Hello, my name is Ben Burrell and welcome to a podcast series taking an in-depth look at Bob Dylan's studio recordings album by album, starting with 1989's Omercy.

Broken lines, broken strings, broken threads, broken springs, broken springs, broken idols, broken heads, broken heads, broken heads, broken heads, people sleeping in broken beds.

Ain't no use jivey, ain't new use joking.

Everything is broken.

Starting with Omercy might seem like an odd way to begin,

but this is a really interesting and important album in Dylan's back catalogue.

It was released at a time where Bob wasn't, shall we say, particularly on a hot streak.

He was coming off the back of three pretty disappointing albums,

both commercially and critically in the form of Down in the Groove,

knocked out and loaded, and Empire Burlesque.

I kind of see Oh Mercy as the start of the second half of Dylan's career.

I'm not saying it's all classics from here on out,

but this certainly

helped to recapture that Dylan magic that might have been missing in the last couple of years

of his career previous to this. This rebirth really starts with Bono from U2, funny enough. Bono

was having dinner with Dylan and he suggested that he worked with a producer called Daniel Lamois,

who had gained quite a bit of

notoriety at this stage, working with artists such as you two, and also Peter Gabriel, to name but a few.

He was seen as the main working partner of Brian Eno. Bob outlines their first conversation quite extensively

in his autobiography. He writes, I've been having a hard time making records. Bono brought up the name

Daniel Lamois and said he had musical ideas comparable to mine. Bono picked up the phone

and dialed the man. We spoke for a moment. Basically what Lamois said was, if I was ever in New

...