Bob Who?

My joking contribution to the least-rocking thread is Bob Dylan, but it occurred to me I never brought him up in a proper thread. Also, “Bob Who?” is my group name in Rock Band 2.

My roommate Adam is a Bob Dylan fanatic. I started out pretty neutral/oblivious toward Dylan, but the more someone tells you what you’re supposed to do, the less you want to, so we go back and forth about how I’m not giving Dylan enough credit for blah blah blah, and how Adam’s giving him way too much credit, etc, whatever.

So I call upon the collective and hopefully less personally invested wisdom of Qt3:

What do we specifically and directly have to thank Bob Dylan for? I mean other than BSG jumping the shark. Yeah, certainly he wrote some songs we all like, but anyone can do that; those are just one or two songs we’d miss if he wasn’t around.

Adam would have me believe almost none of the music I enjoy today would exist if it wasn’t for Dylan, while I say Dylan doesn’t really deserve any particular credit for, say, The Smashing Pumpkins, or Ghostface Killah or Vampire Weekend, or a whole lot of anything I listen to. I’m sure he did a lot for the mumbling guy with an acoustic genre, but so what? What did Dylan do for music?

We wouldn’t have the Jimi Hendrix version of All Along the Watchtower. Does that count for anything?

That’s what I meant by “certainly he wrote some songs we all like.” You could pick any band and point out that if they didn’t exist, obviously we wouldn’t have their songs. And granted, Dylan deserves more credit than the average artist specifically for song writing, but that’s still just a collection of songs he specifically wrote that wouldn’t exist without him. That goes without saying. Did he really pave the way for new styles or genres or something?

And I’m not arguing he didn’t, I’m just saying I’m completely ignorant of it if he did, and if I’m going to get a reasonable answer about it, it won’t be from my fanatical roommate.

Yeah, certainly he wrote some songs we all like, but anyone can do that

No, anyone can’t do that; and I have no idea why we’d expect to have anything to thank a singer/songwriter for other than the songs he wrote and sang. That is more than enough to spend one lifetime on.

I’m far from a Bob Dylan fan, but IMO “Like A Rolling Stone” deserves the acclaim it’s received. I do prefer some of Dylan’s other songs in covers by other artists, but he nailed that one.

That’s what I meant by “certainly he wrote some songs we all like.” You could pick any band and point out that if they didn’t exist, obviously we wouldn’t have their songs. And granted, Dylan deserves more credit than the average artist specifically for song writing, but that’s still just a collection of songs he specifically wrote that wouldn’t exist without him. That goes without saying. Did he really pave the way for new styles or genres or something?

I really don’t understand where you’re going with this. If Beethoven hadn’t been born, we just wouldn’t have had his symphonies. If Michelangelo hadn’t been born, we just wouldn’t have had his paintings. If Shakespeare hadn’t been born, we just wouldn’t have had his plays. What’s the big deal?

You seem to be suggesting that Dylan’s achievement is only meaningful if he influences other people or creates a genre or something. Now, arguably he did do both of those things far beyond what most pop artists can ever hope to achieve. But even if he didn’t, the songs themselves have intrinsic value, as does the work of any artist who does his job well. So I am having a hard time getting my mind around your point of view here. If you want to say he wrote bad songs, just say he wrote bad songs.

I think he’s revered in large part for being politically outspoken. He might have changed “what music can do” more than changing music itself, you know? I was looking at his wikipedia entry and saw this:

He has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2008, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.

That’s certainly not something that you can say about “anyone”. But yeah, I mean… You can pick pretty much any great artist or author and say, “Without them, we just wouldn’t have those 2 or 5 or 10 books everybody likes so much.” It doesn’t mean that Steinbeck isn’t revered for good reason.

Sorry, I must be doing a terrible job communicating this. I’m not saying it’s trivial to write great songs or be a successful musician in your own right.

I’m suggesting that if Dylan hadn’t been born, we wouldn’t have had his music, which is sad and all that, but not objectively different than if some talented but much more obscure musician.

So what did Dylan do that really broke ground and set him apart as really influential?

That’s certainly not something that you can say about “anyone”. But yeah, I mean… You can pick pretty much any great artist or author and say, “Without them, we just wouldn’t have those 2 or 5 or 10 books everybody likes so much.” It doesn’t mean that Steinbeck isn’t revered for good reason.

