Down in The Groove - Recording and Reception

Recording and Reception

"Even by Dylan standards, this album has had a strange, difficult birth," wrote Rolling Stone critic David Fricke. "Its release was delayed for more than half a year, and the track listing was altered at least three times. If the musician credits are any indication, the songs that made the final cut come from half a dozen different recording sessions spread out over six years." Like its predecessor, Knocked Out Loaded, Dylan once again used more collaborators than normal.

In a review published in his Consumer Guide column, Robert Christgau wrote, "Where Self Portrait was at least weird, splitting the difference between horrible and hilarious, forever professional—not a single remake honors or desecrates the original. All he can do to a song is Dylanize it, and thus his Danny Kortchmar band and his Steve Jones-Paul Simonon band are indistinguishable, immersed in that patented and by now meaningless one-take sound." Christgau would later call Down in the Groove a "horrendous product."

In his review for Rolling Stone magazine, Fricke noted that "a highly anticipated—if somewhat unlikely—collaboration with Full Force, the top Brooklyn hip-hop posse, turned out to be an old Infidels outtake, 'Death Is Not the End,' newly garnished with some tasty but rather superfluous Full Force vocal harmonies." "Death Is Not The End" was covered by Nick Cave in 1996.

In 2007, Rolling Stone labeled Down in the Groove as Bob Dylan's worst album.

The Grateful Dead collaboration titled "Silvio," did experience some success as a single, and Dylan would regularly feature it in his shows. "Silvio" would also be included on 1994's Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume 3 and The Essential Bob Dylan.