His Bobness/My FOMO

When you were a teenager, what were the arguments you participated in over pop bands? Were you Beatles or Stones? U2 or Simple Minds? Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet? Bowie or Bolan? Frankly, it didn’t matter in my day, and it certainly doesn’t matter now, though at 53 years of age, I couldn’t tell you who teenagers are squabbling over today - if they are at all when their attention is consumed by myriad other media. 

Last week’s Brit Awards brought out the old fart in me, as I silently harrumphed, dad-like, something about how music isn’t as good as it was in my day, perking up only when I saw Bruce Springsteen’s Letter To You amongst the Best Album nominees. The reality is that, actually, pop is in quite rude health. It’s just that there aren’t many artists these days who can command the attention, adulation or, for that matter, interest, that those who pioneered rock and pop still do (and coming soon to this blog will be an interview with David Hepworth and Mark Ellen, legends of music journalism, who continue to represent an age when this stuff mattered to people like me). However, this sort of stuff does still matter to those who stand at the altar that is Bob Dylan, who turns 80 today. It is possible that, in the pantheon of popular music, there hasn’t been an artist as revered as His Bobness. If my social media timelines today are any measure, he’s an icon who transcends even other icons of popular music, an untouchable. 

My question, then, is “why?”. I don’t mean that to sound disparaging, but I’ve never ‘got’ Dylan. His music just hasn’t moved me in the way others’ has. This, folks, is the subjective madness that defines and divides opinion, which polarises and binds in equal measure. And all that is fine. There is no rule that says you must like anyone, which is why I bristle at the playground term “hate”. I don’t care much for hip-hop, and there are plenty of bands I’ve been more than indifferent towards, but I’ve never been so incensed to brand anything or anyone off limits.

So, Dylan. If a cursory search of Amazon’s bookstore is anything to go by, revealing a return of “more than 3,000 results”, the man born Robert Allen Zimmerman this day in 1941 is peerless in admiration. Perhaps more tomes have been produced about The Beatles, but I’d imagine it’s going to be close run. My shelves bulge with books about numerous rock luminaries, and a fair proportion of my disposable income since I became a wage earner is represented by the records and box sets stored elsewhere. Dylan’s contemporaries are well represented in my cultural life, too. Just not Dylan himself. In fact, I could probably cite greater familiarity with covers of his songs, such as The Byrds’ Mr. Tambourine Man, Jimi Hendrix’s All Along The Watchtower and Eric Clapton’s Knocking On Heaven’s Door, all of which were effectively made their own, with many surprised to learn of their actual originator.

I do see, though, how Dylan is appreciated for his lyricism - more poetic than pop - and, in particular, captured a world in change during the hippie 60s and the freewheeling 70s. Like most people with ears, I’ve heard Like A Rolling Stone, The Times They Are A-Changing, Lay Lady Lay and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall; I’ve listened to Blood On The Tracks, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde all the way through. But now I think of it, I’ve probably spent more time listening to The Traveling Wilburys, the supergroup Dylan joined with George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, than any of Dylan’s own recordings. Somehow, it has just not moved me as other things have. Sorry, Bobophiles, it’s just how it is. 

That doesn’t discount him though. It is abundantly clear, amongst those who adulate Dylan, that he represents - and has always represented - a singularity that is rare in popular music. Viewed through the modern prism of homogenised, formulaic pop, Dylan is the arch individualist. He has always been more than just a folk singer or a blues singer or attached to any other label you like. In fact, it’s this sort of value that makes me wonder why I’ve never joined the chorus of acclaim.

I can see that part of Dylan’s appeal is that he is enigmatic. He writes and performs songs of a near-poetic nature and, yet, doesn’t appear to play the rock star game. Even his 2016 receipt of the Nobel Prize for Literature was met cooly, with Patti Smith collecting it on his behalf, despite it being the first time a songwriter had received the award. He later delivered the traditional Nobel winners’ lecture, diffidently explaining, matter of factly: “My songs are alive in the land of the living, but songs are unlike literature, they are meant to be sung and not read”. Here, I should mention his voice, which by his own opinion, is not his strongest suit: “I was never a good singer, but if you have a good story, then it doesn’t matter because people want to listen.” There’s probably an entire blog post about crap singers with genius-like writing abilities.

