (born 9 December 1994), known professionally as Enny (stylized in all caps), is an English rapper, singer and songwriter. She is best known for her 2020 single "Peng Black Girls" which gained popularity following a remix vers ...
Aronoff's sprints and shuffles grooving ahead like '60s folk-rock never did."
And
Paul Nelson, writing for ''
Musician
A musician is a person who composes, conducts, or performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general term used to designate one who follows music as a profession. Musicians include songwriters who wri ...
'', called the album "a deliberately throwaway masterpiece". When the ''
Voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...
'' held its
Pazz & Jop
Pazz & Jop was an annual poll of top musical releases, compiled by American newspaper ''The Village Voice'' and created by music critic Robert Christgau. It published lists of the year's top releases for 1971 and, after Christgau's two-year abse ...
Critics Poll for 1990, ''Under the Red Sky'' placed at #39.
In the end, album sales were disappointing, peaking at #38 on the US charts and #13 in the UK. According to the book ''Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan'', the disappointing record sales of this album made him depressed. On top of that, Dylan's second wife had just signed for divorce in August 1990, although their marriage was completely unknown to both Dylan's fans and the media until the 2001 publication of ''Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan'' by
Howard Sounes
Howard Sounes (born 1965) is a British author, journalist and biographer.
Biography
Born in Welling, South East London, Sounes began his journalistic career as a staff reporter for the ''Sunday Mirror''. He broke major stories, including one ...
.
Legacy
Dylan continued the style of the album with his recording of the nursery rhyme "
This Old Man
"This Old Man" is an English language children's song, counting exercise and nursery rhyme with a Roud Folk Song Index number of 3550.
Origins and history
The origins of this song are obscure. The earliest extant record is a version noted ...
", which was released on the Disney charity album ''For Our Children'' in 1991. For his follow-up album, ''
Good As I Been to You'' (1992), Dylan went back to his acoustic roots, recording more serious songs.
In 2005,
''Q'' included the lead-off track "Wiggle Wiggle" in a list of "Ten Terrible Records by Great Artists". ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' placed "Wiggle Wiggle" on the list of The 10 Worst Bob Dylan Songs, noting that it "sounds like the theme song to one of those tripped-out television shows beloved by toddlers and drug users". The song was covered on the 2014 tribute album ''
Bob Dylan in the 80s: Volume One'' by
Slash
Slash may refer to:
* Slash (punctuation), the "/" character
Arts and entertainment Fictional characters
* Slash (Marvel Comics)
* Slash (''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'')
Music
* Harry Slash & The Slashtones, an American rock band
* Nash ...
and
Aaron Freeman. Its lyrics were also the namesake for the Danish pop/rock band
Big Fat Snake.
Track listing
Personnel
*Bob Dylan –
acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...
,
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
,
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
,
accordion
Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...
,
harmonica
The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...
,
vocals
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...
,
production
Production may refer to:
Economics and business
* Production (economics)
* Production, the act of manufacturing goods
* Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services)
* Production as a stati ...
Additional musicians
*
Kenny Aronoff –
drums
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...
*
Sweet Pea Atkinson
Hillard "Sweet Pea" Atkinson (September 20, 1945 – May 5, 2020) was an American R&B singer known as one of the vocalists for the band Was (Not Was).
Biography
Atkinson was born in Oberlin, Ohio, and moved to Detroit as a child. He worke ...
–
backing vocals
A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are use ...
*Rayse Biggs –
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
*
Sir Harry Bowens – backing vocals
*
David Crosby – backing vocals
*
Paulinho Da Costa –
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
*
George Harrison
George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian c ...
–
slide guitar
Slide guitar is a technique for playing the guitar that is often used in blues music. It involves playing a guitar while holding a hard object (a slide) against the strings, creating the opportunity for glissando effects and deep vibratos tha ...
*
Slash
Slash may refer to:
* Slash (punctuation), the "/" character
Arts and entertainment Fictional characters
* Slash (Marvel Comics)
* Slash (''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'')
Music
* Harry Slash & The Slashtones, an American rock band
* Nash ...
– guitar "Wiggle Wiggle"
*
Bruce Hornsby,
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, pianist and composer. Commonly nicknamed the "Rocket Man" after his 1972 hit single of the same name, John has led a commercially successful career a ...
–
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
*
Randy "The Emperor" Jackson –
bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
*
Al Kooper –
Hammond organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated s ...
,
keyboards
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
*
David Lindley –
bouzouki, guitar, slide guitar
*David McMurray –
saxophone
The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...
*Donald Ray Mitchell – backing vocals
*
Jamie Muhoberac – Hammond organ
*
Jimmie Vaughan
Jimmie Vaughan (born March 20, 1951) is an American blues rock guitarist and singer based in Austin, Texas. He is the older brother of the late Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Several notable blues guitarists have had a significant ...
,
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Stephen Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990) was an American musician, best known as the guitarist and frontman of the blues rock trio Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. Although his mainstream career spanned only seven years, ...
,
Waddy Wachtel,
Robben Ford
Robben Lee Ford (born December 16, 1951) is an American blues, jazz, and rock guitarist. He was a member of the L.A. Express and Yellowjackets and has collaborated with Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, George Harrison, Larry Carlton, Rick Springfield ...
– guitar
*
David Was – backing vocals, production
*
Don Was – bass guitar, production
Production
*Dan Bosworth – assistant
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
*Marsha Burns – production coordination
*
Ed Cherney – engineering,
mixing
*Steve Deutsch – assistant engineering
*Judy Kirshner – assistant engineering
*Jim Mitchell – assistant engineering
*Brett Swain – assistant engineering
Certifications
References
External links
Lyricsat Bob Dylan's official site
Chordsat Dylanchords
Further reading
*
{{Authority control
1990 albums
Albums produced by Bob Dylan
Albums produced by David Was
Albums produced by Don Was
Bob Dylan albums
Columbia Records albums