There’s that Bob Dylan quote: ‘He who’s not busy being born is busy dying.’ That’s a great line. And I really believe that.
The only thing about rock n’ roll in my house is a couple of paintings of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan – and they were expensive, too.
It must be tiring being Bob Dylan for the past 50 years. People act like he’s not even human, which must be hard work. Every room he walks into just goes quiet.
I have no doubt that if I met Bob Dylan, it would be disappointing – and annoying to him. But that’s why I like Bob Dylan.
Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music – the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger – could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.
I didn’t sound anything like Capote at the screen test. It was more like Bob Dylan. In his early years. With the flu.
If I was to meet Lou Reed or Bob Dylan, I would be totally helpless. Writers and musicians make me feel completely starstruck.
In 1952, Muddy cut the song ‘Rollin’ Stone.’ It was a nationwide success, and the song echoes down through rock n’ roll history. Bob Dylan cut a tribute by the same name, an English band decided to call themselves the Rolling Stones, and the magazine that first embraced music as a serious cultural phenomenon was itself called ‘Rolling Stone.’
When I was around 12, my heroes were Cindy Sherman and Bob Dylan and Samuel Westing from the kids’ novel ‘The Westing Game’.
I feel like we’re very lucky in the sense that Dawes can be the kind of band that plays with Bright Eyes or M. Ward but that also plays with Bob Dylan.
When I discovered Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I could explore the records that inspired me on a different level and that led me to Joni Mitchell, who is maybe my favorite of all time, and Warren Zevon. Those artists that wrote the lyrics that you try for.
My musical influence is really from my father. He was a DJ in college. My parents met at New York University. So he listened to, you know, Motown, and he listened to Bob Dylan. He listened to Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones, but he also listened to reggae music. And he collected vinyl.
In other words, I’d say the whole story of Bob Dylan is one man’s search for God. The turns and the steps he takes to find God are his business. I think he went to a study group at the Vineyard, and it created a lot of excitement.
Growing up, I was a little hippie kid. I went to some good concerts… Amnesty International with Bob Dylan and Tracy Chapman… The best concert I ever went to was this one at the Cow Palace my freshman year in college on New Year’s Eve. It was Pearl Jam opening for Nirvana opening for Red Hot Chili Peppers.
For most of the twentieth century, a Minnesotan abroad could fix his home state in the cosmos by invoking for his hosts the name Charles Lindbergh or Bob Dylan, native sons who were claimed by the world and never really returned to the Gopher State.
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