Your honour, I refer you to the “Supertramp, nicer voice” comment. Yes, I know your honour. Yes, your honour, balderdash is indeed the correct retort. Yes, your honour, these two clearly deranged people should not be allowed near music-listening equipment (I believe the modern term is hi-fi) ever again. Yes, your honour, you have a good day too.
I’ll take Supertramp any day over Dylan, who I used to like, but entering my 40s, I don’t even listen to lyrics, but I do listen to the musicality (phrasing, vibrato, harmonies, etc)
I think some think they’re “supposed” to like Dylan (or whoever the media pushed)
Wowser! Not seen that live version before, it surpasses the studio version by some distance. And that’s a damn good version. Glimpses of the producer on second guitar, the boy Thompson, T, himself.
I’m not so up with the more recent era but that is a classy cover of course. Most tasteful and well done. Not my thing really. I would enjoy it live. The original has the benefit of coming from the horse’s mouth in being so personal and felt and unrefined.
It’s been proven by scientific research that it is those of little intelligence, you know fans of Black Sabbath, Duran Duran, Spice Girls etc, it is those who don’t understand the complexities, nuance of His Bobness’s lyrics and voice.
I think his lyrics are great, with a lot of imaginative imagery, and he knows his way around a tune to support them. But sadly his voice does nothing for me.
As good as he obviously is, his songs invariably sound better when sung by somebody else – in particular, Dylan super-fan Bryan Ferry.
Ferry’s singing is very stylised, affected and self-conscious. Not a bad thing per se, but not necessarily an improvement either. I love Roxy, but his Dylan covers are pretty much pub singer karaoke versions and I can’t be doing with them.
Yeah I think it’s funny people putting Ferry forward as an improvement. He’s hardly Caruso himself.
Dylan’s voice may not be for everybody, but he is a brilliant singer in my opinion. Just listen to Like a Rolling Stone, Visions of Johanna, Lay Lady Lay, Tangled up in Blue and dozens (hundreds?) more.
I loved Rough and Rowdy Ways but think that throughout his career he’s often gone for the first easy rhyme that came into his often doped head, which hardcore fans optimistically imagine is some profound juxtaposition, brimming with meaning. That said a lot of said fans sound quite convinced and convincing on the excellent Is It Rolling Pod cast, co-fronted by Kerry Shale, famous in this parish for his long-standing Word podcast announcements.
See also: “The Beatles? Pshaw…”, “Aren’t the Rolling Stones a bit old for this?”, “Second rate Anthony Newley, I’d say”. “ Grateful? For what?” “Which ones Syd?,” “Can’t even grow a beard!”
I’m pretty much “none of the above” but Dylan and odd bits of the Stones are the only sixties dadrock shibboleths that do anything for me. The real love I have for anything in that era is reserved for Wall of Sound girl groups, Motown and Stax. But mainly the girl groups.
Dylan’s obviously a massive chancer and has been all too happy to don the Emperor’s outfits at various points, but he’s rarely uninteresting, almost never twee, and can actually write. (That doesn’t mean he always *does*, but he *can*.)
(I really did try with the other 60s religion. I had a couple of moments where I tried to have the conversion, but wanting it wasn’t enough. They have their occasional moments, but they’re a bloodless, powerless, twee period piece to my ears. I really think you either had to be there, or to have wanted to have been there enough, for them to sound anything other than limp. But it’s a faith thing, so no nonbeliever can truly grasp them, and no believer can truly grasp that the rest of us aren’t just posturing.)
Anyway, Dylan: at his best he’s the proper job, but that doesn’t mean I actually listen to him very often.
Dylan, like all the others, is ultimately just a pop star. He’s thrilled us and added to many of our lives, but he doesn’t have any more intrinsic value than most other musical acts.
What he does have is a pretty wild back catalogue, some of which is crazily well written, and an oddly (almost eerily) singular mythos which I struggle to find in any other pop star, and a good deal of which arises from that voice. He’s obviously of the 1960s, but he’s also not; who are his contemporaries, his soundalikes? Plenty of people drew influence from him, but no one else (that I’m aware of) went all the way and adopted his soundbed, presumably because the voice is such rough terrain.
And yet, the voice is perfect for his music. I am clearly in the minority on this thread in that I prefer Dylan’s originals to the numerous covers, and I think he would be materially worse if he had sung in any other voice(s). Listen to I Want You – who is singing that particular song any better than that? It’s all right there in the vocal. I hated that song as a kid until one day the penny dropped; it’s actually *meant* to sound like that, and it’s better because it does.
