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Um, I agree and have been saying that for years. I'm not saying that I dislike Bob D., but he's no hero. An icon, maybe, but not much more. I like a lot of his songs, but would never give him the kind of cred that it seems like the majority of people do.

Musically he was painfully derivative and any artists that he influenced directly really aren't that good or acclaimed.

Lyrically he was good, but never the best. What about guys like David Berman? Dylan was dumbed down for the masses (on purpose).

Culturally we're talking about someone who was afraid of being Jewish, who changed his musical style to be more accessible, and admitted that he became political to get more attention. He knew he was a pop icon as much -- if not more -- than Britney Spears, et al. He barely made an effort to give the illusion that it was a facade.

Fundamentally, it's this facade that everyone's in love with -- A midwestern slow-talkin' boy who moved to New York and took the world by storm and who seemed to not give a damn while he smoked his cigarettes and laughed about how people called him an anarchist. The fact that his lyrics are somewhat poetic and songs listenable (even though his only number ones were performed by others) give people enough to go on to start a trend of calling Robert Zimmerman a musical legend. I disagree. He's not terrible, but he's not some messiah, either. Wholly over-rated, charming or not.

SNAP! I expect about as much controversy as the Dave Matthews thread a few months back.

Carl, rock and folk are derivative forms. The point isn't pure originality. The point is original voice on top of synthesis, and no songwriter has topped Dylna's achievement when it comes to voice, complete with its borrowings and its amalgamations and its imperfections. You're allowed not to like Dylan, but there simply is no overrating him.

Annie, the onus is on you to defend your position, not on anyone to explain to you something that is self-evident. The Pulitzer isn't for his contribution to your taste; it addresses exactly the truth of his legacy: a profound contribution to our music and culture.

overrated?

bob dylan has had arguably more cultural significance than any other artist of the 20th century, or at least the latter half. to understand his music is to understand a radical shift in american beliefs, values, and consciousness. he has (well, had) one of the most distinctive and incredible voices in popular music; it's hard to think of how punk would have evolved without bob dylan's voice. his music, or at least his best music, was the opposite of derivative, it was unprecedented; had there really been a song like "like a rolling stone" before "like a rolling stone"? and his lyrics, most of all; i'm convinced no one has written better lyrics than bob dylan did in the first fifteen years of his career. a few have come close (townes van zandt, will oldham, joanna newsom, and yes, david berman, to name a few), but i've never seen anything that parallels the complete mastery of "desolation row," "gates of eden," "all along the watchtower," "can't you please crawl out your window," "visions of johanna," "sad-eyed lady of the lowlands," "tangled up in blue," "idiot wind," and countless others that i don't care to mention for the sake of time and space.

look at it this way: was there an artist, or at least a popular artist, quite like dylan before dylan? think about it. he was the first poet of the jukebox. before dylan, the closest thing to dylan was johnny cash or little richard, neither of whom wrote as great of songs as dylan (at least in my opinion).

i'm not sure why i'm writing this, since i've had this argument a countless number of times with people who never seem to convert. either you love him or you hate him, i suppose. i just can't understand why anyone would hate him. "the sun's not yellow, it's chicken" - C'MON!

i think my original post came off as flippant, which i didn't mean it to be. i genuinely am interested in why and how his music resonates with so many people.

thank you, dick phorr. that's exactly the sort of reasoning/argument/defense i was/am looking for. that's very interesting to read.

i guess i'm fascinated by dylan as a cultural artifact, going off of your comment -- dylan as an icon who represented something greater than himself. that's fascinating to me, from a sociological perspective.

that comment was by me, btw.

Try the lesser known songs and records that aren't his best known work.
Play "Nashville Skyline"; "I Threw It All Away" -- what a great song. Try "Mew Morning" which includes "Winterlude" and "Three Angels". Heard "Jokerman"? (If that song doesn't catch your interest then I guess you had better not try much more.) Some more tunes to test out: "Going , Going , Gone" on "Planet Waves", "Moonlight" on "Love and Theft", "Sweet Marie on "Blonde On Blonde", "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" from "John Wesley Harding".
Or,you can just listen to the greatest (okay ONE of the greatest) rock era records ever made: "The Basement Tapes". Psychedelia was raging full force while these guys (Dylan and The Band) were busy making something even more exotic: music deeply rooted in Americana yet paired within a brilliant mythology all its own.

