Dylan would reflect these beliefs on stage. At one show in the fall of 1979, Dylan said, "You know we're living in the end times ... The scriptures say, 'In the last days, perilous times shall be at hand. Men shall become lovers of their own selves. Blasphemous, heavy and highminded.' ... Take a look at the Middle East. We're heading for a war ... I told you 'The Times They Are A-Changin' ' and they did. I said the answer was 'Blowin' in the Wind' and it was. I'm telling you now Jesus is coming back, and He is! And there is no other way of salvation ... Jesus is coming back to set up His kingdom in Jerusalem for a thousand years." As Heylin writes, "[Dylan's] belief in the imminence of the End was reflected in almost all of the songs he now found himself writing." Dylan would later say in an interview taken in 1984, "The songs that I wrote for the Slow Train album [frightened me] ... I didn't plan to write them ... I didn't like writing them. I didn't want to write them." "Precious Angel", "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking", "When You Gonna Wake Up?" and "When He Returns" all "drew heavily and directly upon the Book of Revelation," notes Heylin. "In the early months of 1979, Dylan was writing his most message-driven album in sixteen years. This time, though, the pursuit of the millennium had overtaken more sociopolitical concerns." Recording sessions Dylan first heard Mark Knopfler when assistant and engineer Arthur Rosato played him the Dire Straits single "Sultans of Swing". Later, on March 29, 1979, Dylan caught the final show of a Dire Straits' residency at the Roxy in Los Angeles, California. Dylan approached Knopfler after the show, asking the guitarist to participate on his next album. Knopfler agreed, unaware of the religious nature of the material that awaited him. Dylan also approached Jerry Wexler to produce the upcoming sessions. "What he wanted", Wexler told interviewer Ted Fox, "was more of a tailored, big funk sound, which he didn't have on his records. He wanted a little more precision, a little more musical input. It was something he felt was time." According to Wexler, it was his, not Dylan's, initiative to bring in Knopfler: that was "the innovative part of it...Instead of going with the regular Muscle Shoals section, I changed