By Tony Attwood
When I first heard Bob Dylan, when I ws a teenager, I didn’t think “I wonder what else he has recorded.” I thought, “I want every other record he’s ever made.” (Trouble was, he’d only just started, so I had to wait, which made me even more excited and impatient).
And I guess that these days it is quite possible that there are artists out there whose music would drive the same reaction inside me – that I would hear one or two of their recordings, and then think, “I want everything else they’ve done.” But sadly, it doesn’t seem to happen – or at least not that often. All these songwriters I come across, have created extraordinary and interesting songs, and sometimes very varied songs, but I think it is fair to say, not a selection of songs whose sheer variety compares with the achievement of Bob. Maybe Paul Simon got part way there, but I’m not sure…
And to be clear, by my comment above, I’m not talking about songwriters who try and imitate Bob to create a song in each style he has used, but rather songwriters whose work is complete and interesting on each occasion; songs which in themselves so varied in their style as approach that they need to be heard over and over again.
Now if you want to hear what I mean perhaps I might suggest you go to the first page of our series on Dylan songs in the order they were composed and scoot down to 1962 and then play the first ten songs. In fact if you don’t want to know about any other early Dylan compositions I will make it easy and set out those ten songs for you here.
- Ballad for a friend
- Poor Boy Blues
- Rambling Gambling Willie
- Standing on the highway
- Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues
- Death of Emmett Till
- The Ballad of Donald White
- Let me die in my footsteps
- Blowing in the wind
- Corrina Corrina
Now you might immediately want to argue that Dylan didn’t write every one of those compositions – and you might be right, but I really don’t want to get side tracked into that debate at this point. What I want to do is point out the sheer variety of those ten songs that he performed, many of which (or most of which) he wrote or utterly re-arranged. And the fact that they were the first ten songs of a total of 36 that Bob wrote or arranged and recorded that year.
So for example you might also want to argue that Bob certainly did not write “Corina Corina” – to which I would agree, but I would add that what we have there is an interesting arrangement. And yet that’s really not my point. For whether he wrote each song or not, there is something in each performance that makes me want to listen. Something that takes me beyond the recording by the person who did write each song. Something unique to Bob.
Thus I am not searching for examples of Bob’s diversity of writing, nor seeking out a successor to Bob’s compositions and performances. What I am forever looking for is perhaps a composer, or perhaps a performer, who can make me sit up and think “wow!” I must hear that again, and “wow – what else has he/she done?”
And I do feel that such a composer or songwriter or performer is out there somewhere, because there is a lot of new music I listen to which I enjoy. I mean even the more recent issues have given us musical offerings that are interesting, even if not all of them are tracks I want to hear over and over again. But they can be references back to the point, sometimes almost saying, “This is as far as I have gone – do you want to take this any further?”
And that I find so fascinating since I can still enjoy much of the early Dylan music, even though the problem is, I know it inside out and back to front. I’ve heard it many times performed by Bob, I have heard it performed by other people, I’ve even played it myself on piano and guitar, and even occasionally on the accordion (when no one is listening), which is fun for me (although not for anyone else I fear). And now? I know the songs. What do I do now?
In desperation I even type in the phrase “all the talent of a new Bob Dylan” in order to see what AI came up with. I won’t bore you with the answers, because you can do it yourself if you are so moved, and then you can go searching for that person’s music on the internet.
But it was that point which gave me this thought: “Is there, somewhere out there, another singer songwriter, who is going to be able to enthuse and engage a whole generation in the way that Bob has done? Was Bob really a one-off, never to be repeated, the likes of which we will never see again? Is that how it goes?
As happens sometimes in my house, we started to talk about this and inevitably then had to go and look at what the annoying AI Overview had to say (annoying because AI suggests that this is the answer, rather than letting us find our own answers).
Bob of course comes out top of the songwriter list, and as I am sure you would imagine, Lennon and McCartney came in second place. However I didn’t expect Joni Mitchell to come third, and then I almost stopped because I came across the whole of the Blue album (if that link doesn’t work just tyle “Joni Mitchell Blue album” into Google. Or play your own copy.
Stevie Wonder came next followed by Chuck Berry, Jagger and Richards, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and then Carole King and Gerry Goffin.
And somehow I simply thought, that’s enough for today, for tomorrow, for next week, next month, next year. I mean I’m going out for Sunday lunch with my friend who’s staying with me at the moment, and I’m getting a bit worked up about a scandal that is by far the biggest story we’ve had in football (soccer) for years and want to write more about that for the other blog I run.
And somehow Bob has to fit in with all this.
How did I ever come to have more than one hobby?
But maybe that is the point. Life in the 21st century is utterly diverse and varied, and keeps me endlessly occupied even at my advanced age. And that’s rather good isn’t it? I mean, Dylan, Lennon and McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Chuck Berry, Jagger and Richards, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Carole King and Gerry Goffin.
What more do you want?