all of those mentioned are good starters ("i threw it all away" might be my favorite dylan song ever). here's my list of favorite lesser-knowns:

boots of spanish leather
i don't believe you (she acts like we never have met)
one of us must know (sooner or later)
dear landlord
tears of rage
million dollar bash
one more night
tell me that it isn't true
tonight i'll be staying here with you
all the tired horses
copper kettle
time passes slowly
sign on the window
father of night
when i paint my masterpiece
isis
one more cup of coffee (valley below)
oh, sister
senor (tales of yankee power)
sweetheart like you
emotionally yours
ring them bells
man in the long black coat
most of the time
blind willie mctell
standing in the doorway
not dark yet
highlands
cry a while

if you notice, most of these are pre-blood on the tracks. i won't go so far as to say he "fell off" after that, but his albums were never as consistently good. still, part of what's great about listening to dylan is rediscovery. i've listened to blonde on blonde off and on since i was in middle school (i'm 22 now), and only recently did i realize how amazing "one of us must know" and "absolutely sweet marie" are. same with "boots of spanish leather." and even his worst albums have their little gems here and there. i can't think of an artist to whom relistening has been so continually rewarding, with perhaps the exception of curtis mayfield.

Bob Dylan is, quite simply, one of the greatest singers ever. He could wrap his tongue around words in ways that no one else could. Listen to his "She's Your Lover Now"; he invests that song with every emotion know to man and even a few that haven't been invented yet.

As a songwriter, he was of course often derivative. That's what folk songs are: the songs of the folk, and Dylan just wrote down songs that were already there but that no one else had yet known how to write down.

One of his lesser-known gems is "I'll Keep It With Mine." It's an early song, and whereas he was often prolix in his early day, that song has a haiku-like simplicity, but its simplicity is only superficial.

I think that it is cool that you are looking into Dylan, Annie. There is nothing i can say or anyone else can say to make up your mind. You just need to listen to it and decide for yourself. Some people love it and some people don't. Also, are there Dylan songs that are "lesser known"? Either you have the album or you don't. One of my favs is "Sooner or Later (one of us must know)"

Naves

There is something magical there. It cannot be explained, it must be felt. The power of Dylan's words at the right time or mood seem to make a connection. When you turn the corner into mid life, and you start looking at your life and mortality, the words of "My Back Pages" seem to connect. "If You See Her Say Hello" is a gut wrentching song that if heard at the right time and place makes you feel the pain as well. While I can explain Bob Dylan no better than anyone else, open a bottle of wine this weekend, dim the lights, put "Blood On The Tracks" on and tune out the world. If you are lucky enough to connect you will have a lifetime of absolutly great music.

I'm glad several people mentioned "I'll keep it with mine" - one of my very favorites.
Also, check out "Every Grain of Sand" for a profound song with an incredible harmonica solo. And one more obscure one that I sometimes sing when I'm alone "Only a Hobo"

Bootleg Series - Volumes 1 and 2 - truly haunting stuff. Barebones, too, so you can put a little of the iconography aside and just listen to what he was doing as a songwriter at the time.

That being said, "Blood On the Tracks" was my intro album to him, and I guessed that worked pretty well. I think the first couple albums when he was in full-on Woody Guthrie tribute mode are so-so.

I listen to "Desire" a lot. Only, I skip "Hurricane" and "Joey". The rest of that album - top notch. "Sara" alone makes it worth the price of admission.

What allows a song or film or poem to be revisited again and again? I think it is the ability of the work to repeatedy startle.
Dylan's words do that; he uses them differently than others. He did this when, as a very young man, he wrote astonishing works like "A Hard Rains Goint to Fall" and he continues to do surprise us today.

Harburg and Porter continue to delight, as do Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer and the great Lorenz Hart. Their nimble words do not wear out.
In another era and in different ways Dylan has achieved a similiar durability. We've heard his songs before yet still marvel at their unique construction.

When one compares Bob Dylan to his contemporaries in terms of depth and longevity the result is a renewed feeling of astonishment.

First of all, sorry to say, a Pulitzer ain't no big deal. When you consider that a Pulitzer is a prize given out by people who want to seem worthy of being chosen to give out a prestigious award, and you consider all the dubious winners of the past and what they "achieved," it's something of a shuck. After all, who are these people and who appointed them to tell us who is "important" or "worthy" and who conferred some powers of judgment on them?

There's the notion, silly in this case, that the award is going to bring someone arguably under appreciated the recognition he deserves. But Bob's never been under appreciated so much as idolized or disdained. You have to be deaf to have lived a life that he hasn't influenced -- actually saturated would be a better word.