I think you’re spot on that Dylan dodges the tweeness that infects so many 60s acts (including several of the ones I love), and which has aged so poorly. That voice is anything but twee, and it pairs perfectly with the lyrics, which, protest phase apart, tend to eschew the major thematic concerns of the era for a more biblical flavour. Some of them are stolen, some of them are nonsense, but they work. For me, anyway. And they work partly because a lot of them are very good, and partly because even when they’re not that voice somehow operates to grant them a patina of credibility. Others here know their 60s Rock history far better than I do, but it always feels to me like Dylan was the first to really sneer. And there has been so much sneering since.
I think Dylan is ultimately the perfect vessel for the culture of rock intellectualization which is one of the major cultural contributions of the 60s/70s. His ridiculous yet brilliant inauthenticity and absolute refusal to allow any of us behind the curtain makes him the ultimate blank canvas onto which to project fan theories, quasi-academic nonsense and our heartfelt desire that the stuff we consume as a hobby might in fact be evidence of intelligence and taste, both our own and those of its producers.
It’s that latter quality which has steadily sent a section of his fanbase, and even his main biographer, utterly insane. Five decades now attempting to make sense of it all, parsing Chronicle for clues to the great mystery, cataloguing bootlegs and pretending that lyrics which were hammered out at 3am in a stupor by a kid far too young to really know anything about life contain all the secrets of universe. Dylan offered us the empty outlines of genius and the critics and fans rose to the challenge to fill in all the blanks.
The voice is all part of that fun, and the fact he’s regularly changed it (from the needling, nasal whine of the 60s to the country croon, and on to the bluesier notes of his late period) is just another example of what makes him so unusual; whereas most musicians have at some point or other opened the door and invited us in, with Dylan it’s one subterfuge after another to keep us away. Half a century of evasion, a near death experience to push us back when we got too close. God knows if any of that is even what he sounds like when he sings in the shower, and even when he actually tries to tell the truth (Sara), it emerges as a series of blatant lies.
I used to worry that Dylan would one day crack and invite the cameras into what I’m sure is ultimately a fairly humdrum life. But I think enough time has now passed to be certain that will never happen. He’s going to remain an enigma forever, and in an era of total access and ever reducing privacy that is one hell of a legacy.
Why is he so revered? The same reason as all the other major acts; because we need something to revere, because he offered himself up, and because he wrote the kind of lyrics you can drop into discussions like these as if they were a full stop on the conversation; indisputable evidence of a genius only a fool could deny.
This is my favourite Dylan song. We had it read at our wedding because the first verse describes my wife better than I ever could (still true to this day), but also because I wanted to reinforce to the world that I’m a certain kind of complex and misunderstood individual who really gets those deeper truths of life. That’s the magic of Dylan – he wrote poetry that can genuinely speak to your life half a century later, and he confected a personal brand that suggested that allowing those lyrics to speak to your life makes you a little smarter than the average bear. And then he sang those beautiful lyrics like a honking seal. What’s not to like?
Very good. He was as good as it gets within the confines of pop, defining what rock could be, all the possibilities. Plus the goofy, eccentric bits to undermine all the seriousness.
I should have added, for posterity and because my relentless appreciation of contemporary music sometimes seems to be received as a general opposition to the 60s (as if the two have to be in binary opposition), my favourite acts from that era are Sam Cooke, Dylan, The Velvet Underground, The Small Faces, Aretha, Marvin Gaye, The Doors, The Temptations, Isaac Hayes, The Lovin Spoonful, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, The Band, James Brown, The Flying Burritos Bros, The Delfonics, The Velvelettes, Led Zep, Scott Walker, Etta James, The Monks, Nina Simone, Van Dyke Parks and The Four Tops.
Some properly amazing music. Admittedly none of it as good as the new Olivia Rodrigo album though 😉 Oh, or this – which is 5 years old but is my current musical crush.
Outrageously good looking, catchy songs, great clothes, teenager during Rock ‘n’ Roll, saw Buddy Holly play live, around for pivotal moments in the history of Civil Rights.
Mind, the only post-60s Dylan I have is the Pat Garrett soundtrack, so I make you right for the last half-a-century. I leave the dull stuff to Paul Morley, that’s what he’s there for. It’s called delegating.
Ratty kept the view
While all the washerwomen came and went
Mole and Badger too
Well, uh, outside in the cold distance
Weasels, stoats, and ferrets did growl
Toad of Toad Hall was approaching
And the wind in the willows began to howl,
His best tunes are surprisingly catchy and he knows when and where to put a hook in them.
I’m not a big fan, but a high profile is justified, in his case. Just personal taste but I rate Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman higher as songwriters.
I can put up with his voice(s) but I simply cannot abide his harmonica playing. Just about any folk club Dylan copyist can play harmonica better on his songs than he does, I reckon.
