Lines that branded Dylan a poet and counterculture valedictorian
in the '60s are imprinted on the culture: "When you got nothing, you got nothing
to lose"; "a hard rain's a-gonna fall."; "to live outside the law you must be
honest." Some lyrics "you don't need a weather man to know which way
the wind blows" and "the times they are a-changin' " appear in Bartlett's
Familiar Quotations.
He has survived radically shifting trends, despite a career-long
habit of being out of step with the times. At 20, he sang with the confidence
and conviction of a septuagenarian bluesman. He was so much older then. At 60,
he's still hitting the road with the restlessness of a teen. In pop culture
years, he's ageless.
Dylan's continuing impact is most keenly felt in music's
creative community. He's regarded as pop's unrivaled liberator for breaking
the three-minute song barrier, ignoring moon-June-spoon lyric formulas and charting
a chameleon course from folkie to rocker to country crooner to holy roller
that paved the way for David Bowie, Elvis Costello and Madonna.
He has demonstrated that the nasal intonations of an unconventional
voice, often dismissed as a croak or worse, could outshine (or certainly outlast)
the most pristine pop songbirds.
Across three generations of musicians, he is exalted, not
just as his generation's spokesman, a folk rebel or a pop experimenter, but
as a teacher. It's another side of Bob Dylan the knotty professor, whose
dog-eared back pages contain the blueprints for numberless musical progeny.
"Everybody owes a debt" to Dylan, says Bruce Springsteen.
"He really did change the face of popular music, particularly in how a singer
could sound and what topics you could take on. Everything from hip-hop lyrics
to Marvin Gaye to Anarchy in the U.K. can be traced in some fashion back
to his breakthroughs."
Tom Petty, Dylan's frequent collaborator and a bandmate
in retro-rock's all-star Traveling Wilburys, says, "He's very spontaneous and
gives musicians a lot of room. Whatever he does, there's always a good, durable
song involved that can take many arrangements and interpretations."
Sundry '60s peers enjoyed parallel ascents but still took
cues from the maverick wordsmith.
"I got good grades on all my papers, but it took Dylan
to get me to write," says Stephen Stills. "All of a sudden, I was thinking in
complete sentences and using my whole vocabulary. Hey, na�ve rhymes with grieve!
He woke me up."
Billy Joel says he was motivated to join Columbia Records
because the label had signed an outlaw folkie with a creaky voice. "Before Bob,
they had Broadway showtunes, Mantovani-type records and Sing Along With Mitch.
They had the foresight to sign this guy who didn't sound like anybody and seemed
to be from another era."
Inspired by Dylan's graceful melodies, Joel eventually
abandoned hopes of penning Dylanesque prose and detoured into classical music.
"Bob's a consummate wordsmith," Joel says. "Nobody wrote like him. I really
stunk at it, because I'm too bloody literal. That's why I don't like words anymore."
Though Dylan mined Americana, his sway extended beyond
U.S. borders. Paul McCartney, who soaked up Dylan's 1962 debut at his parents'
home in Liverpool, says The Beatles took cues from his subsequent electric forays.
"He helped us free up artistically," he says. "He had an influence on everyone.
Dylan and Chuck Berry belong on the list of America's great poets."
British glam-rock pioneer David Bowie, who toasted the
bard on 1972's Song for Bob Dylan, notes, "Dylan taught my generation
that it was OK to write pop songs about your worst nightmares."
U2 singer Bono taught himself guitar while listening to
Dylan.
"His voice has been a bee buzzing around my ear since I
can remember being conscious," he says. "It's an unusual voice, not always soothing,
sometimes nagging, but it reminds us of the possibilities for music and its
place in the world."
Shaped by punk rock, the quartet had disregarded its Irish
roots until Dylan sent them excavating. During their first encounter, Dylan
probed Bono about Ireland's folk balladeers, then recited Brendan Behan's Banks
of the Royal Canal.
"U2 kind of came from outer space, where punk was ground
zero and you didn't admit to having roots. Bob scolded me, 'You're sitting on
all this stuff. You should check it out.' As we fall over ourselves toward the
fast and furious future, Dylan feels like the brakes, reminding us of stuff
we might have lost, like our dignity."
Just liked by women
Dylan crossed the gender line, joining Joan Baez and Joni
Mitchell as major forces shaping female singer-songwriters. Stevie Nicks says
flatly, "He's a total mentor." "What I love about Bob is the fact that no one's
ever been able to really figure him out," says Bonnie Raitt. "With every reinvention,
you never know if it's a genuine shift or just him slyly ducking out of view.
No one has had a more profound cultural and political impact on our generation."
