I don't like Bob Dylan

You had to be there.

Great songwriter. God-awful singer.

His harmonica playing sucks too.

I think Joam Baez' "Diamonds and Rust " says a lot about Dylan. I like lots of Springsteen though.

This book tells of Baez's association with Dylan.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1439169640/?tag=absowrit-20

Yeah, I know the feeling.

. . . but, well, he got to me eventually - sometimes.

I never liked Neil Young either. But he's getting through to me too - maybe more than Dylan.

(Everything but the Girl have utterly no love for Dylan, or JFK -- have a look at the lyrics for Me and Bobby D sometime.)

Great songs, terrible singer. In recent years his voice has become so bad it should be declared a crime against music.

Alessandra Kelley said:

I don't know if this is true, but I heard Dylan visited folk legend Woody Guthrie late in his life when his voice was ravaged by Huntington's Disease, and patterned his own singing voice on Guthrie's.

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Dylan was a fan of Guthrie's before he visited him, I think. He certainly modeled his style on Guthrie, but probably not the dying version.

Al Stevens said:

You had to be there.

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Agreed, Dylan was a generational thing. I don't get rap and my kids tell me the same thing, "its a generational thing dad."

If you ever read about a group, read about "The Band," Bob Dylan's association with them really improved Robbie Robertson's lyric writing ability, and Robbie admits same...

Then go and find the movie, "The Last Waltz." It will blow you away...

thothguard51 said:

Agreed, Dylan was a generational thing.

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Nah, I spent the sixties gestating and potty training and I ended up loving Dylan.

Medievalist said:

I think Joam Baez' "Diamonds and Rust " says a lot about Dylan. I like lots of Springsteen though.

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Me prefer Joni Mitchell...

Don't like Dylan. Fingernails on a chalkboard would be more pleasant to listen to.

I absolutely LOVE Springsteen and have been a diehard fan for almost 30 years. Him I get. His music I get. He's the only performer I've seen multiple times and will continue to see whenever possible. No one puts on a concert like Bruce. No. One.

Unfortunately, Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Bob Seger, and John Mellencamp were the soundtrack for everything I despised about the Seventies and Eighties.

I find that, somehow, I classify musicians and groups as "white hat" or "black hat" - say, whether I applaud their success or feel like I would save or condemn them in my Armageddon - independently of whether I like their music. I don't listen to Springsteen, but he's a White Hat. So are Seger and Mellencamp. Bon Jovi will always be black-hat to me, as will pretty much all hair-bands.

Johnny Cash and Tom Waits, ironically, are about as white-hat as it gets for me.

eta: in terms of my Hat Scale, I think Dylan's probably some sort of straw colour.

I recall, in my teenage years, stating G'n'R's Knocking on Heavens Door was far superior to Dylan's original. By my early twenties I realized my youthful blunder. By my mid- twenties I listened to nothing but Dylan (ok, maybe a little Leonard, too). This only slightly scarred me.

I tried to turn my family on to him, but got the same reply -- great songs, when sung by another voice. I guess (as someone once said) the thing about taste is -- it's all about taste.

For me, Dylan's voice is almost always a perfect accompaniment to his music. Sure, sometimes it's rougher than a dog without a dental hygiene routine -- but mostly it's on the money great. As for his lyrics and the praise/chatter/discussion of them -- well, I'd say I learned so much from what Dylan had to say/didn't say/accidentally implied/vaguely intoned/totally avoided both on vinyl and off that I'd say all writings about him and his work have a justifiable foundation.

I could (and almost did) list all the recordings that are worth a listen for those struggling with the fellas voice, but I figured there was no point. People will either like it straight away, come to like it on their own terms or always hate it. Taste rears it's head again. Though I would add that I hated Olives (the fruit, not the Popeye concubine) until very recently.

I'd also like to address the previously stated statement that his voice has got worse. I think the opposite. He's grown into his blues man voice and, like Dylan, it's just brilliant and different to what it was before. Having said that, I will declare his live shows can certainly be vocally mercurial.

Finally, I wanted to say thanks to Medievalist for reminding me of Diamonds and Rust -- brilliant song and brilliant comment that transcends Baez's (in my opinion) usually sweet and emotionally led, youthful and serious perspective. Hope that doesn't sound like I'm bashing Baez (Oo-er missus) and to make things even on her humour front I'll point people to her really funny Dylan impression.

