Does this approach to creation exclude feeling? It’s as impossible to measure and absurd to discuss as the other, but at least it sounds a little more original.Īnd let’s not talk about his voice of “sand and glue”, as another slippery fish described it. So much has been said about the sincerity of the committed poetry of his early period, in which he was blithely heard to claim that he wrote what people wanted to hear, while we overlooked his trick of conjuring up a few chords and superimposing on them a melody with calculatingly effective hooks and turns. For his most wonderful tunes usually consist of the same chords, sometimes in almost the same order (see “Girl from the North Country”/”Boots of Spanish Leather”), no revelation. Many of the great artists did only one or a very few works and then devoted themselves to the dignified craft of living, which, as Sábato explained, is no small thing.Īs we were saying, Dylan has been insisting since the seventies on the song model that made him so famous, sometimes with notorious results and sometimes not so much revealing, in any case, his way of approaching songwriting: just spin the four chords and see what comes out. And yes, he made a lot of songs, but he also insisted on slipping in blues and dreamy filler even at his peaks, and even if his tidy genius was genuine, so what? To say “he was a genius” means nothing. In the case of Dylan’s (psychedelic) old-fashioned taste, deep America. It is a candle the size of a sun for that generation that began the adventure from the farthest reaches to reach the most intimate. They wield the exotic cologne of the Beat and, at the same time, the sand-stained trousers of the Midwest. He was voluble in character, but above all he was prolific, and the texts that accompany some of his songs from the golden age between 19 are among the most beautiful of his decade. The big question is: why are they so fickle? We have also long been under the bias that a “Bob Dylan” song is good in itself (Dylan himself has been one of those who have abused this). What is it about his songs that they start selling when a third party simply covers them? Or perhaps, what is it about him that doesn’t keep our attention for a long time? The reverse is also true, and as a result we have suffered for decades from the dogma that covering a Dylan song (which after all can be anything in its minimalism) is a guaranteed hit, especially if it’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”. It wasn’t until 2020 that a performance of his reached number one.
Tambourine Man”) only became official hits when others lent him a hand. And it’s not our doing: some of his best-known tracks (“Blowin’ in the Wind”, “Mr. Now it’s the one we like best on that bittersweet album. For example, in our early days we missed a song called “My Back Pages” at every turn of Another Side… until we heard it from the Byrds. Let’s start by saying that Bob Dylan holds the record for songs that seem mediocre until others cover them. In an imaginary podium of favourite musicians, no doubt we would place him below the first triad, and yet he is a better composer than all of them. This is not to say that he is the one we listen to the most, or even enjoy the most, although when we do enjoy him it is in a very peculiar way. Not the best lyricist or the best poet (increasingly frequent exaggerations in mainstream culture), but a composer of melodies and chords. It seems risky to say it, but from here we maintain that weird Uncle Bob, who is turning eighty, is the most important composer that popular music has produced in the last century.
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