I think that in his prime his singing was exemplary. I mean that his phrasing brought out the feeling and meaning and the text was always clearly enunciated, often a fault with other singers where the lyrics are somewhat hard to make out. And always in tune despite the lack of prettiness in the voice. Take You’re A Big Girl Now off Hard Rain. What a performance. Raw but clear.
Took me 20 years to find a Dylan album I liked. I’d almost given up (see also Led Zepp)
Eventually Time out of Mind did the trick. Also just bought Love and Theft and whilst not quite as good, enjoyed it all the same
His 60’s and 70’s output eludes me still but I might get there eventually. His voice can grate but when it locks into one of those longer songs where they keep the groove going, then I find it almost transcendental
While you find his voice annoying, and most of his fans seems to agree, I belong to the tiny minority (well; I never hear anyone voice this opinion) who think that all of his voices in all of the stages of his career are no less than brilliant. On record and live. No complaints from me, in fact I hate hearing other – supposedly better – singers murder his songs. His voice and his songs belong together and his voice makes his already great songs better. I also love his harmonica playing.
I’m just a lucky bastard I guess! 🙂
This. His voice is perfect for what he does. No-one else can sing a line like “You’re an idiot babe, it’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe” and sound quite so venomous and dismissive, yet nonchalant.
I love his attitude. He really doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He is clearly a very intelligent, complex individual. Whatever you think of “plagiarism” , he certainly does his homework.
There was a time In the sixties when brilliant words and music poured out of him effortlessly. Inspiration has been up and down since then but he has kept plugging away and his records are never less than interesting, even the bad ones, especially when you consider how slapdash his studio process seems to be.
I also agree with Locust. His voice suits his songs perfectly.
I also agree with Locust and you. Exceptional acts come and go but they have a golden period when they become what they were meant to be and make their mark. The 60s above all. Others tried to catch up and up their game, the game he was ahead of, becoming more lyrically ambitious, more ambitious generally, so it was a competition to be better.
I can’t think of anyone else who has produced so many essential records in each decade over 60 years. The song writing is peerless (look at how much he has been covered) and I’m in the camp that loves his voice, and the way he uses it and phrases to convey meaning beyond just the words as written – he’s an actor as much as he is a singer.
But I think you’re just being provocative and getting a rise out of us all, Wheaty, you cheeky scamp.
Singularly great singer from 1962-77.
A stylist after that with some significant deterioration.
Remarkable compensation from 1997-2006 on albums.
As a live singer from 1990s is physical limitations interfere quite regularly for me.
Pitch very accurate but too often adopted a mannered approach in the 1980’s.
I understand the opposition to his timbre but its no different really from many a blues singer, His singing on BOTT is sublime,
Surely for all the theorising it must be something just as simple as personal taste? Maybe I like Kit Kats and you like Oreos, as simple as that. I certainly PARTIALLY agree with you (and I’m broaching on deramdaze territory here) in that there’s only a comparatively small portion of his work I find great – everything up to ’67, Blood on the Tracks and (weirdly) Must Be Santa (for novelty) and honestly very very little else. And on some things like Self Portrait his voice is just a total turn off.
But what I do like I LOVE to the point of obsession. Every so often I love to escape into the sound world of something like Desolation Row or Sad Eyed Lady and it’s not just about the lyrics. In fact I don’t think he’s a particularly great lyricist as such; it’s all in the performance and in the feeling he gets across.
It is strange though how some acts which touch so many can baffle and confuse others who just don’t get it. My particular aversions are James thingummy from Manic Street Preachers and David McAlmont, both of whom sound like the proverbial nails on a blackboard to me and for the life of me I can’t see what other people are seeing in them.
I remember reading the reviews of that, hoping it was be a rich vein of Dylan material I wasn’t aware of and had dismissed. Sadly, it wasn’t for me. I had a listen and just… nah. For the record, I don’t like Nashville Skyline either (although Lay Lady Lay has a certain lazy charm).
I find that remarkable ( not a criticism. Arthur, just another point about subjectivity). Like Junior, for me ASP demonstrated what a great, flexible interpretative singing voice he had. It’s not like the NS voice which is a little too froggy for me.
First gig in a while coming up in err, February 24. The band shouldn’t make my tinnitus any worse.
The band Simply Dylan. Checked them out online and they are very good, interpreting the songs of His Bobness in their own way. None of that imitation codswallopthingy.
I like him. Most especially for the run of albums he made up to 1970. When he was wiry, dressed in black and laughing in hotel rooms with Alan Price.
