Ask people who know him for a description of Bob Dylan outside the prerogatives of fame and the obligations of art, and they have to stop and think; there’s just not that much left.
I’ve been interested in writing and storytelling since I learned to read, but it wasn’t until I read Dylan Thomas, when I was 14, that I became interested in language itself, and saw it as more than a transparent medium for a story.
I want to see Bob Dylan do sketch comedy. I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan.
Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.
At the ‘L.A. Times,’ I always wanted to write about artists I thought were meaningful. So I interviewed Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Eminem, White Stripes. And I could understand how almost everybody I interviewed had a sense of artistry.
If people want to talk about Bob Dylan, I can talk about that. But my dad belongs to me and four other people exclusively. I’m very protective of that. And telling people whether he was affectionate is telling people a lot. It has so little to do with me. I come up against a wall.
I like men who are very cool but who are also so brilliant that they are almost insane. Sean Penn, Gary Oldman, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits – men who would be flipping burgers if they hadn’t found an outlet for their brilliant mind-sets.
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.
I am so proud of the growth of Dylan’s Candy Bar into two more flagship stores: Union Square in New York City and Chicago on Michigan Avenue, and two airport stores: JFK and Detroit.
The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer.
Bob Dylan enabled rock & roll to grow up and survive. He injected the power of language and ideas into the music.
I only read the very best music books. Donald Fagan’s memoir ‘Eminent Hipsters’ is great. Bob Dylan’s memoir ‘Chronicles’ and Patty Smith’s ‘Just Kids’ are both incredible.
Under Milk Wood’ was given to me when I was quite young, in Sydney. I didn’t even know what Wales was, let alone anything about Dylan Thomas. It taught me the beginning of my love of English literature.
One quality of a good songwriter is to be vague. A vague notion, a vague image, but enough to give the listener the opportunity to make more out of what’s being said than is there. That’s the great thing about Bob Dylan’s songs: We the listeners have made more out of them than he ever intended.
Dylan can do no wrong.
The thing about a music career is that it ain’t over until the fat lady sings. Look at all the times people threw in the towel on Dylan – or Neil Young. Remember when Young was doing things in the ’80s like ‘Trans’ and the rockabilly album and being completely lambasted by critics who now think he is wonderful again?
My parents raised me on Spooky Tooth and The Band, Derek and the Dominoes, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, all that stuff. Rock n’ roll was just in my subconscious.
For someone like me, who has grown up with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, it’s hard not to invest a lot of myself in what I do.
Forever Young, by Dylan, is one of my favorite songs.
Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a ‘poet.’ After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.
I don’t know which way I’m going. My next CD might be country, might be Dylan, might be Mick Jagger. I don’t know. I love a challenge.
I am a child of the ’70s, so I love classic rock – Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, and I also love Coldplay.
The beautiful despair is never fruitless. It keeps you going. Like when I first heard Bob Dylan do ‘Things Have Changed,’ or any time I see any work of art really beautifully done, like Michelangelo’s ‘The David’ or that movie ‘Lost in Translation’ – it inspires me to try and find my own version of that.
Thousands do benefit from love, support and comfort in their final chapter: I watched my dad slip away without pain as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen tracks played in a warm Marie Curie hospice, surrounded by doting nurses and his family.
I tell people I never got to hear Dylan Thomas read because my husband wouldn’t let me, because he thought it would be a sort of bad influence. People say, ‘And you didn’t go?’ They’re so surprised because the me they know would have gone. And I say I was very much a ‘yes, dear’ wife.
