God-like Genius #2: Bob Dylan

Several years ago, over a dinner where I had my Apple Airport spinning random songs from my collection, my Dad asked me who I considered to be my overall ‘favorite’ artist.  After mulling it over for a couple of minutes, I confessed that I didn’t know.  I’ve got a lot of (what I’d consider) varied music, and I listen to different stuff at different times.  It’s kind of difficult to rank Zappa against Mogwai, or Steve Earle against Radiohead, or Nick Cave against Godspeed You! Black Emperor.  Plus, whenever I discover someone new I’ll obsess over them for ages and switch into full-on completist mode (as I’m currently doing with the The Fall) so that’s my favorite, now.  But an absolute favorite? I couldn’t say.

I’ve had the question in the back of my mind ever since, and I finally have an answer.  It’s Dylan.  It’s always been Dylan. My Last.FM profile says as much, listing 14,736 plays since I signed up, versus 5,117 for the next closest, Frank Zappa.  True, Frank Zappa has probably influenced my life to a much greater degree (in terms of attitude, motivation, etc.), but the soundtrack has always been Bob.  Maybe I was just in denial because Dylan’s not exactly oozing street-cred (although that seems to have changed over the last album or two), but it’s time to stand up and admit it.  Dylan is my guide.  The man is a stone genius!

A year or so back, Mojo magazine published a list of their top 100 Dylan songs.  They then invited their readership to do the same and published the reader’s top 100 the next issue.  And there really wasn’t that much overlap.  There’s a lot of artists that that you couldn’t pull 100 decent tracks together, period, let alone 150 top ones – and these were all top songs – every one of them a classic that the average songwriter would have given their right arm to have penned.  The Bob Dylan Database currently lists 470 songs written by Dylan songs, which is a phenomenal body of work.

Sure, Dylan has produced some absolute crap, but in his defense he himself has acknowledged it as crap, saying in his excellent Chronicles autobiography that he released it purely to drive away his fans and free himself from the burden of their expectations.  There’s an old Buddhist Proverb (Although Farhad tells me it’s actually a Persian saying) that says “A fool who recognizes his foolishness is a wise man.  A fool who considers himself a wise man is a fool indeed”.  Extrapolating, a genius who recognizes what he does as crap is a genius.  Indeed.

A lot of people take issue with his voice – a kind of nasally whine for the most part. Dylan is most commonly seen as a folk singer, but his range goes well beyond folk and he can really kick out the jams when he wants to.  Listen to the bile-fueled anger of the Hard Rain version of Idiot Wind, the pure rock of Groom Still Waiting from Shot Of Love and When The Night Comes Falling from Empire Burlesque, and the lust-driven groove of New Pony from Street Legal.  Even his staple Like A Rolling Stone has more edge to it than any amount of rock and/or roll. Who could fail to be moved by the sheer beauty of I’ll Remember You (from Empire Burlesque)?  Who can deny the pure emotions of Forever Young (from Planet Waves)? 

A testament to the legacy of Dylan can be found in the number of people who have covered his songs – sometimes so convincingly that people forget that Dylan wrote them.  Witness:

  • Guns N Roses – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
  • AdeleMake You Feel My Love
  • Jimi HendrixAll Along The Watchtower
  • Johnny CashWanted Man
  • The ByrdsMr. Tambourine Man (My least-favorite Dylan song.  Don’t care much for the Byrds’ version, either).
  • Bryan FerryA Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
  • Manfred MannQuinn The Eskimo (I’m not a great fan of this one, but no-one ever remembers that Dylan wrote it.)
  • Julie DriscollThis Wheel’s On Fire (Best known (at least in Britain) as the theme tune to Absolutely Fabulous)

Of course, Dylan remains the best interpreter of his own songs – and interpret he does, rarely performing a song the same way twice.  It doesn’t always work, but you can’t fault the man for trying. That’s why he’s always worth seeing live. I’ve seen him live twice, and when he comes back through Houston next time, I’ll be there again. Again, there’s not many artists that I’ll do that for.

As of today, I have exactly 3,000 Dylan songs in my collection, and I’m missing a few albums (the uplift on the Bob Dylan Database figure is due to live versions, and alternate takes on the Biograph and Bootleg Series sets).  If I listened to them all, end-to-end, it would take me 9 days straight.  Sometimes I’ll stick it all on random and listen to nothing but Dylan all day at work, for a full eight or ten hours.  And I never get tired of it.  If I could choose only one artist to listen to for the rest of my life, it would be Dylan.

My absolutely favorite album of Dylan’s is Slow Train Coming.  This is probably his most Christian album, and I am way, way off being a Christian, but the absolute conviction he brings to some perfect tunes just blows me away.  I could listen to that album over and over again: Gotta Serve Somebody, the title track, and even the wry Man Gave Name To All The Animals – you can’t touch this!

So call me old. Call me out of touch. Call me what you want; I can’t forsake him any more. Dylan is, and will always be, the king. Not The Beatles, not Elvis, not even Radiohead. Dylan is the man.

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