As to his voice, my wife was very fond of the long-running tv drama series, ‘Ally McBeal’. A feature of which was the regular scene at the end of each episode set in a karaoke bar.
One new character finds himself called up to sing.
‘No, sorry. I can’t sing’, he says. To which an old hand pipes up
‘Don’t worry about it. Look at Bob Dylan. Been singing for forty years and hasn’t hit a note yet.’
well that is just idiotic -the beef with Dylan is the nasal propensity, not singing out of tune ,though over the 60 year career there have been some incidents.
I have seen pictures of endlessly revised song lyrics , there are multiple versions of a song and he reknown for writing new lyrics to songs while recording them in the studio. I guess this is slapdash or “on the hoof”.
All good Didds. But even if they were,does it matter? The song is either good or it isn’t. Some of the best songs happen in a flash and many rubbish songs are laboured over.
Uncle Wheaty says
His influence peaked here for me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEc83sFyUMU
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Dear god, you think his influence peaked here ? I bet you like Supertramp, don’t you, don’t you?
Uncle Wheaty says
I love Supertramp and they have written more great tunes than Dylan ever did.
They were also sung in a nicer voice.
Baron Harkonnen says
I love Supertramp and have ALL the albums. I also love Bob Dylan and have ALL the albums.
For every great song that Supertramp have written/performed His Bobness has written/performed 50+………..at least.
Baron Harkonnen says
and I bet my mate @SteveT can sup more ale than you can.
Uncle Wheaty says
Nice to know we agree on one artist.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Your honour, I refer you to the “Supertramp, nicer voice” comment. Yes, I know your honour. Yes, your honour, balderdash is indeed the correct retort. Yes, your honour, these two clearly deranged people should not be allowed near music-listening equipment (I believe the modern term is hi-fi) ever again. Yes, your honour, you have a good day too.
MortSahlFan says
I’ll take Supertramp any day over Dylan, who I used to like, but entering my 40s, I don’t even listen to lyrics, but I do listen to the musicality (phrasing, vibrato, harmonies, etc)
I think some think they’re “supposed” to like Dylan (or whoever the media pushed)
davebigpicture says
I said pretty much the same thing a few months ago on another thread. I’ve tried a few times with the early albums but no joy. OOAA
Jaygee says
You don’t have rate him as an artist to acknowledge his brilliance as a songwriter.
Diddley Farquar says
Although I would say practically no cover is better than his best originals, although it may offer a worthwhile alternative.
nigelthebald says
Oh yeah, Diddles?
retropath2 says
Wowser! Not seen that live version before, it surpasses the studio version by some distance. And that’s a damn good version. Glimpses of the producer on second guitar, the boy Thompson, T, himself.
nigelthebald says
Couldn’t agree more, Doc!
fitterstoke says
That is chust sublime…thank you for posting it.
nigelthebald says
When Shelby’s vocal harmony first comes in, it sends shivers down my spine, @fitterstoke, every time I listen to it.
(Which I’m about to do again now…)
Diddley Farquar says
I’m not so up with the more recent era but that is a classy cover of course. Most tasteful and well done. Not my thing really. I would enjoy it live. The original has the benefit of coming from the horse’s mouth in being so personal and felt and unrefined.
mikethep says
I’ve listened to this at least ten times today, it’s magnificent. One for the ages.
Can someone confirm which lady is which? It’s to settle an argument…
nigelthebald says
Allison (Sissy) – one of Steve Earle’s many ex wives – plays piano, @mikethep, while older sister Shelby – who bats for the other side – is on guitar.
Vulpes Vulpes says
And its worth stating that both of these women have done magnificent solo albums of their own.
retropath2 says
Sissy ( I didn’t know the diminutive) is now partnered with Hayes Carll.
nigelthebald says
Oh indeed, Foxy!
Tiggerlion says
Bob used to say that all his songs belong to Jimi. That was up to 1970. All his later songs belong to Bettye:
Diddley Farquar says
He was high at the time though.
Junior Wells says
Good , better than most. Not better.
Gatz says
I tend to go all or nothing on Dylan, and once I get into a Dylan groove with listen to little else for a month or two. The well runs very, very deep.
Baron Harkonnen says
You are correct @Gatz.
It’s been proven by scientific research that it is those of little intelligence, you know fans of Black Sabbath, Duran Duran, Spice Girls etc, it is those who don’t understand the complexities, nuance of His Bobness’s lyrics and voice.
dai says
You like what you like. Others like him a lot
hubert rawlinson says
Which Dylan voice there are many?
