Remembering When a Bob Dylan Album Featured a Budding Superstar on Backing Vocals in 1976

Bob Dylan has an occasionally haphazard method of making records that is not for the faint of heart, especially if you’re a musician participating in one of those sessions. His spur-of-the-moment decisions and penchant for capturing unexpected brilliance in the moment require his collaborators to go on that wild ride with him.

Dylan’s 1976 album Desire is notable for the inclusion of a single female backing vocalist on most of the songs. That vocalist, Emmylou Harris, hung in there during the unorthodox sessions and brought an integral element to that wonderful record.

A ‘Desire’ for the Unexpected

Bob Dylan initially wasn’t planning on getting back in the studio so soon following the release of the wildly celebrated Blood On The Tracks album in January 1975. Things changed when he happened upon Jacques Levy, an old acquaintance, while out one day in New York City.

Levy was mostly known as a theater producer at that stage of his career. But he had also done some songwriting. When Dylan played him some material on which he’d been recording, it led to a writing collaboration between the two men. Very quickly, they had composed an album’s worth of material.

Dylan, wanting to capture this sudden lightning in the bottle, hustled into Columbia’s studios to lay some tracks down. He invited an eclectic group of musicians to join him, including Eric Clapton, who ended up contributing to just one song (“Romance In Durango”) on Desire. Levy and Dylan decided a female singer was needed. That’s when Emmylou Harris entered the picture.

Singing with Bob

Desire producer Don DeVito suggested Harris for the role. Bob Dylan knew absolutely nothing about her but went along with the choice anyway. One wonders if he would have made the same decision if he’d realized that a burgeoning star was entering the sessions.

After a failed solo album in 1969, Harris put her career back on the right track by providing backing vocals on the two lauded but little-heard solo albums by Gram Parsons. After Parsons’ death in 1973, Harris refocused on her solo career. She released the hit country album Pieces Of The Sky in early 1975, a few months before she accepted Dylan’s invitation.

Parsons was handed a lyric sheet and set up next to Dylan on the mic. She watched him for cues while also trying to keep up with the wordy lyrics. And all this happened not during overdubs, but while the session instrumentalists played all around her.

Crucial Contributions

With all that happening, Harris occasionally left overwhelmed. She left the sessions prematurely to get back to her solo commitments. But her voice ended up on seven of the nine tracks on Desire, including “Hurricane”, the opening track and lead single.

Her impassioned harmonies added nice contrast to Dylan’s typically coarse lead vocals. Some of the songs are essentially duets, with Harris singing right along with Dylan from start to finish. She’s part of the reason that Desire is such a sonic outlier compared to other Bob Dylan records.

Harris would go on to add guest vocals to many other projects through the years, all while cultivating her rich solo career. And Dylan never again worked so exclusively with a single backing vocalist on an album in the same manner. Perhaps he realized that anything like it would be unfavorably compared to Harris’ stellar work on Desire.

(Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)

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