Why do artists love Bob Dylan’s ‘Every Grain of Sand’?

Why is 'Every Grain of Sand' one of Bob Dylan's most celebrated songs among his fellow artists?

(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)

Sun 7 April 2024 5:00, UK

John Lennon once revered Bob Dylan as an icon to strive towards. However, by the time his hero found himself in a born-again Christian phase, the bespectacled Beatle was labelling him “pathetic”. This change of fortune for the original vagabond, once lauded as the kickstarter of counterculture thanks to anthems like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, was reflected among the critics too. If Lennon had proved anything with his new age idealism, it was that Christ was no longer cool.

For the most part, the public bought into this, too, and Dylan found himself in a strange fallow patch. There is an enormous, underreported Christian market in the US, with many books the secular world has never heard of dominating the market at any given time. However, Dylan failed to find favour here when the mainstream shunned him as he had alienated that audience a decade earlier with his anti-establishment songs and progressive ways.

So, as a born-again Christian, he was effectively stuck between a rock and a hard place, but he didn’t much care. He soldiered on with diminishing returns on all fronts. Saved reached a measly 24 in the US charts, and Shot of Love faired even worse, peaking at 33. For an icon of Dylan’s scope, these were disastrous figures. This was no 1960s comedown either, evidenced by the fact that at around the same time, Paul McCartney’s two releases, McCartney II and Tug of War, hit first and third in the charts. No, the prognosis was that Dylan had hit a major artistic downturn, and perhaps Jesus was to blame.

Rising from these ashes was one sole salvation, ‘Every Grain of Sand’. This luscious gospel-inflected track was lauded and continues to be shrouded in praise, not by the critics and not all that often by fans either, but largely by his fellow artists. Elvis Costello said it might be his “best song”, Bono compared its majesty to the “great psalms of David”, Bruce Springsteen cited it among Dylan’s finest when inducting him into the Hall of Fame, it was a favourite of Johnny Cash who had it performed at his funeral, Patti Smith has hailed it as a masterpiece as have PJ Harvey, Emmylou Harris and plenty more.

Its quality wasn’t even lost on Dylan, either. The troubadour describes Shot of Love, the album that spawned it, as his own finest work. “For me, I think it’s the most explosive album I’ve ever done,” he said in 1983. “I like Freewheelin’, and I like my first album. Shot of Love is my favourite, actually.” He wasn’t just after latent publicity either, because in 1985, he was still at it. “People didn’t listen to [Shot of Love] in a realistic way,” he told Cameron Crowe.

”The critics wouldn’t allow the people to make up their own minds,” he continued. ”All they talked about was Jesus this and Jesus that, like it was some kind of Methodist record. I don’t know what was happening, maybe Boy George or something, but Shot of Love didn’t fit into the current formula.” Artists tend not to consume music in the same way. During the Shot of Love era, discs were often passed around by artists at the same label before the papers had even had a chance to listen. So, what they heard in his Leonard Cohen-like prayer was a man tapping back into the creative flow that triggered his earliest masterpieces.

Meanwhile, the cultural angle that Dylan’s quality had been waylaid by Christ continued to sell. Frankly, he wasn’t cool enough to strike against this. In fact, even though the brilliance of ‘Every Grain of Sand’ still shines through, there are still a few production problems that you would probably nix in retrospect. This liberty wasn’t afforded to the icon at the time, and the stunning verses were tarred with the broad-stroke brush that he had lost it.

Ironically, there was a grain of truth to this, too; his quality and importance had waned, but that narrative was overbearing and blemished the brilliance he was still capable of. It’s facile and glib but he also didn’t even look cool in this era, and with MTV on the rise, that glibness was suddenly very, very important.

As he said himself of the song, “That was an inspired song that came to me. I felt like I was just putting down words that were coming from somewhere else, and I just suck it out.” That is exactly how he used to refer to the songs that he “found“ rather than wrote in the unrivalled purple patch of his youth. This billow of inspiration amid rubble was recognised by some, but not by others.

Dylan explained that divergence as thus: ”People were always looking for some excuse to write me off and this was as good as any. I can’t say if being ‘non-commercial’ is a put-down or a compliment.”