All in all, what am I saying?

To be honest, I can't remember. It's a long post and I have a tendency to not look back.

And maybe not looking back is a good way to attack (in both aggressive and engaging senses of the word) Dylan as musician, Poet and Icon.

Perhaps its better to look forward to the time when you'll catch up to him.

I had to learn to tolerate Dylan's voice in order to appreciate his songs. It was worth the trouble.

poetinahat said:

Unfortunately, Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Bob Seger, and John Mellencamp were the soundtrack for everything I despised about the Seventies and Eighties.

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When I was twelve punk declared year zero and every single song or band that had ever existed was out of fashion. Whether it was Davie Bowie or Queen or the Beatles or Chicory Tip or Mud everything was out.

This turned out to be a little extreme, as the Lurkers and Generation X weren't quite the quality we thought at the time, and my peer group spent the early eighties catching up on all the old stuff. Dylan in this context was like Woody Guthrie - so old it wasn't even uncool to listen to him, as long as you had nothing to do with his horrible born again Christianity.

After New Wave fell to pieces I went through various phases (I tried heavy metal on but it didn't fit) until the late eighties when I realised Johnny Marr was a guitar god and started listening to indie.

thothguard51 said:

Agreed, Dylan was a generational thing.

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Except among folksy hipsters. There are many great folksy and bluesy artists around today, and I do prefer them to Dylan, but I don't hate. I realize he inspired a lot of musicians I like today.

Priene said:

Chicory Tip

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Priene said:

Mud

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Wow - I had to look them up. Hackneyed, but catchy - as funny as they look, there's fun to be had if you don't want to think too hard. Punk really was inevitable, wasn't it?

You may be listening to the wrong Dylan. Most of his best stuff was done early, and aside from maybe "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Positively Fourth Street", that best is songs not released as singles by him. Noted above is the cover of "Just Like a Woman" (previously mentioned), to which I'll add "All Along the Watchtower" (Jimi Hendrix), and "Dear Landlord" (Joe Cocker).

But Dylan's own "Mr. Tambourine Man", "Desolation Row", "Visions of Johanna", "Memphis Blues Again", "Highway 61 Revisited" recordings are at the apex of his compositional ability.

And, yes, I very much like Neil Young, too. Neither he nor Dylan can sing worth sloth drool, but that isn't why they're compelling. Johnny Cash couldn't sing, either, and don't even get me started on Tom Waits, and I like both of them, too.

You want the big powerful voice doing musically precise and utterly vacuous material? Try Steve Perry or Dennis DeYoung or Lou Gramm. Me, I'll take Dylan and Young anyday. Hell, I'll even take Bon Scott over those guys.

caw

One of my favorite Dylan songs is Tangled up in Blues. He's an amazing song writer, but unless I'm listening to one of his recordings from the Sixties, I'm not too interested in listening. He's been practically unintelligible for years.

One of my favorite singer/songwriters is Elvis Costello. His voice isn't great, but no one sings and interprets his songs like he does, IMO. I could sit and listen to him sing the telephone book.

I want to hear the emotion in the music, not necessarily a perfect voice because that can be really boring.

Neil Young fan here too. And Johnny Cash.

Mclesh said:

One of my favorite Dylan songs is Tangled up in Blues. He's an amazing song writer, but unless I'm listening to one of his recordings from the Sixties, I'm not too interested in listening. He's been practically unintelligible for years.

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Aha! Tangled Up in Blue was on Blood on the Tracks, released in 1975. Back in my youth, all the ex-hippies used to go on about how nothing Dylan did then compared with his sixties work, but to my mind Blood on the Tracks is not only Dylan's greatest album, but one of the greatest albums released by anyone ever.

poetinahat said:

Wow - I had to look them up. Hackneyed, but catchy - as funny as they look, there's fun to be had if you don't want to think too hard. Punk really was inevitable, wasn't it?

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The BBC have been rerunning Top of the Pops from 1976 onwards, covering week by week just how terrible pre-punk music actually was. (Spoofed rather well here - I quite the sound of Andy Zorchestra and his Orchestra.)