Diddley Farquar says
I’m quite partial to the sand and glue like one.
hubert rawlinson says
Ah the gargling one.
niallb says
There’s even the one which occasionally hits the right note.
davebigpicture says
He’s singing all the right notes, just not in the right order……
Captain Darling says
I think his lyrics are great, with a lot of imaginative imagery, and he knows his way around a tune to support them. But sadly his voice does nothing for me.
As good as he obviously is, his songs invariably sound better when sung by somebody else – in particular, Dylan super-fan Bryan Ferry.
Slug says
Ferry’s singing is very stylised, affected and self-conscious. Not a bad thing per se, but not necessarily an improvement either. I love Roxy, but his Dylan covers are pretty much pub singer karaoke versions and I can’t be doing with them.
Black Type says
Try the ballads – Don’t Think Twice, Make You Feel…, Positively 4th Street. He sings them with great feeling.
dai says
Yeah I think it’s funny people putting Ferry forward as an improvement. He’s hardly Caruso himself.
Dylan’s voice may not be for everybody, but he is a brilliant singer in my opinion. Just listen to Like a Rolling Stone, Visions of Johanna, Lay Lady Lay, Tangled up in Blue and dozens (hundreds?) more.
Nobody sings Dylan like Dylan
retropath2 says
Except Steve Gibbons!
Diddley Farquar says
Many definitive originals of classics from his imperial phase which would be 63-76 despite there being notable covers.
Black Type says
You’ve got a lot of nerve.
Baron Harkonnen says
🤣⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️🤣
BrilliantMistake says
I loved Rough and Rowdy Ways but think that throughout his career he’s often gone for the first easy rhyme that came into his often doped head, which hardcore fans optimistically imagine is some profound juxtaposition, brimming with meaning. That said a lot of said fans sound quite convinced and convincing on the excellent Is It Rolling Pod cast, co-fronted by Kerry Shale, famous in this parish for his long-standing Word podcast announcements.
fitterstoke says
streamofconsciousness, innit?
retropath2 says
See also: “The Beatles? Pshaw…”, “Aren’t the Rolling Stones a bit old for this?”, “Second rate Anthony Newley, I’d say”. “ Grateful? For what?” “Which ones Syd?,” “Can’t even grow a beard!”
hedgepig says
I’m pretty much “none of the above” but Dylan and odd bits of the Stones are the only sixties dadrock shibboleths that do anything for me. The real love I have for anything in that era is reserved for Wall of Sound girl groups, Motown and Stax. But mainly the girl groups.
Dylan’s obviously a massive chancer and has been all too happy to don the Emperor’s outfits at various points, but he’s rarely uninteresting, almost never twee, and can actually write. (That doesn’t mean he always *does*, but he *can*.)
(I really did try with the other 60s religion. I had a couple of moments where I tried to have the conversion, but wanting it wasn’t enough. They have their occasional moments, but they’re a bloodless, powerless, twee period piece to my ears. I really think you either had to be there, or to have wanted to have been there enough, for them to sound anything other than limp. But it’s a faith thing, so no nonbeliever can truly grasp them, and no believer can truly grasp that the rest of us aren’t just posturing.)
Anyway, Dylan: at his best he’s the proper job, but that doesn’t mean I actually listen to him very often.
mikethep says
Point of order: you mean sixties granddad rock shibboleths.
Bingo Little says
I think you rather hit the nail on the head here.
Dylan, like all the others, is ultimately just a pop star. He’s thrilled us and added to many of our lives, but he doesn’t have any more intrinsic value than most other musical acts.
What he does have is a pretty wild back catalogue, some of which is crazily well written, and an oddly (almost eerily) singular mythos which I struggle to find in any other pop star, and a good deal of which arises from that voice. He’s obviously of the 1960s, but he’s also not; who are his contemporaries, his soundalikes? Plenty of people drew influence from him, but no one else (that I’m aware of) went all the way and adopted his soundbed, presumably because the voice is such rough terrain.
And yet, the voice is perfect for his music. I am clearly in the minority on this thread in that I prefer Dylan’s originals to the numerous covers, and I think he would be materially worse if he had sung in any other voice(s). Listen to I Want You – who is singing that particular song any better than that? It’s all right there in the vocal. I hated that song as a kid until one day the penny dropped; it’s actually *meant* to sound like that, and it’s better because it does.
I think you’re spot on that Dylan dodges the tweeness that infects so many 60s acts (including several of the ones I love), and which has aged so poorly. That voice is anything but twee, and it pairs perfectly with the lyrics, which, protest phase apart, tend to eschew the major thematic concerns of the era for a more biblical flavour. Some of them are stolen, some of them are nonsense, but they work. For me, anyway. And they work partly because a lot of them are very good, and partly because even when they’re not that voice somehow operates to grant them a patina of credibility. Others here know their 60s Rock history far better than I do, but it always feels to me like Dylan was the first to really sneer. And there has been so much sneering since.