The point is not that Bob is an original. The point is that he served his artistic apprenticeship, learned what was good what he could do and why and how and shifted the course of American life.

All art is derivative. In fact, if today's so called musicians knew anything about music or cared anything about music that had been made before them their music would become something other than just computerized masturbation and little whining exercises in narcissism.

In the sixties when the Beatles were releasing I Want to Hold your Yand, Dylan wrote Blowing in the Wind and songs that became Civil Rights marching songs. He's a skinny white kid playing at the March on Washington and he's playing a guitar and he's singing a song about the Medgar Evers. People who didn't like quicken to this dubbed him a protest singer, a title he hated because it seeks to describe and contain and define what he could and never would let other people define for him.

His songs elicited sympathy for oppressed black people, he wrote the first really adult American love songs, he zigged and legions of others zigged, so he zagged and legions of others zagged. There would be no Townes Van Zandt or any of these other singer songwriters without him. Influenced by him the Beatles the Stones all of rock music began to open itself to experimentation.

If you want to know why Picasso was such a great painter you have to know or learn something about the visual arts. And that means learning something about what he made when. Ditto with Dylan. When Louis Armstrong could no longer play the horn he started to sing and if his voice wasn't that hot there was something about the ecstasy with which he performed which made you sit up and take notice. Dylan has his limitations as a singer, but to say he can't sing is to have a sort of packaged entertainment idea of what singing is. The problem with all these people who say they've never been able to "get Dylan" is that when push comes to shove they want other people to tell them how to listen. If somebody has to tell you how to listen or how to look, you're a student and you should leave criticism to them to whom it comes natural. Dylan and Louis Armstrong are the two most profound influences on twentieth century American music; their influence goes way beyond their personal achievements, even though those personal achievements were necessary to win them the influence. Ryan Adams is Bob six timed diluted.

It is easy to think of Bob Dylan in terms of derision, and a lot of people do. His singing can be heard as distinctive, or you could call it grating, for starters, and a lot of people never get past that.

It is easy to think of him as just another folksinger, too, I suppose, except that he managed to move beyond the (often admirable) work that artists like Phil Ochs or others were doing when Dylan first came to town. I think that a lot of the problem people have with Dylan is that they are thinking of his work in reductive terms- he's a folksinger that went electric passes as sophisticated analysis for a lot of critics. What this overlooks is the breadth of his career. Sure, he was a folksinger for a while, briefly, then he wrote and performed songs in that style for another year or so, through about the first half of 1964, say. And then he proceeded to take an American musical style in a wholly new direction.

I would put it to you that Chuck Berry is his only real peer as a rock'n'roll innovator, and I would argue further that anyone who has written a rock song that was intended to be taken seriously since Dylan released "Highway 61 Revisited" has been influenced by his work. The Beatles become The Dave Clark 5 without Dylan. David Bowie would have been a Donovan imitator. Bruce Springsteen would have been auto mechanic. He transformed the form into something different, much as Charlie Parker transformed jazz. (Indeed, in many of the same ways that Parker transformed jazz.)

What Dylan should you listen to in order to hear this? Well, I suppose that depends on what other sorts of things you enjoy. There is enough catalog depth there to keep you busy. It would be hard, I think, to love straight-on rock'n'roll and not like "Blonde on Blonde". I think "Before the Flood" is one of the very few worthwhile live albums out there-- it's a great band,at the height of their powers, playing great material. "Greatest Hits, Vol. II" is accessible and deep, and the songs aren't quite as overplayed as perhaps some of his other material might seem to you to be. "The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3" is like that too, with songs that even a lot of specialists are less familiar with.

If rock is a temple, Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan are two of its pillars. If you can name two other artists that can stand with them you are doing pretty well, and I'll spot you Elvis.

I'm no scholar of Dylan or anything, but when I put on one of his albums it still sounds as arresting and fresh as the first time I heard it. That is more than I could say for most artists I got into in high school.

To me he has always sounded like a walking encyclopedia of American folk and blues music who took up the banner of Woody Guthrie and ran with it. There have been others who have done the same thing, but Dylan drew the map.

You should check out his autobiography, too. A fine read.

I most appreciate Dylan when other people sing and arrange his songs. The Byrds come to mind first, of course, as well as Jimi Hendrix's "All Along The Watchtower"...but there are lesser-known covers like Rainy Day's "I'll Keep It With Mine" that really do the songs justice. And he inspired the Beatles to create Rubber Soul, even if it was just a matter of passing Lennon a joint.

