I met the music of Robert Zimmerman (aka Bob Dylan) through the music of folk singers, “Peter, Paul, and Mary.” Their version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” with its haunting first line, “How many roads must a man walk down/Before you call him a man?”, and the song itself resonated through America long before people became acquainted with its creator. Bob Dylan’s songs have been covered by hundreds of musicians, many of whose versions were more popular than his. His voice is as unique as his lyrics. “Bob Dylan isn’t a good singer. He’s a great singer. His voice isn’t pretty. It’s harsh and grating. His lyrics are often the same way—his vocals match what he writes. His voice can be insulting.” (The Odyssey Online).
More than 1500 artists (an incomplete list) have covered Dylan’s songs, everyone from Ray Conniff to the Grateful Dead. Even The Ventures, an instrumental rock band, spent 2:20 on “Quinn the Eskimo.” The breadth of his immense catalog, his songs, his voice, and his extraordinary lyrics led him to his well-deserved 2016 Nobel Prize in literature.
“Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.”
“Something’s happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones.”?
“Crimson flames tied through my ears/ Rollin’ high and mighty traps”
“Ah but I was so much older then / I’m younger than that now.”
“They’re selling postcards of the hanging”
“There must be some way out of here” said the joker to the thief.
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”
It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe/ It don’t matter, anyhow”
You’re the reason I’m trav’lin on/ Don’t think twice, it’s all right”
“Go away from my window / Leave at your own chosen speed”
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows:”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61”May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young
“Don’t trust anyone over thirty” has been questionably attributed to Bob Dylan, but today, May 24, 2021 Dylan will have passed that milestone fifty years ago. This is more just another of those “Sunrise, Sunset” posts, where the writer wanly looks back on the passage of time. It’s a full-throated appreciation of the genius of the man who gave so much of himself through his music to these tired old boomers, we who grew up with the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, the Dylan who like Steve Jobs knew what people wanted before they knew they wanted it. He was panned when he wrote “Like a Rolling Stone”, disappointing acoustic loving folkies with one of his best songs ever. They didn’t know they needed this, but they did.
“You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?”