"Bear, we're screwed. Dylan's gone Christian," Jerry Wexler told Barry Beckett over the phone. The conversation took place in advance of Muscle Shoals recording sessions that became Bob Dylan's 1979 album "Slow Train Coming," according to Scott M. Marshall, author of new book "Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life," who interviewed "Slow Train Coming" co-producers Wexler and Beckett before they died in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

Beckett, nicknamed Bear, was less pessimistic about the impact Dylan's newfound Christian outlook would have on the upcoming album. Beckett told Marshall he replied on the phone to Wexler, "I think it will work out Jerry if he doesn't get too schmaltzy on the lyrics."

Even amid a 55-year recording career that's firmly established Dylan as one of the most influential songwriters ever (if not the most), his "Christian period," which continued after "Slow Train Coming" with another Muscle Shoals made LP, 1980's "Saved," remains Dylan's most controversial season. The only other period that comes close is when Dylan "plugged in" for the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, swapping his original solo acoustic folk sound for a Stratocaster and electric rock band aesthetic, upsetting some fans so much later during that tour some moron loudly heckled Dylan at a Manchester concert with cries of "Judas!" between songs.

While Marshall sees parallels between "Dylan goes electric" and "Dylan goes Christian," the latter feels heavier even if the former is the more iconic pop-culture moment. "Back then (in the mid-60s) they were just talking about choice of musical instruments and style," Marshall says, calling from the Toccoa, Ga. home he shares with his wife. "And sure, it was significant and caused a big ruckus. But here was Dylan in the late-70s, this idol basically who had this body of work for almost two decades and here he was coming out and saying, 'Jesus was the answer.'"

Producer Jerry Wexler and Bob Dylan at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield, May 1979 during the "Slow Train Coming" recording sessions. (Copyright Dick Cooper/Courtesy Scott M. Marshall)

Drummer Pick Withers first met Dylan after playing a gig with British band Dire Straits at West Hollywood, Calif. venue The Roxy. They were introduced at an upstairs private bar there. Dire Strait's 1978 self-titled debut LP featured the sprawling Dylan-esque hit "Sultans of Swing." Both Withers, a player with a crisp, nimble and jazzy touch, and Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler, whose eloquent solos quickly became a hallmark of that band's sound, were brought in to play on Dylan's "Slow Train Coming."

"I guess (The Roxy show) was an informal audition as Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett had recommended us," says Withers, who resides in Liverpool with his wife Linda. "They had recently co-produced Dire Straits' second album 'Communique,' and our involvement stemmed directly from that." In 2000, Wexler told Marshall that Dylan had called him and asked him to produce the album that became "Slow Train Coming." It's likely Dylan was very aware of the strong music and commercial success of many previous Muscle Shoals-recorded releases, such as Staple Singers soul hit "I'll Take You There" and The Rolling Stones rocker "Brown Sugar."

"Slow Train" was recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound. But not the studio's iconic 3614 Jackson Highway address in Sheffield, at the lesser known 1000 Alabama Ave. location, a former Naval Reserve Building along the Tennessee River.

Gregg Hamm was recording engineer for "Slow Train Coming" and follow-up LP "Saved." He recorded Dylan and his musicians through a Neve console onto two-inch 24-track analog tape. Dylan cut his vocals (probably singing into a Neumann U87 mic) inside the center isolation booth, directly across from the control room, where Hamm, Wexler and Beckett would work.

Dylan wore a "little toboggan" hat for much of the sessions, Hamm recalls. The singer cut his vocals live with the band, recording his guitars (possibly including a black and white Strat) at the same time. "He wanted things to be more in the moment type situations," Hamm says, "which was just the way he did things and I totally agree with that. You get what's real and real-time and it just made a lot of sense." Hamm recalls Dylan having a notebook with him during the "Slow Train Coming" sessions but doesn't know for sure if its contents were lyrics, session notes, grocery list or whatever.