I think Dylan is ultimately the perfect vessel for the culture of rock intellectualization which is one of the major cultural contributions of the 60s/70s. His ridiculous yet brilliant inauthenticity and absolute refusal to allow any of us behind the curtain makes him the ultimate blank canvas onto which to project fan theories, quasi-academic nonsense and our heartfelt desire that the stuff we consume as a hobby might in fact be evidence of intelligence and taste, both our own and those of its producers.
It’s that latter quality which has steadily sent a section of his fanbase, and even his main biographer, utterly insane. Five decades now attempting to make sense of it all, parsing Chronicle for clues to the great mystery, cataloguing bootlegs and pretending that lyrics which were hammered out at 3am in a stupor by a kid far too young to really know anything about life contain all the secrets of universe. Dylan offered us the empty outlines of genius and the critics and fans rose to the challenge to fill in all the blanks.
The voice is all part of that fun, and the fact he’s regularly changed it (from the needling, nasal whine of the 60s to the country croon, and on to the bluesier notes of his late period) is just another example of what makes him so unusual; whereas most musicians have at some point or other opened the door and invited us in, with Dylan it’s one subterfuge after another to keep us away. Half a century of evasion, a near death experience to push us back when we got too close. God knows if any of that is even what he sounds like when he sings in the shower, and even when he actually tries to tell the truth (Sara), it emerges as a series of blatant lies.
I used to worry that Dylan would one day crack and invite the cameras into what I’m sure is ultimately a fairly humdrum life. But I think enough time has now passed to be certain that will never happen. He’s going to remain an enigma forever, and in an era of total access and ever reducing privacy that is one hell of a legacy.
Why is he so revered? The same reason as all the other major acts; because we need something to revere, because he offered himself up, and because he wrote the kind of lyrics you can drop into discussions like these as if they were a full stop on the conversation; indisputable evidence of a genius only a fool could deny.
This is my favourite Dylan song. We had it read at our wedding because the first verse describes my wife better than I ever could (still true to this day), but also because I wanted to reinforce to the world that I’m a certain kind of complex and misunderstood individual who really gets those deeper truths of life. That’s the magic of Dylan – he wrote poetry that can genuinely speak to your life half a century later, and he confected a personal brand that suggested that allowing those lyrics to speak to your life makes you a little smarter than the average bear. And then he sang those beautiful lyrics like a honking seal. What’s not to like?
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Brilliant read – cap doffed
Diddley Farquar says
Very good. He was as good as it gets within the confines of pop, defining what rock could be, all the possibilities. Plus the goofy, eccentric bits to undermine all the seriousness.
Bingo Little says
I should have added, for posterity and because my relentless appreciation of contemporary music sometimes seems to be received as a general opposition to the 60s (as if the two have to be in binary opposition), my favourite acts from that era are Sam Cooke, Dylan, The Velvet Underground, The Small Faces, Aretha, Marvin Gaye, The Doors, The Temptations, Isaac Hayes, The Lovin Spoonful, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, The Band, James Brown, The Flying Burritos Bros, The Delfonics, The Velvelettes, Led Zep, Scott Walker, Etta James, The Monks, Nina Simone, Van Dyke Parks and The Four Tops.
Some properly amazing music. Admittedly none of it as good as the new Olivia Rodrigo album though 😉 Oh, or this – which is 5 years old but is my current musical crush.
fitterstoke says
You rascal, Unc – agent provocateur, much? 🙀
Uncle Wheaty says
It is a genuine question.
fitterstoke says
Well, okay then…
deramdaze says
Outrageously good looking, catchy songs, great clothes, teenager during Rock ‘n’ Roll, saw Buddy Holly play live, around for pivotal moments in the history of Civil Rights.
Mind, the only post-60s Dylan I have is the Pat Garrett soundtrack, so I make you right for the last half-a-century. I leave the dull stuff to Paul Morley, that’s what he’s there for. It’s called delegating.
Jaygee says
@deramdaze
While it rhymes with delegating, what Paul Morley the activity Paul Morley practices
does not usually require a group
Gary says
Elevating?
Jaygee says
Briefly so
Junior Wells says
So that’s 10 years out of 60+ years. Lol.
deramdaze says
Yes.
Good to see your Maths O Level – Grade C, I presume – has come in useful.
Junior Wells says
I am an Aussie we don’t do “ O” levels.
Hamlet says
I’m all for debate, but even at his best, Dylan looked rather like a vole being condescending.
