Gospel-only shows at the Warfield

The run came a few months after Slow Train Coming, the album that announced his conversion to evangelical Christianity. Fans who bought tickets expecting the familiar songs heard none of them. Instead he fronted a band with a group of gospel backing singers and performed the new religious material, along with songs that would turn up on his next album, Saved, and on some nights he spoke to the crowd about his faith between numbers. Some in the audience booed or walked out, and several reviews were openly hostile. He did not bend. The gospel-only format carried on through the touring that followed into 1980, and for a while it was the only version of Dylan on offer. Whatever people made of the message, the shows held some of the most fervent singing of his career.