There's no denying Dylan's influence in the overall scheme of things, and some of his work is timeless. But Dylan was a *moment* more than anything else, and I think it's hard sometimes for those of us who came later to appreciate the music that inspired that moment.

I do admire the fact that Dylan was resolute about not being co-opted by this group or another. It's probably one reason why we're still discussing him today as opposed to, say, Joan Baez or Dave Van Ronk. And the story of Dylan enraging the folkies at Newport is one for the ages - even if Pete Seeger didn't actually try to cut the power with an axe (a great anecdote that, sadly, has been refuted by none other than stage manager Joe Boyd).

all said and done dylan for reasons whatever they may be has touched loves of many by giving some of the most realistically grounded songs of this century. one may not be able to decipher his fame or success (also take note that he's just doing his thing and has never asked for it) but he has done what he has done and that is the power of real music. Don't get up gentlemen, I'm only passing through (times have changed)

Bob Dylan is the most perceptive observer of the human condition I have ever met. Talking to him is an intense experience. If you don't get him or his music that's fine, but don't mistake your surface knowlege of his work for insight into the man. He's deep.

without sounding smug or preachy,
i must suggest to annie (the first post)
to take an lsd trip and listen to "mr. tambourine man,"
and both sides of "bringing it all back home," and highway 61 revisited."

ohstop

without sounding smug or preachy,
i must suggest to annie (the first post)
to take an lsd trip and listen to "mr. tambourine man,"
and both sides of "bringing it all back home," and highway 61 revisited."

ohstop

. and it ain't in the cream puff hair-do's
or cotton candy clothes
or it ain't in no Hollywood wheatgerm
it ain't in the one's who ain't got any talent, but think they do, and think their fooling you, And rantin and ravin and takin your money and think it's funny.
And you can't find it on the golf course,
and uncle Remus can't tell you and neither
can Santa Claus.
So where do you look for this hope that your seeking?
Where do you look for this candle that's glowing?
Where do you look for you look for that hope that you know is there and out there somewhere-
You can either go to the church of your choice, or go to Brooklyn State Hospital
Find God in the church of you choice, find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital-
and it's only my opinion, i may be right or
wrong: you find them both at the
Grand Canyon, sundown.

The man wrote that at 17. How many can say they did something so genuine in a lifetime? Give him 100 pulitzers.

To the fools who don't think dylan made such a great impact and who think the people he influenced aren't that acclaimed they obviously have never turned on the radio. His voice is painful to listen to. His poetry is pure genius. It would be hard to find a prominent song writer who wasn't influenced by him. His words can be depressing, uplifting, inspiring, the list go on. They are the human spirit.

"last thoughts on woody guthrie" was written when dylan was in his early 20's, not 17. he was still ripping on little richard in hibbing at 17. not that the poem isn't beautiful, one of the finest things he maybe ever wrote, but don't give him too much credit.

Like the man said, "If you have to ask what's so good about Dylan, you'll never know.

I always liked Dylan's songs. Well, those that I had heard. I hadn't heard that many after all. It's hard to find a person who has never heard "Like A Rolling Stone" or "Knockin' On Heaven's Door". And who wouldn't like those songs?

But only after I actually began listening to all the material he had recorded I fell in love with him. It didn't happen immediately either. At the beginning, I only listened to the songs but didn't really 'hear' them. I guess that's close to something he himself said once. It's true, nowadays, every time I listen to a song I can discover something new. His music isn't the kind that gets old and boring.

Also, I personally liked studying the songs and finding out about the stories behind them like "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll". I watched tons of videos of him performing and read about everything that happened at the time. Did a lot of reading. That's of course because I'm too young to have been there myself and I became really interested in the whole phenomenon.

But that's just me...it's not like everyone should spend that much time getting into him if they feel that is not gonna happen anyway. All the music isn't for everyone. Although, I happen to think his music is for everyone. Some people just haven't gotten in and it's not necessarily their fault. In my opinion, particularly people who weren't alive in that era, much of Bob Dylan's music may be something you have to give time and thought. And keep listening to those songs more than a couple of times.

I have to admit, at first, I found it hard to see the brilliance of Blonde On Blonde. I dug a few songs but it was praised so much it confused me. Today I don't know what the heck I was thinking! It's one of my favourite albums ever. Like many others of his. That's how I turned from a person liking a few classic songs into a total Dylan fan.

Some things are true whether you believe them or not....

Dylan is true genius...

Dylan is an experience and you have to have that experience to understand it...

FCH