In 2000, Beckett told Marshall once he heard Dylan run through new song "Gotta Serve Somebody" for the first time at Muscle Shoals Sound, he was relieved: "When I heard those lyrics I said, 'Oh my goodness this is great.' And it wasn't your typical corny Christian related music - you know, having to do with 'Jesus loves me, this I know,' all that stuff. It had depth." "Gotta Serve Somebody" - musically sinewy, lyrically bold and deceptively danceable - quickly stood out to Hamm during the sessions. "It just had a feel to it that was sort of infectious. I thought it was pretty special." That tune would not only become the album's opening track, it would win Dylan his first ever Grammy, in 1980 for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Male.

Even though by 1979, Muscle Shoals Sound had hosted plenty of major stars including Rod Stewart and Paul Simon, co-owner Jimmy Johnson was especially thrilled about Dylan coming in. That thrill turned to awkwardness though upon meeting Dylan. "He was a very strange and interesting person," Johnson says. "Matter of fact when we first met him he wouldn't even speak to us and then we started treating him that way and then he flipped back and started getting nice. I don't think we ever met anybody quite like him during all the years. But in the end it turned out our friendship was pretty good."

Hamm recalls things warming up as the sessions progressed. "A lot of the folks that were involved had never met (Dylan) before and didn't know what to expect. When you're not familiar with somebody and they're the status that he was, you're walking on eggshells for a little bit until you figure things out."

Most of the spring 1979 "Slow Train Coming" sessions took place in the afternoon, as Wexler wasn't fond of working late-night, Hamm says. Like many involved in the sessions, Hamm recalls Dylan being quiet and keeping to himself when not singing, playing guitar or introducing new songs to the musicians. Wexler and Beckett essentially ran the sessions, although some of their instructions over the control room's talk-back mic out to musicians in the studio could have originated from Dylan. Withers says he and Knopfler only really saw Dylan at the studio, or as the drummer puts it "at the coalface."

That's not to say Dylan completely eschewed "Slow Train Coming" musicians' company during the sessions. Johnson laughs while recalling Dylan had all the album's female backing singers staying with him at the Wilson Lake house he was crashing at.

Withers, who played a custom Eddie Ryan drum kit on "Slow Train Coming," says the sessions began slowly. Dylan, Withers, Knopfler, bassist Tim Drummond sculpted the songs with Beckett at the piano. "Basically, there was an initial introduction to the song as we all gathered around the piano," Withers says, "but I don't recall playing any drums until we had some kind of road map in our heads. What was interesting for me was that Dylan's vocals on those initial takes would be the master vocal. You had a maximum of three attempts before you moved on to another song. All of the album was recorded in this manner - the four basic rhythm section pieces and then all instruments as in Mark's solos, backups, organ, percussion, horns etc., were recorded after."

In fact, Withers and Knopfler were at Muscle Shoals Sound for 10 days and never heard any of those subsequent overdubs, except Knopfler's guitar solos, until "Slow Train Coming" was released as an album on Aug. 20, 1979. Withers credits drumming with Beckett and Drummond for elevating his playing. It also helped plant the seed for keyboards on later Dire Straits albums, he says. "I had wanted to introduce keyboards to Dire Straits but (bassist) John Illsley and (rhythm guitarist) David Knopfler were reluctant to do so. I think this experience helped Mark make up his mind to bring in keyboards as he too was pondering about it." Some of Dire Straits' biggest hits following Withers' six-year stint in the band, including 1985's "Walk of Life," would feature keys. The drummer would go on to work with such artists as Robert Plant and Joan Beaz.

Looking back on the Dylan sessions, Withers is particularly fond of "Do Right to Me Baby" and reggae-flecked "Man Gave Names To All The Animals." "Some of the other stuff was incomplete without those gorgeous gospel girl back-ups and the horns and extra keys, etc.," Withers says. "I think those tracks blossomed as a result of the overdubs. The 'Animals' track was a more complete recording without the overdubs."

None of the musicians and studio personnel interviewed for this story recall Dylan's Christian oriented lyrics being a big topic of discussion during the sessions. "I really didn't pay much attention to it," Withers says. "I was fully concentrated on the musical backing."