I do get, however, that Dylan’s rise to prominence came with the a-changing times he sang of. Like so many in the 60s, social and culture upheavals were afoot, and with Vietnam and the civil rights movement in America spilling over to Europe, I can see how that great run of music during this time could resonate. Some argue that his words 50-plus years ago are just as relevant today. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, believed to be a reaction to nuclear conflict, would fit the environmental narrative today just as easily. However, as Dylan commences his ninth decade, he doesn’t appear to have lost anything, as his 2020 album Rough And Rowdy Ways serves to demonstrate. Whereas the majority of artists of pensionable age are largely treading predictable water, Dylan is regarded to have produced a masterpiece, of its time and of his age. That takes quite a lot.

Go back to his origins and you perhaps see why the reverence is afforded. His appearance in 1962 came just as rock’n’roll was in its infancy. Elvis Presley had shown teenagers that there was more to life than their parents’ easy listening, and The Beatles were coming along with their chirpy interpretation of it. While they were jangling away at Love Me Do, Dylan was wowing the Newport Folk Festival with his folkie take on contemporary America. Rod Stewart has said that, having been listening to American folk music for a while, Dylan’s debut opened him up to the idea of America being a land he wanted to visit.

Sean Hannam

60 years, 10 Grammies, 1 Oscar and that Nobel prize later, Dylan has presided over 39 albums and 600 songs of his own, a catalogue as impressive as the man himself is almost anonymous. “Like a large amount of his recorded output, he's still shrouded in mystery and intrigue - there’s so much to decipher,” says music writer Sean Hannam, whose own collection of aforementioned Dylan books is now up to almost 70. “I never tire of reading about him, or listening to his music.   He’s one of the last remaining original rock stars who’s a true maverick and an enigma. He doesn’t give many interviews anymore or do his own social media,” he adds, pointing out that even David Bowie appeared on chat shows in his later years.

Perhaps, then, the key to getting Dylan is that enigma. Perhaps my fault has been that I’m not quizzical enough. I’d be the first to admit that much of the music I like grabs me emotionally, first, in some way, rather than by curiosity. A classic case of ‘liking what I like’. And here’s where we get into the subjectivity of music fandom. “I especially fell in love with his more amusing and wry songs, rather than the protest material,” says Sean, who got into Dylan as a teenager when a friend gave him a compilation tape. “About two years later, when I was at university, my parents bought me a triple-CD set of some of Dylan's first few albums, and then I discovered his mid-60s ‘electric’ records - Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde - which blew me away. That’s my favourite Dylan period. I still think no one has equalled that run of three great albums - two of which he made in the same year!”

Here Sean gets closer to answering the question that’s been troubling me: why. Dylan’s ‘going electric’ phase transformed the somewhat stereotypical Greenwich Village folkie into someone intrinsically cool which, at risk of suggesting shallow motivation, is still the key element of most preferences in popular music. “I love watching interviews and live footage of him from that time, when he’s confounding journalists and his audiences,” adds Sean. But, he stresses, his fandom is not just a nostalgia trip in retro cool: “In his 79th year, Dylan put out a 16-minute surprise single during lockdown that was a masterclass in songwriting, Murder Most Foul, and followed it up with Rough And Rowdy Ways, his best album since 1997’s classic Time Out Of Mind. There aren’t many - or even any - acts who could do that so late in their career. He’s still an awesome creative force.” He makes a very good point.

Rock musicians passing what would be retirement age for the rest of us is nothing new. Many of my blues heroes - like John Lee Hooker and BB King - played on into their 80s; the Rolling Stones, while no longer in the vibrancy of their pomp, are still capable of putting on a damn good show and, in the case of Blue And Lonesome, an authentic record, even if one of cover versions. Perhaps the late Leonard Cohen, a Dylan contemporary with a similar background and musical outlook might have been considered of the same cadre, along with Paul Simon and Paul McCartney, although the latter’s quality control is sometimes overlooked by his deity. Age is, though, just a number. Look at Tom Jones: he’s just released Surrounded By Time, a couple of months shy of his 81st birthday, and to rave reviews. What, then, Dylan? “Now he's 80,” says Sean, “who knows. But long may he continue to confound and surprise us. To misquote his song, She Belongs To Me, that's why we need to ‘salute him when his birthday comes’.”

I suppose it’s never too late to learn. As I wrote recently, in my post about the Matt Deighton Overshadowed documentary, I’m historically late to many artists, and found great comfort in writer Andrew Collins’ recent confession that he was a late convert to Springsteen, as was I. 60 years of 39 albums sounds like a mountain to climb, but perhaps there’s a Dylan-Damascus moment to come.