Right, so I’m not saying Dylan isn’t revered for good reason, but my roommate seems to think every modern artist owes Dylan a huge debt and I’m being silly by not acknowledging it.

And I think that’s probably dumb.

His music is good, but his lyrics are the draw, and that is what he’s most famous for. He has written in many styles – famously infuriating his fans by going electric, and so forth – but what he’s saying, in both form and content, is what sets him apart.

edit: For the record, I’m obviously not a Dylan aficionado.

For further example: I think The Smashing Pumpkins are a legitimately awesome band (or at the very least were, for the sake of argument) and I think anyone should be able to acknowledge that even if they don’t personally appreciate it. I feel Dylan is due about the same, but even typing that I feel like I’m probably outraging a bunch of people who want to tell me that Dylan was way more influential than your average great artist.

So this is where I want to hear that from someone other than my roommate so I can get a little more perspective on it.

The thing about Dylan is that he (along with Lou Reed) created now-hoary archetype of rock music genius. Keep in mind that Dylan already had a solid folk following at the time of his most iconic songs, and perversely decided to piss off that fan base in the interests of pushing his music further. That sort of willful career management was pretty unusual for the time.

Also remember any semi-literate rock songwriter owes a huge debt to Dylan. He brought an extremely literate sensibility to music that was considered disposable kid stuff. That creative spark ignited The Beatles, The Stones, and countless others in his wake to follow that same spark.

Well that’s more like the sort of answer I was looking for, thanks.

Where’s triggercut when you need him?

Dylan was important for a couple of reasons. One is that he was part of the shift from singers who sang songs written for them by professional songwriters, to singer-songwriters; people who sang songs they’d written themselves. It’s true that other singer-songwriters were around at the time, but Dylan influenced them too, because he made being a singer-songwriter seem like the thing to be.

The other thing he did, though, was just to expand the emotional range of what popular music could be. Prior to Dylan, most popular songs were basically themed along the lines of “I love you so much, it’s so great the you love me as well!” or “I love you so much, why don’t you love me too??”. He experimented with angry songs, surreal songs, philosophical songs, &c &c, and he did it really well, too. To get a sense of how different Dylan was, compare his 1963 album “The Freewheelin’” with any other album released that year.

In fact, take a look at this list:

There’s some great music there, but nothing is nearly as lyrically adventurous as what you’ll find on Freewheelin’. (“Brown Eyed-Handsome Man” is probably the one I’d pick off that list as the most lyrically interesting - technically excellent lyric-writing with a hidden anti-racism theme). I guess the thing is, there might have been plenty of complex and interesting poetry being written by obscure artists locked away in garrets somewhere, but Dylan took that kind of experimental spirit and he was massively commercially successful with it, and that both inspired other musicians to want to write more interesting lyrics, and it made the industry willing (in fact, eager) to let their musicians do more interesting stuff, because they hoped to replicate his commercial success.

The being said, I don’t think Dylan is the be-all and end-all of great music or great lyric-writing, but to my mind there’s no doubt that he’s historically important - in a way that the Smashing Pumpkins, say, are not.

Hurricane is an awesome song.

That’s a good summary. As for the first part, there is some mythology surrounding it, particularly with regard to the original “reveal” of electric Bob at the 1965 Newport Music Festival. But there is no question that later performances like the 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert (I apologize in advance for the enthusiasm of the author) do an excellent job of showing Dylan at his peak and some of his former fans at their most outraged. It’s also my favorite of the Bootleg series of his albums, if only because of how sharp that contrast between the first and the second half feels in retrospect.

But yeah, as everyone else is saying it is in the end it is all about the lyrics. Not just the song themselves, but the weight they lent to rock music. I heard someone describe “Tangled Up In Blue” as doing in music what the Impressionists did in paintings, and while the analogy is imperfect I think it does the trick. He killed mandatory literalism and obviousness in rock, for better or worse. Many great things continued to be written along those lines in spite of him (he himself does a fair share of it, and some it is also great), and always will, but he opened the doors for a lot of people.

But by all means, continue to destroy your roommate. Most Dylan-pushers need to be pushed back.