In the fall of 1989, having just returned from the Never Ending Tour, Bob Dylan began gearing up for a new album. He wrote several songs during the fall, and some others were already done. The songwriter wanted the album to be different from the previous one, Oh Mercy, produced in the steamy atmosphere of New Orleans by Daniel Lanois. He settled on studios in Los Angeles, close to his property in Malibu. In order to go in a different direction, production responsibilities were assigned to Don and David Was. These two, born Donald Fagenson and David Weiss, were musicians and former high school friends. Ten years earlier they had founded the band Was (Not Was). Don had produced records for, among others, Carly Simon in 1985 and Bonnie Raitt in 1989. Dylan also participated in the production of Under the Red Sky, under the pseudonym Jack Frost.
Under the Red Sky is dedicated to Gabby Goo Goo, which was the nickname of Dylan’s then-four-year-old daughter Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan. The record has a handful of tracks rooted in Anglo-Saxon children’s nursery rhymes. However, the light tone and structure of the children’s songs mask serious, intense ideas: childhood in Minnesota, biblical themes (“2 x 2,” “Cat’s in the Well,” “Wiggle Wiggle,” and “God Knows”), materialism (“Unbelievable”), misinformation circulated by the elites and media (“T.V. Talkin’ Song”), and melancholy (“Born in Time”).
The black-and-white photograph on the cover portrays Dylan squatting and pensive in a bleak landscape. Is this his idea of the world after a nuclear holocaust? The photograph was taken in the Mojave Desert, in California, and is credited to Camouflage Photo. In reality, the photographer is none other than Dylan himself.
By choosing Don Was as producer, Dylan was probably looking for a less tortured climate for his new album than working with Daniel Lanois. When they met, Dylan asked Was to produce a new version of “God Knows,” an outtake from Oh Mercy. After booking a studio, the two men got to know each other. “We never discussed anything about ideas. Bob never played us any of the songs in advance, we never told him who the musicians were gonna be… ‘God Knows’ was our audition. You should’ve seen the room that day. Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan on electric guitars, David Lindley on slide, Kenny Aronoff on drums, young Jamie Muhoberac on B3, Bob played piano and sang. I played bass. Nobody knew the song. Bob played it for us once then we cut it. The modus operandi was immediately established: listen to Bob and respond sympathetically.”43 At that time, Don Was had relatively little experience with production, which he subsequently regretted: “I probably could have been a better producer for Bob but who knows.”143 However, the sound engineer, Ed Cherney, had worked for big names in the music scene, such as Sting, the Rolling Stones, and Michael McDonald, among others.
Under the Red Sky was recorded with rock celebrities, including George Harrison, Slash (Guns N’ Roses), Elton John, the Vaughan Brothers, Robben Ford, Al Kooper, Bruce Hornsby, and David Crosby, a symbol of the California spirit. The number of musicians involved was twenty-two! The producers’ idea was that, at each session, different guests would accompany Dylan. Dylan later regretted this, saying, “To make that record the brothers had a different band in the studio for me every day. Musicians from Bruce Hornsby to Elton John to Slash, the guitar player. Anybody who had some kind of recognizable name in the music industry. I just played along in that situation and did the best I could.”144
Despite this impressive array of guest stars, the album is musically homogeneous. It includes ballads, blues, boogie, and rock, like that heard in Memphis’s smoky clubs. Dylan’s timeless and engaging voice was not enough to generate a critical and commercial success. Released on September 11, 1990, Dylan’s twenty-seventh studio album did not have the same prestige as Oh Mercy, even if the LP reached number 38 on the US Billboard charts and number 13 in the United Kingdom. In the end, the album was relatively underrated.
Accurate information about dates and exact recording studios of the various sessions is hard to confirm. Nevertheless, the production truly began on January 6, 1990, probably at Ocean Way Recording in Hollywood. This was a fabled place that saw the coming and going of a number of artists, including Michael Jackson (Thriller), Frank Zappa, Supertramp, and the Beach Boys. Between February and April, the rhythm tracks were recorded in various studios, presumably the Complex Studios and the Record Plant in Los Angeles, but also Sorcerer Sound Recording Studios in New York, where Norah Jones would later record her first hit record Come Away with Me (2002) and where Lou Reed had worked. On March 2, a promotional version of “Most of the Time” (Oh Mercy) was recorded with the Record Plant’s portable digital twenty-four-track recorder at Culver City Studios in California. Between April 30 and May 25, ten overdub sessions were held, most likely, at Ocean Way Recording.
Under the Red Sky was not a major hit. Dylan said that at that time he had a poor relationship with the recording industry, and that there were too many musicians involved on the album. “I like Don and David, but let’s face it, neither one of them knew anything about American folk music or gut level arrangements that come out of the world of simplicity.”144
According to David Lindley, Dylan borrowed his Japanese Teisco guitar to record one of the songs on the album, “And he particularly liked the nasty twang to it.”145 The songwriter played his harmonica (in A) for only one song.