If anything I thought the straight ahead character sketch like “King Charlemange” or “Deacon Blues” were Becker and Fagen’s strong suit. They can definately leave stuff up to interpret (is “Peg” about an old friend or a creepy stalker?) but they really didn’t do anything as hallucinatory as “Desolation Row”.
Getting back to Bob, his true strength is his diversity. He can do direct political songs (Hurricane), more general cultural indictments (It’s Alright Ma), beautifully awkward love songs (Sara), bitter songs about lost love (Fourth Time Around), weird story songs (Frankie Lee and Judas Priest), and way out there sound poetry (the above mentioned Desolation Row).
Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying…
Great!
Nitpick. It’s “Kid Charlemange,” which is generally thought to be about Oswald Stanley, although I don’t understand how anybody would know that without an interpreter. “Deacon Blues” may be about a character. But straight ahead? Nevermind. Sorry about the hijack.
I’ve gotta go with Hunter S. Thompson on this. If Dylan had only written Mr. Tambourine Man he would be one of the best poets ever. He did a lot more really good stuff too. And while I like Dylan’s work, I don’t really seek it out.
I wasn’t into Dylan at all until a few years ago, when I first saw Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, which is now on my top 10 favorite movies list. So, for those of you looking for a reason to like Dylan, there’s one you might want to try.
Nitpick. It’s Owsley Stanley, and I always thought the allusion was obvious–not that the obvious is always true.
What did John Lennon mean by, “Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye”? What did Bruce Springsteen mean by, “go-kart Mozart was checking out the weather chart to see if it was safe outside”? Are you sure you’re bringing nothing to this yourself?
Am I a terrible songwriter because I find things in my lyrics that I didn’t intend? Or because a listener said I had captured the spirit of the modern age when I absolutely wasn’t writing about anything except the inside of my own head? I admit I’m no Joni Mitchell.
I voted great. He will be remembered as one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century.
I do think that some of his rhymes are stretched a bit, like “You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat, who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat.”
It sounds like free-association to me, searching for the next word that rhymes: at, bat, cat…ah ha!
No matter how you think of his singing, Dylan’s songwriting is among the best of the past 60 years. Look had how many people have covered his work.
Dylan does not have a great voice, and his range is limited, but he writes songs to fit into what he can do and his singing is effective in selling the song. It’s like (in a very different context) Fred Astaire, whose voice was not spectacular, but who knew how to make it work.
An interesting work is ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ by John Corigliano. Here’s a link to the first of the seven songs - Mr. Tambourine Man.
The entire point of this piece was to approach Bob Dylan as just a poet, and to set the texts with no reference whatsoever to Dylan’s music.
I’ve always admired Dylan’s poetry, but I’ve never cared much for his music, his voice nor for his aesthetic of deliberately underrehearsing.
I think he’s great but that doesn’t mean I don’t have reservations about him. I find for example that most of his songwriting is harmonically unadventurous. I don’t have problems with his singing as others do although it’s definitely showing some wear as he’s aged and toured a little too much.
I thought highly enough of Dylan to take my Doper name from one of his most acclaimed songs. 
Great.
Easily great. Probably greatest. And perhaps deserving of the Nobel prize in literature.
Without Dylan, nobody listed above has the career they’ve had. He was the first and the best, a true visionary who showed what was possible simply by doing what he does. Everyone listed above owes him a solemn debt of gratitude.
I knew that. :smack:
Sure. It’s a song about an illegal drug chemist noted for the exceptional purity of his product. In the days before Breaking Bad was on the air, who else would anybody know of who fit that description?
Damn right. Most comments above are looking at him backwards, through the context of everything he enabled. I don’t really care if you like to actually listen to him or not (though I do)… just try to understand what he did for us.
His best stuff is really brilliant. I think he’s also written some real crap that he knew he’d get away with because he was Bob Dylan, and it bothers me when an artist holds his audience in contempt like that. Putting those moments aside, his best work is so evocative and specific and open to interpretation that it’s just fascinating.
The Hendrix cover of “All Along the Watchtower” is worth considering, IMHO. It nicely illustrates just how good a songwriter Dylan is, even if you don’t personally like his own performances and/or arrangements.
I voted “Great” but I wish there’d been an option between good and great.
I’m NOT of the right age or political persuasion to love Dylan, but I love a lot of his work anyway. But unlike many of his fans, I didn’t start liking him until the mid Seventies. See, when I was a kid, I associated Dylan with the lame songs we had to sing on the bus to camp, or that nuns made us sing at folk Mass.
***Desire ***was the first Dylan album I ever really got into, and it’s still my favorite (the long and wrong-headed “Hurricane” notwithstanding).