Beyond the overt Christian themes and titles like "When He Returns," Dylan's lyrics were also now much more direct. His previous material had often been ambiguous, for example riddle-songs such as "Like a Rolling Stone," allowing for multiple interpretations. "Compared to his earlier lyrics it was just very different," Marshall says.

Besides "Gotta Serve Somebody," other Slow Train Coming" standouts include the emotional "I Believe in You," featuring lovely Knopfler guitar lines, and the sparse "When He Returns," with just Dylan's voice and Beckett's piano. Regarding the latter track, Beckett told Marshall in 2000, "It was the first time I really realized what his singing was about, how much soul he had. So, it was quite a revelation for me."

The Muscle Shoals Horns, which included trombonist Charles Rose, saxophonists Ronnie Eades and Harvey Thompson and trumpeter Harrison Calloway Jr., were brought in later to overdub lines on songs like "Precious Angel," "When You Gonna Wake Up" and "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking." During that era, the quartet would sometimes do sessions "by head," Rose says, but for "Slow Train Coming," Calloway wrote out horn charts. Rose thinks he played a King 3B trombone on the sessions.

The Muscle Shoals Horns had a good relationship with Wexler, who'd recommended the ensemble to piano-rock star Elton John for his 1974 tour. Rose recalls cutting "Slow Train Coming" horns in Muscle Shoals Sound's Studio B. He'd met Dylan once before, during sessions for an album by Electric Flag guitarist Barry Goldberg, who'd played keys for Dylan during the controversial 1965 Newport "going electric" set. During those earlier Muscle Shoals Sessions, Wexler, co-producing Goldberg's eponymous 1974 LP there with Dylan, had called Rose into the control room at 3616 Jackson Highway and said, "Hey, Charlie, this is Bob Dylan. He wants to hum you a lick." Rose listened to Dylan's idea and replied, "Yeah we can do that" and went back out to the main room to relay it to the rest of the horn section. One of Dylan's young sons was in the control room and had a new stopwatch and would time how long it would take Rose to get to the control room. "What is this kid, the efficiency expert?" Rose recalls thinking back then. Recently Rose has been on the road with country singer Lyle Lovett, calling in for this interview from a Cleveland hotel room.

Withers had grown up listening to "an awful lot" of Dylan records. Yet his initial response to record with him was "somewhat ambivalent. Yes, I wanted to do it but the prospect of failure was lurking in the shadows of my mind. So, in a way, I felt it was more to do with a crossing of the Rubicon and more significant than anything I achieved with Dire Straits." Withers was about 31-years-old during the Slow Train Coming" sessions. He enjoyed his time in Alabama but says it was odd not being able to order a beer at some restaurants after a day at the studio - although now in 2017 he hasn't consumed alcohol in 18 years.

There has been much speculation about the "Slow Train Coming" back cover photograph, which depicts a boat on a body of water, the mast in a cross like position and a silhouetted figure many logically assumed to be Dylan. Marshall interviewed photographer Nick Saxton, who shot that image. Saxton told Marshall the boat depicted is on or near the Amazon River and the mysterious figure isn't Dylan but Gary Wright of groovy 1975 single "Dream Weaver" fame. Saxton had previously taken photos of Wright, some of which Wright didn't want including the boat photo and somehow Dylan came across that image and wanted it for "Slow Train Coming."

"So, that's pretty funny: the guy who wrote 'Dream Weaver,' he's on the back cover of 'Slow Train Coming,'" Marshall says.

Spooner Oldham, whose brilliant, tasteful keyboards adorn many a Muscle Shoals hit, including "Mustang Sally" and "When A Man Loves A Woman," joined Dylan's band for the tour promoting "Slow Train Coming." Oldham rehearsed with Dylan and his band at a Santa Monica warehouse for two or three weeks. "I assumed he'd probably be off-the-cuff, not much rehearsal but I was totally wrong," Oldham says. "We were well-rehearsed for the tour."