Diddley Farquar says
An outrageously good looking vole to be fair. There he goes, all along the riverbank.
hubert rawlinson says
“All along the riverbank.” First draft for All Along the Watchtower?
salwarpe says
Ratty kept the view
While all the washerwomen came and went
Mole and Badger too
Well, uh, outside in the cold distance
Weasels, stoats, and ferrets did growl
Toad of Toad Hall was approaching
And the wind in the willows began to howl,
Jaygee says
Very good
mikethep says
*leans into gob iron* Parp parp.
Mike_H says
His best tunes are surprisingly catchy and he knows when and where to put a hook in them.
I’m not a big fan, but a high profile is justified, in his case. Just personal taste but I rate Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman higher as songwriters.
I can put up with his voice(s) but I simply cannot abide his harmonica playing. Just about any folk club Dylan copyist can play harmonica better on his songs than he does, I reckon.
Junior Wells says
Interesting that his first paid performance, in a studio I assume, was as a session harmonica player.
grac says
UP!!!
Diddley Farquar says
I think that in his prime his singing was exemplary. I mean that his phrasing brought out the feeling and meaning and the text was always clearly enunciated, often a fault with other singers where the lyrics are somewhat hard to make out. And always in tune despite the lack of prettiness in the voice. Take You’re A Big Girl Now off Hard Rain. What a performance. Raw but clear.
Junior Wells says
If you have listened, across the catalogue, like properly, and still can’t see it , I can’t help you.
Thegp says
Took me 20 years to find a Dylan album I liked. I’d almost given up (see also Led Zepp)
Eventually Time out of Mind did the trick. Also just bought Love and Theft and whilst not quite as good, enjoyed it all the same
His 60’s and 70’s output eludes me still but I might get there eventually. His voice can grate but when it locks into one of those longer songs where they keep the groove going, then I find it almost transcendental
deramdaze says
‘Longer’ songs… yes… we’re no ‘longer’ really talking about Pop Music are we?
We’re veering more into Double Geography on a Monday morning.
Not you Thegp, but it will be… oh, what is the word, oh yes… ‘men’ who are usually going to be flying the flag for it.
See ‘Morley’.
pete says
Don’t be ridiculous.
mikethep says
It’s got to the point where you could be addressing pretty much any of the contributors to this thread. You need to be more specific.
Locust says
While you find his voice annoying, and most of his fans seems to agree, I belong to the tiny minority (well; I never hear anyone voice this opinion) who think that all of his voices in all of the stages of his career are no less than brilliant. On record and live. No complaints from me, in fact I hate hearing other – supposedly better – singers murder his songs. His voice and his songs belong together and his voice makes his already great songs better. I also love his harmonica playing.
I’m just a lucky bastard I guess! 🙂
Slug says
This. His voice is perfect for what he does. No-one else can sing a line like “You’re an idiot babe, it’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe” and sound quite so venomous and dismissive, yet nonchalant.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Who is this Wheaty fool? He’s just planting stories in the press.
hubert rawlinson says
In fact it’s just an Idiot Wind-up.
Diddley Farquar says
He just kinda wasted our precious time.
Rigid Digit says
Wasn’t that Owen Paul?
kalamo says
I’m not one of his biggest fans, but even as a casual listener the quality of some of his songs is obvious.
Tiggerlion says
I love his attitude. He really doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He is clearly a very intelligent, complex individual. Whatever you think of “plagiarism” , he certainly does his homework.
There was a time In the sixties when brilliant words and music poured out of him effortlessly. Inspiration has been up and down since then but he has kept plugging away and his records are never less than interesting, even the bad ones, especially when you consider how slapdash his studio process seems to be.
I also agree with Locust. His voice suits his songs perfectly.
Diddley Farquar says
I also agree with Locust and you. Exceptional acts come and go but they have a golden period when they become what they were meant to be and make their mark. The 60s above all. Others tried to catch up and up their game, the game he was ahead of, becoming more lyrically ambitious, more ambitious generally, so it was a competition to be better.
Jaygee says
Amazing that, despite being in their ninth decades, he, Macca and Mick are still capable of putting on live shows that pull in the punters.
Truly will be the beginning of the vinegar strokes for our generation when
The first one of those three pops their clogs
Blue Boy says
I can’t think of anyone else who has produced so many essential records in each decade over 60 years. The song writing is peerless (look at how much he has been covered) and I’m in the camp that loves his voice, and the way he uses it and phrases to convey meaning beyond just the words as written – he’s an actor as much as he is a singer.
But I think you’re just being provocative and getting a rise out of us all, Wheaty, you cheeky scamp.
Everygoodboydeservesfruita says
Singularly great singer from 1962-77.
