Desire

Most of the album was co-written with Jacques Levy, and Dylan and Levy finished fourteen songs in about three weeks in the Hamptons. In late June 1975 Dylan, riding in a car around the Village, spotted the violinist Scarlet Rivera walking with her violin case, stopped to talk and invited her to rehearse, and she joined the album. A first session on 14 July, with Joey and Rita Mae, left him disappointed. On 28 July he returned to Studio E with about 21 musicians. The recording was haphazard: Dylan wanted to record live, and producer Don DeVito stacked instruments on the multitrack tapes.

Emmylou Harris and Ronee Blakley sing backing vocals, and Eric Clapton plays guitar on Romance in Durango. Hurricane tells the case of the boxer Rubin Carter, who was released in 1985 after his conviction was overturned. The eleven-minute Joey is about the gangster Joey Gallo and drew controversy.

It spent five weeks at number one on the Billboard albums chart and was certified double platinum. In the UK it reached three, and the NME named it album of the year. Rolling Stone ranked it 174 in 2003 and again in 2012. Dave Marsh counted it among the two best records Dylan had made since John Wesley Harding, while Robert Christgau questioned the deceitful bathos of Joey.