Before the tour kicked off, Dylan performed for the first time on NBC's "Saturday Night Live." He and his band debuted three songs from "Slow Train Coming" on the show: "Gotta Serve Somebody," "I Believe in You" and "When You Gonna Wake Up." Oldham recalls playing "SNL" with Dylan "felt comfortable" and enjoyed meeting "SNL" actors like Bill Murray and Jane Curtin. "Those people, I'd been watching them at home and liked them," Oldham says. There was also an afterparty. After filming "SNL" leaving the TV studio proved interesting though. Oldham recalls Dylan "basically trying to crawl under" Oldham's wife Karen's "big coat" to thwart photographers waiting outside. "He got the limo driver to drive backwards up an alley to avoid people trying to follow," Dylan says. "He didn't seem to want that kind of attention."

Marshall finds it "kind of crazy" Dylan debuted "these intense Christian songs on a comedy TV show."

"The Bob Dylan Gospel Tour" opened November 1979 with an extended run at San Francisco's Warfield Theatre, which concert promoter Bill Graham had recently refurbished to a glorious state. Arriving at the show in a van, Oldham noticed a horde of placard-carrying 20-somethings outside the venue, "which reminded me of the '60s." He tried to read the youths' placards to see what the fess was. "Best I could tell it was protesting Bob's conversion from Judaism to Christianity," Oldham says. "It blew my mind."

Oldham's Hammond B-3 organ and Wurlitzer electric piano were set-up on stage-right for the Dylan tour. At the first couple Warfield shows, which were sold-out Oldham says, the band would play a song and half the audience would applaud and the other half would boo. "That was intimidating in the sense that we were doing gospel music and getting booed and we were playing well and singing well," Oldham says. "It didn't make sense really. But I knew sort of what was happening. Or they want him to do 'Like a Rolling Stone,' 'Mr. Tambourine Man,' whatever they came wanting to hear. And he won't change a note or lick or sentence for anybody. He does it his way and that's admirable to me."

Even though the sets ignored Dylan's classic hits, besides the tour's early San Francisco shows, Oldham only remembers a sizeable negative fan reaction one other time, in Arizona. A Center Star native, Oldham had grown up hearing piano and organ in church, so playing on Dylan's gospel flavored material "felt natural."

Riding on the bus between shows, Dylan typically sat by himself with his boots kicked up on the seat in front of him, not bothering to talk with anyone else in the band or vice-versa. "I felt like I was on my own really," Oldham says of the Dylan bus vibe. "And I'm sure everybody else did." There were some memorable adventures with Dylan though. In Boston, Dylan called Oldham's hotel room and asked him if he'd walk with him to a record store signing appearance, and the keyboardist gladly accepted the invitation. It was winter so Dylan was wearing a navy peacoat and Oldham a long leather coat. "I was cold before we got there," Oldham says. "I said, 'Bob this is really cold.' And he said, 'Oh this feels great to me. Makes me feel like I'm alive.' Of course, he grew up in Minnesota and was used to it."

Another time, in New York, Dylan invited Oldham and the band out to dinner and then to a club to see a band he'd previously been impressed with. They arrived at the club to find it almost empty. The band, a bluesy group that would score some MTV hits just a few years later, was drunk onstage and sounded terrible. Afterwards, Dylan told Oldham, "I'm never going to recommend anything to anybody ever again." Oldham adds, "He wanted it to be special - and it was special just getting out with him - but what he took us out for wasn't special."

About nine months after the "Slow Train Coming" sessions wrapped, Dylan and his road band returned to Muscle Shoals Sound in their tour bus to record his next LP, "Saved." Beckett and Wexler were back as co-producers. "They were a great pair," Hamm says. "Barry had such a great knack for arranging the musical side of things, and Jerry had an ear for how to make everybody work together."

It was the first-time Oldham had ever recorded coming straight off the road. "We were playing the songs in theatres across the country at that time," he says, "so we just rolled in there and they had the mics set up and the equipment and we just started playing like it was another show." Like "Slow Train Coming," the "Saved" material was recorded mostly live with very few takes. Oldham doesn't recall Dylan ever telling him or the other musicians what, when or how to play. "I think he being a songwriter, guitar player and a singer, he pretty much had his hands full learning his own songs. I'm sure his thinking was to get some guys and girls together that do well doing their own thing also, and let's put it together and make a picture, you know?"

