Street-Legal is the eighteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on June 15, 1978, by Columbia Records.
The album was a departure for Dylan, who assembled a large pop-rock band with female backing vocalists for its recording.
[1][2] Dylan spent the first half of 1977 engaged in divorce proceedings and a custody battle with his first wife, Sara, while editing Renaldo and Clara, an ill-fated film shot during the fall of 1975 on the first leg of his Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
[3] His work was disrupted on August 16, 1977, when news broke that Elvis Presley had died at 3:30 p.m. at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
He quickly contacted several musicians, including former Rolling Thunder Revue members Steve Soles, David Mansfield, Rob Stoner, and Howie Wyeth.
'"[3] Soles, Mansfield, Stoner, Wyeth, pianist Walter Davis, Jr., and percussionist Otis Smith arrived in late November and early December.
Though disappointed with the critical reaction, with the film released and his legal matters settled, Dylan was finally ready to rehearse.
As rehearsals progressed, it soon became clear the band wasn't "picking up where the Rolling Thunder Revue left off," as Mansfield recalled.
'"[3] After auditioning a number of drummers ("maybe ten or a dozen" by Bernstein's estimates), Dylan replaced Wyeth with Denny Seiwell, who briefly played with Paul McCartney and Wings.
[5] When rehearsal was held on December 30, the band now included Stoner, Mansfield, Soles, guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, and singers Katey Sagal, Debbie Dye Gibson, and Frannie Eisenberg.
As biographer Clinton Heylin writes, "[Dylan] began to impose a grander vision on whatever sound the Revue veterans had initially conceived.
With the first leg of his world tour set for February in Japan, he quickly made some last-minute changes, removing Sagal and Eisenberg and replacing them with novice singer Helena Springs and seasoned professional Jo Ann Harris.
Rob Stoner recalls, "a telegram arrived from the Japanese promoter, and in it he had a manifest of the songs he expected Bob to do on this tour.
It really was sort of like Bob Dylan meets Phil Spector in the best way ... as if it had [just] been recorded so the instruments sounded full and well-blended.
The Searchers recorded "Coming From The Heart (The Road Is Long)" and Eric Clapton released "Walk Out In the Rain" on his album Backless, which also included another song written at this time, "If I Don't Be There By Morning".
[citation needed] Other songs written during this time include: Following the twin successes of Blood on the Tracks and Desire, Street-Legal was another gold record for Dylan, peaking at No.
critic Jon Pareles remarked that "Dylan still needs a producer," but others found fault with both the songs and the performances.
Greil Marcus criticized the singing as "simply impossible to pay attention to for more than a couple of minutes at a time" and accused "Is Your Love in Vain?"
of sexism, claiming Dylan was "speak[ing] to the woman like a sultan checking out a promising servant girl for VD.
"[citation needed] In the UK, reviews were positive, with Michael Watts of Melody Maker proclaiming it Dylan's "best album since John Wesley Harding".
[citation needed] Many years later, even Street-Legal's most ardent admirers would admit some flaws in the album, finding most fault with the production.
"Street-Legal was the first in a long line of song collections whose failure to be realized in the studio would lay a 'dust of rumors' over Dylan as an abidingly creative artist that he has never been able to fully shake," writes Heylin.
[citation needed] The original 1978 LP sleeve credits mastering to Stan Kalina at CBS Recording Studios NY; the album was produced by Don DeVito.
In 1999, DeVito revisited Street-Legal and remixed the album with modern, digital techniques in an attempt to improve the mix and produce a richer overall sound.