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The Phenomenon of Bob Dylan:
Cultural Weathervane
The Neverending Tour: Dylan’s
Present Relevance
Locarno, Switzerland – October 1987
It’s almost like I heard it as a voice. It wasn’t like
it was even me thinking it. ‘I’m determined to stand,
whether God will deliver me or not.’ And all of a
sudden everything just exploded … And I noticed
that all the people out there – I was used to them
looking at the girl singers, they were good-looking
girls, you know? And like I say, I had them up there
so I wouldn’t feel so bad. But when that happened,
nobody was looking at the girls any more. They
were looking at the main mike. After that is when
I sort of knew: I’ve got to go out there and play
these songs. That’s just what I must do.
-- Bob Dylan, interview with David Gates, Newsweek, 1997
Daniel Lanois
Produced albums for Neil Young, U2, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou
Harris, and Willie Nelson
Ring Them Bells: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7wwWmYWmj8
Under the Red Sky:
http://vimeo.com/63529850
September 1989 September 1990
Most Of The Time: http://vimeo.com/63431742
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAzcPg5LR5k (alternate version)
November 1992 October 1993
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY6Rimo6mb0
Sittin’ on Top of the World:
Big Joe Williams’ version (with Dylan):
http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/sittin-top-world
Broke Down Engine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy8Am4ZQ-gM
Blind Willie McTell’s version:
http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/broke-down-engine
September 1997:
Grammy winner
Album of the Year
Cold Irons Bound
(Grammy winner –
Best Rock Performance): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hO-83CIVKM
Make You Feel My Love:
9/11/2001:
Grammy winner
Best Contemporary
Folk Album
High Water (For Charley
Patton): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fdqF4XIUsE
Charley Patton’s High
Water Everywhere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=336dDZsU1Eg
August 2006:
#1 – Grammy winner
Best Contemporary
Folk Album
Rollin’ and Tumblin’ :
http://vimeo.com/47587514
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Q2uTqB3lM
Muddy Waters’
Rollin’ and Tumblin’:
http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/rollin-and-tumblin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql2qlO8HH20&feature=kp
Eric Lott
Professor of English
University of Virginia
Dylan’s “Floater”
My old man, he’s like
some feudal lord / Got
more lives than a cat
Juliet said back to
Romeo, “Why don’t you
just shove off / If it
bothers you so much?”
The old men ‘round
here, sometimes they
get on / Bad terms with
the younger men
But old, young, age
don’t carry weight / It
doesn’t matter in the end
Saga’s book
My old man would sit
there like a feudal lord
… (p. 6)
“If it bothers you so
much,” she’d say,
“why don’t you just
shove off?” (p. 9)
I heard he caused
some kind of trouble
that put him on bad
terms with the younger
men … (p. 153)
But age doesn’t matter
in that business … age
by itself just doesn’t
carry any weight (p.155)
2003
Cross the Green Mountain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw8YjVrRNRU
Henry Timrod
“The Poet Laureate of the Confederacy”
… Dylan’s borrowings were actually more extensive.
“Cross the Green Mountain” included lines and
images from sources that ranged from Julia Ward
Howe’s “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, Henry
Lynden Flash’s “Death of Stonewall Jackson”, and
Nathaniel Graham Shepard’s “Roll-Call”, to Frank
Perkins and Mitchell Parish’s jazz standard from
1934, “Stars Fell on Alabama”. In the next-to-last
verse, Dylan condensed an entire Walt Whitman
poem, “Come up from the Fields, Father” … into
a single compact eight-line stanza, and he took a
phrase from Whitman’s original to boot.
-- Sean Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America, 2010, p. 284
October 2004
Scott Warmuth
Albuquerque, NM disk jockey Scott Warmuth
http://www.pinterest.com/scottwarmuth/a-bob-dylan-bookshelf/
The masterstroke in Chronicles: Volume One is
that Dylan incorporated an initially invisible second
book beneath its surface. There are jokes and
nods, tip-offs to when he is blowing smoke, and
commentaries on artifice and illusion. Occasionally
he reveals secrets that he might otherwise keep to
himself. He opens up about his influences and his
methods. His singular, identifiable American
voice is actually an amalgam of the voices of so
many others.
-- Scott Warmuth, “Bob Charlatan: Deconstructing Dylan’s
Chronicles: Volume One”, New Haven Review (2008 Vol.
1), p. 83
Bob is not authentic at all; he is a plagiarist, and his name and
voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception.
-- Joni Mitchell, interview in Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2010
I may be too inclined to defend, but I do think it’s characteristic
of great artists and songsters to immediately draw on their
predecessors … Plagiarism wants you not to know the original,
whereas allusion wants you to know.
-- Christopher Ricks, Professor of English, Boston University, author of
Dylan’s Visions of Sin, interview in New York Times, September 14, 2006
You could give the collected works of Henry Timrod to a bunch
of people, but none of them are going to come up with Bob
Dylan songs.
-- Scott Warmuth, interview in New York Times, September 14, 2006
Things Have Changed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo
2001 Academy Award – Best Song
2000
July 2003
May 2006 – April 2009
Robert Hunter
Friend of the Devil: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XacvydVrhuI
It’s All Good:
April 2009
http://www.mojvideo.com/video-bob-dylan-it-s-all-good/f369156a41a8ccc486e4
September 2012
Scarlet Town: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-e9ZM8IiL4
Pay in Blood: http://vimeo.com/63455997
Questions
Why do we accord Dylan the respect that we do?
What influences Dylan? Where does his musical-
poetic background come from? What does he
channel? And why does he go through so many
changes?
What is Dylan’s impact on our culture? Is he
reflecting it, creating it, or both?
