When the Slow Train Came

Thirty years ago today, on October 15, 1979, Bob Dylan released SLOW TRAIN COMING, an album of music expressing his new-found convictions as a fundamentalist Christian.

In an interview he gave five years later, Dylan said: "The songs that I wrote for the Slow Train album [frightened me]...I didn't plan to write them...I didn't like writing them. I didn't want to write them."

The cover art for the album displays a man holding a cross, but appearing ready to swing it like a hammer, so that the crossbar of the cross will presumably drive a spike into a railroad line under construction.

Dylan's album, and his conversion, had the distinction at any rate of inspiring John Lennon to write "Serve Yourself," with lyrics like this:

You tell me you found Jesus. Christ!
Well that's great and he's the only one
You say you just found Buddha?
and he's sittin' on his arse in the sun?