Bob Dylan-Street-Legal (1978)
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Street-Legal
Label: Columbia
Format: Cassette
Sell Date: 10/9/26
Condition: VG+/VG+
Discogs Last Sold: 5/31/26 VG+/VG+ $5.00
Low: $3.25
Median: $5.00
Average: $5.88
High: $20.00
Current low price: $4.48 (Ireland) $6.00 US
Curren Number on Sale at Discogs: 8
Have/Want: 49/57
Where Sold: Toronto, ON, Canada
Time It Took To Sell: 3 years
Where and When Bought: Facebook marketplace lot
Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A
Sad To See It Go: No
"16 years!" Bob opens Street-Legal. Coincidentally, this was the amount of time he was a professional recording artist. I wouldn't pin Bob on railing about his place in the marketplace, but I wouldn't put it past him to sneak it in either. However, in my fantasy world, Bob isn't bound by these earthly pursuits lyrically. He can get paid and hash out issues with management and the help on his own time.
Street-Legal was lambasted by people that ought to have known better. There is nothing that sounds like it either in Dylan's catalog or anywhere else. This wasn't a pop record and it wasn't R&B either. Horns and Boblettes (or is that Bob-threes as Greil hinted at) may have gone into the mix and produced a Gold record and a #11 chart position on name, but for Bob, that was a drop off from the earlier 70's. One could and did say it was a failure on all levels: commercial, critical, aesthetic, personal, whatever you like. America told him to take that shit to Budokan and he did, bigger and "better" that Neil Diamond. Time heals all wounds and people forget that one sold well.
A complicated man coming out of divorce wants someone who can cook, sew and understand his pain. It probably won't happen, but it sounds like he was searching hard enough to put it on a record or maybe knew someone else that was going through that and could relate. It was the 70's after all and the Sara/Divorce/Christianity tabloid news seemed to be spilling onto the records. Man of the times and a player in the marketplace but maybe it was indeed a Changing Of The Guard coming to pass. Perhaps it was a hybrid of people, places, events the way Bob might underline a phrase out of a book to hijack for a couplet on a later day. That's what the tabloids have to complain about nowadays.
Otherwise we are left with renegade priest, a women with her head forcibly shaved, a lion on the road and a demon escaped. That's just the beginning and the end! On the way we meet Lucifer the (new) pony and some kind of Spanish guide unnamed and not stopping for a mariachi band in a vacant lot.
"Son, this ain't a dream no more, it's the real thing."
FOR FURTHER REVIEW:
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)
The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964)
Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964)
Watching The River Flow b/w Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (1971)
Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (Original Soundtrack Recording) (1973)
Bob Dylan @ Forest Hills Stadium, Queens, NY 7/21/26
Bob Dylan @ Northwell at Jones Beach Theatre, Wantagh, NY 8/1/25
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