Dylan's guitar playing impressed Oldham during their two-years or so playing together on the road and in the studio for "Saved." "He was more fluid and fluent than I realized. He's a good player."

It was made clear at the beginning of the Dylan tour there would be no complimentary tickets or backstage passes, which was a rarity in the business, Oldham says. When one of the musicians had a visitor they wanted to bring to the show, the expense of each ticket, around $15 or so, Oldham thinks, was taken out of their weekly pay. A stop at the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center was the closest the tour came to Oldham's family and friends. "I think I had 35 guests that I was going to pay for and have it taken out of my salary," Oldham says. "So that night after the gig, maybe the second time ever, Bob called my room after the show and dinner and everything, around midnight and said, 'Spooner you know those tickets? I took care of them.' He paid for them." These days, Oldham lives in Rogersville where his backyard meets the Elk River. Lately he's been performing with singer/songwriter Pegi Young.

"Slow Train Coming" did better commercially than "Saved," going platinum, cracking the top five, while the single "Gotta Serve Somebody" pierced the top 30. Reviews were mixed for both albums, although "Slow Train Coming" fared a little better critically too, including resounding praise from Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner. But "Saved" boasts a compelling road-honed tightness, as on cuts like the driving "Solid Rock" and convincing gospel soul of "Pressing On" and organ-juiced "Are You Ready."

Hamm retired from the studio work in the mid-80s. He's been working in the heating/air-conditioning business since then and still resides in Florence. Recently he picked up a CD copy of "Slow Train Coming" and "was very glad to hear it again," marvelling at the album's warm, clear sound. "It's probably one of the more sonically pleasing records Bob's done," Hamm says. "And not necessarily because of me, but because of the musicians, the way things worked out and the time we had to make it sound good."

Part of the Muscle Shoals area's appeal for recording was it's a laidback place free of big-city distractions, hangers-on, etc. While the vast majority of Muscle Shoals Sound stars recorded there on the down-low, Hamm recalls during the Dylan sessions wide-eyed fans loitering in the parking lot, hoping to see the guy who wrote "Blowin' in the Wind" walk out and smoke a cigarette or something. "I don't know how they knew he was there," Hamm says. "But he's such a poetic genius, I'm sure there were a lot of people who were going to follow him anywhere back then."

In early 2017, a wide-ranging Bob Dylan interview with journalist Bill Flanagan was published on Dylan's website to promote the singer's latest standards set "Triplicate." Asked by Flanagan which of his songs he thought did not get the attention they deserved, Dylan cited "Knocked Out Loaded" cut "Brownsville Girl," co-written with late playwright Sam Shephard, and "Saved" track "In the Garden," which builds to a sanctified swell. As Marshall points out, during this Christian album phase, which bled into the musically more secular sounding 1981 LP "Shot of Love," recorded in Los Angeles, "Dylan wrote songs that he believed and went out there and sang them with a lot of passion and energy."

There are well over 200 published books on Bob Dylan. Marshall had long been a big Dylan fan (his top albums include 1965's "Bringing It All Back Home"), but never particularly cared about the so-called gospel albums until, he says, "I had my own experience. Then things changed. I was then naturally curious about his journey and began to read. Voraciously. At some point, I conducted original interviews. It was an organic thing, really. At certain points, it felt like I didn't have a choice in the matter, but not in a bad way."

At least 12 sources Marshall interviewed for "Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life," including Wexler, Beckett, Drummond and former Dylan publicist Paul Wasserman, are now deceased. He also interviewed numerous other musicians, singers, recording staff and even a Muscle Shoals Sound gofer who shared a memorable van ride with Dylan. Usually Dylan doesn't say much between songs onstage, but leading up to the recording of "Saved" in Muscle Shoals the singer "was a bit chatty" at a 1980 Omaha, Neb. show, Marshall says. "And between songs (Dylan) said, 'You know, in the '60s people used to say I was a prophet and I'd say, 'No I'm not.' And they'd say, 'Yes you are.' Now I come out and say 'Jesus is the answer' and they say, 'Oh Bob Dylan, he's no prophet.'"