A stylist after that with some significant deterioration.
Remarkable compensation from 1997-2006 on albums.
As a live singer from 1990s is physical limitations interfere quite regularly for me.
Pitch very accurate but too often adopted a mannered approach in the 1980’s.
I understand the opposition to his timbre but its no different really from many a blues singer, His singing on BOTT is sublime,
Uncle Wheaty says
No change here then.
I have listened and tried….but no.
Neil Young I like. Better songs and a nice voice.
Blue Boy says
You like NEIL YOUNG’s voice???!!!!
‘I’m listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound;
Someone’s always yelling turn it down’.
That’ll be me, Bob.
Arthur Cowslip says
A provocative thread indeed!
Surely for all the theorising it must be something just as simple as personal taste? Maybe I like Kit Kats and you like Oreos, as simple as that. I certainly PARTIALLY agree with you (and I’m broaching on deramdaze territory here) in that there’s only a comparatively small portion of his work I find great – everything up to ’67, Blood on the Tracks and (weirdly) Must Be Santa (for novelty) and honestly very very little else. And on some things like Self Portrait his voice is just a total turn off.
But what I do like I LOVE to the point of obsession. Every so often I love to escape into the sound world of something like Desolation Row or Sad Eyed Lady and it’s not just about the lyrics. In fact I don’t think he’s a particularly great lyricist as such; it’s all in the performance and in the feeling he gets across.
It is strange though how some acts which touch so many can baffle and confuse others who just don’t get it. My particular aversions are James thingummy from Manic Street Preachers and David McAlmont, both of whom sound like the proverbial nails on a blackboard to me and for the life of me I can’t see what other people are seeing in them.
Junior Wells says
Self Portrait. The Bootleg set revealed that to be his best “ conventional” singing perhaps ever. As you say, taste.
Arthur Cowslip says
I remember reading the reviews of that, hoping it was be a rich vein of Dylan material I wasn’t aware of and had dismissed. Sadly, it wasn’t for me. I had a listen and just… nah. For the record, I don’t like Nashville Skyline either (although Lay Lady Lay has a certain lazy charm).
Everygoodboydeservesfruita says
I find that remarkable ( not a criticism. Arthur, just another point about subjectivity). Like Junior, for me ASP demonstrated what a great, flexible interpretative singing voice he had. It’s not like the NS voice which is a little too froggy for me.
fitterstoke says
Kit-Kats? They’re okay, I suppose – but why are they so revered?
Arthur Cowslip says
FIGHT!
Diddley Farquar says
They break just like a wafer
salwarpe says
As long as they don’t break like the wind.
fitterstoke says
Like a Drifter© I was born to walk alone…
Black Type says
How does it feel
To be Toblerone?
Arthur Cowslip says
Threw the bums a Dime in your prime.
hubert rawlinson says
A simple twist of flake.
Baron Harkonnen says
First gig in a while coming up in err, February 24. The band shouldn’t make my tinnitus any worse.
The band Simply Dylan. Checked them out online and they are very good, interpreting the songs of His Bobness in their own way. None of that imitation codswallopthingy.
Beezer says
I like him. Most especially for the run of albums he made up to 1970. When he was wiry, dressed in black and laughing in hotel rooms with Alan Price.
As to his voice, my wife was very fond of the long-running tv drama series, ‘Ally McBeal’. A feature of which was the regular scene at the end of each episode set in a karaoke bar.
One new character finds himself called up to sing.
‘No, sorry. I can’t sing’, he says. To which an old hand pipes up
‘Don’t worry about it. Look at Bob Dylan. Been singing for forty years and hasn’t hit a note yet.’
Arf.
Junior Wells says
well that is just idiotic -the beef with Dylan is the nasal propensity, not singing out of tune ,though over the 60 year career there have been some incidents.
Diddley Farquar says
The beef is also that he writes lyrics on the hoof.
Nasal Propensity TMFTL
Junior Wells says
I have seen pictures of endlessly revised song lyrics , there are multiple versions of a song and he reknown for writing new lyrics to songs while recording them in the studio. I guess this is slapdash or “on the hoof”.
Diddley Farquar says
I refer to others’ criticism rather than my own. Also it was a silly joke. Apols.
fitterstoke says
Beef! How low can you go?
Junior Wells says
All good Didds. But even if they were,does it matter? The song is either good or it isn’t. Some of the best songs happen in a flash and many rubbish songs are laboured over.
hubert rawlinson says
Written on the hoof.
Beezer says
It is. I agree. Was funny though.
Uncle Wheaty says
Hamper delivered.
Following my Corsair Chicken and cabbage sandwich my appreciation will be blowing in the wind.