The term \u2018voice of a generation\u2019 is one which gets thrown at almost any new artist who tries to tell a story through their music. The Smiths were, for a time, the \u2018voice of a generation\u2019, as were the Arctic Monkeys, albeit for a significantly shorter period. But, for Bob Dylan, this mantle somehow doesn\u2019t do him justice. Bob Dylan has been the voice of multiple generations until now, and will continue to speak for generations well into the future.<\/p>\n
The 60\u2019s were a time in which singer-songwriters were abundant; Greenwich village had a dozen on every street corner, and some of them (Dave van Ronk and Phil Ochs) were special enough to warrant waxing lyrical (if you pardon the pun) about themselves, but Dylan was always a cut above. <\/p>\n
What was, and is, different about Dylan, other than the sheer quality of his songs, is that each song seemed to come from a place of absolute honesty. His face; a scrawny, drawn out looking jumble of features, with a look constantly fixed somewhere between pubescent and eternal, still with its baby fat intact, seemed perfectly at home singing about the endless woes of the world. Very few 20-somethings could pen an anthem for change and, instead of being laughed out of every room they were ever in, enact actual change the results of which are still being felt to this day.<\/p>\n
Trying to boil down Bob Dylan’s career to a succinct soundbite is often a fruitless task. You talk about one era, and you ignore half a dozen more; you talk about the early landscape-changing folk of the early 60\u2019s, and you ignore the rock and roll and country of the late 60\u2019s; you talk about his ‘revival\u2019 in the 70\u2019s and you ignore the blues-inspired rock of the late 90\u2019s and early 00\u2019s. The truth is, that to truly appreciate any of Bob Dylan\u2019s work in its purest form, you almost have to appreciate it all. In being reductive with Dylan, in not putting him on the pedestal which he deserves, you risk losing sight of what actually made, and still makes, Dylan great. <\/p>\n
Yes, he may have had the legendary Al Kooper on guitar and organ and John Hammond producing throughout the 60\u2019s, but this was very much the Bob Dylan Show, as it has continued to be for the past 50 years, and it shows no sign of changing.<\/p>\n
Not many artists can have a song named the \u2018greatest song of all time\u2019 and it not even be the best song on its album. But, for Bob Dylan, this became something of a normality in the mid-1960\u2019s. Every album had a multitude of songs which could rightfully be labelled as the greatest of all time. \u2018Freewheelin\u2019\u2019 had the anthemic \u2018Blowing in the Wind\u2019, \u2018The Times They Are a-Changin\u2019\u2019 had its history-defining titular track, and \u2018Another Side of Bob Dylan\u2019 had \u2018Spanish Harlem Incident\u2019. Any of these would be the shining star in any other artist\u2019s catalogue, but for Bob Dylan, they were just album tracks.<\/p>\n
\u2018If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself\u2019. In the end, it\u2019s Bob Dylan\u2019s quote about himself which sums him up like no other writer, journalist or biographer has ever been able to do before; a man who has taken up the mantle of one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time seemingly reluctantly, but who still sees himself as \u2018more of a song and dance man\u2019 (as he said of himself in 1965) with no more answers about the world than you or I. A man who, as soon as his audience felt they had him sussed, about turned and pulled a move from way out of left-field, and was all the better for it.
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