Until she played his tunes, Sheryl Crow envisioned a future
as a side musician, not a songwriter. "Playing Dylan's songs empowers you,"
she says. "It bolsters you to say what your spirit needs to say. Even though
Dylan has been completely deified, he's taken all the spiritual journeys we
plebeians go through. In his search you can see the patterns of humanity."
At 15, Aimee Mann, roused by Blood on the Tracks,
took a stab at emulating his writing.
"My attempts were horrifying," she says. "The characters
were lost and bedraggled street people I knew nothing about. But he was the
only great lyricist around, and I wanted to be him."
"Here's a guy who did bluegrass, folk, country, rhythm
and blues," says Shawn Colvin. "No territory was sacred. There's a valuable
lesson in that. Bob Dylan took an idiom and made it personal."
Dylan gospel spread to unlikely corners, imprinting rap
and punk as well as country, blues and folk. Billy Gibbons of Texas boogie-band
ZZ Top says Dylan's passion for American roots music "opened our own musical
curiosities. Although ZZ Top may well be thought of as something more akin to
Howlin' Wolf, Dylan's remarkably insightful word combinations and rhyme stimulated
fresh ways of expressing inner feelings in a sort of secret blues language."
Chuck D of the pioneering rap group Public Enemy cites
an early hip-hop street phrase ("I'm chillin' like Bob Dylan") as evidence of
Dylan's clout in urban music. "He is stenciled on a lot of aspects of my career
his ability to paint pictures with words, his concerns for society,"
he says. "He taught me to go against the grain."
Positively forthright
Ditto for Jim Lindberg of Pennywise, a hot punk outfit
that owes some of its fire to Dylan's spark.
"I liked his stripped-down approach from the start," he
says. "It doesn't rely on stage theatrics or a disposable message. Dylan's music
is meant to appeal to your heart and brain, not your crotch."
Pop neophytes willing to learn will find priceless instruction
in Dylan's songs, Lindberg says.
"People lack the courage to express themselves honestly
now," he says. "Standing by your convictions is one thing we've lost since Dylan's
generation."
Billy Joe Armstrong of pop-punk trio Green Day picked up
pointers from Dylan's stylish vitriol. "His lyrics could tear someone apart
in four minutes. I wouldn't want to be at the other end of a song like that."
Ryan Adams of alternative country act Whiskeytown fell
under Dylan's spell after finding lyrics his mother had jotted during college.
Countering detractors who say Dylan is no master of warblers, he says, "There
is a seductive quality to Dylan's voice, and it changes as scenarios call for
different registers, almost the way theater works. Nobody has that voice. Even
on our homogenized McDonald's planet, where cheerleaders are icons, anyone can
do a Dylan impersonation."
Young stars, whether weaned on grunge or rap or hair bands,
eventually gravitate to the godfather of troubadours. Black Crowes singer Chris
Robinson says, "From very early on, the music Bob made sounded important to
me." Rising singer/songwriter Pete Yorn says he and his teen peers shared a
knee-jerk respect for Dylan that deepened with exposure to his records and shows.
Yorn's CliffNotes on Dylan: "His pacing is subtle.
There's no fat in his songs. Whether it's his own experience or a story he's
telling, he puts it across in a way that moves people."
When Canadian singer/songwriter Ron Sexsmith first heard
Blowin' in the Wind, he envisioned a folkie Jethro Clampett. He quickly
changed his tune. "Dylan improvises like a jazz artist," he says. "He wasn't
after perfection. He'd record a song and it would never be the same again. I've
tried to carry on that tradition."
Dylan's '60s contemporaries are quick to credit him with
revolutionizing all forms of music. He beguiled a young Judy Collins with his
Woody Guthrie persona at Gerde's Folk City in 1962. She's covered dozens of
his tunes and stole a compositional technique: "He has a trick of taking an
ancient song and setting a new melody to it. He makes you feel as though you
already know the song. And he'll use a very simple melody to carry the weight
of complicated lyrics."
Paul Simon, also hatched in the folk scene, praises Dylan's
gifts but chose to steer clear of his trail.
"My reaction was, 'Don't do what he does. He's got it covered.'
You've got to go your own way or you're just in a shadow."
That shadow is too immense to sidestep, says John Mellencamp,
a zealous disciple who was in grade school when his older brother played him
a Dylan record.
"Bob put down a huge footprint," he says. "He has brought
more beauty into this world than the rest of us combined. He showed us how beautiful
sorrow could be and how ridiculous the world looked to him."
The self-described crank generously insists Dylan has yet
to make a bad record. "He's never let me down. I love Woody Guthrie and Hank
Williams, but I got news for those guys: This young kid beat you."
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