Comments about Bob Dylan from AARP magazine | The Official Bob Dylan Site

Comments about Bob Dylan from AARP magazine

Larry "Ratso" Sloman has solicited some comments about Bob Dylan for AARP magazine. Here are a few, with more to come:

The truth is, Bob Dylan is a great American artist. His art, his talent, is to speak to everybody, and so when I say American, I think he's a great African American artist, he's a great Jewish American artist, he's a great Muslim American artist, he's a great Asian-American artist, Spanish-speaking artist -- he speaks for the American soul as much as Ray Charles did.








If, as the poet says, "The purpose of art is to stop time," then Dylan has stopped more time, at least for me, than anyone living or gone. Dylan is a man out of time, belongs to the ages, ages well, is no age at all. So what if 70 years have now accrued to the animal body our bard, our Blake, happens to cart around? He was older than that before, and he's younger than that now.

And, most fortunately, his relationship to "retirement" seems to be weird too. Take a day off, Mr. Dylan, and blow out as many candles as you like. But just a day, okay?

The first Bob Dylan album I heard was Highway 61 Revisited. It was 1965. I was almost 13 and had just started guitar lessons. We were living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and my dad was teaching at LSU. One of his writing students came over to the house one day with this album. He was raving about it. My dad wasn't particularly interested but I was. His student left it at the house and I listened to it. Even though I was barely 13, I got it.

From the time I was a small child, I had been influenced by southern poets and folk, blues, jazz and country music. Here was a guy who was putting it all together, for the first time. At the time, I didn't get all of the in-depth meaning of the songs but that didn't matter. I decided, right then and there, that I would learn how to do what he was doing. I wanted to be as good as he was and I have been learning how to do it, ever since.

I met Dylan originally because I was a good friend of Albert Grossman, who was his manager and his mentor. Columbia, Dylan's record company, put out a greatest hits album. I did the poster for it. They had gotten control over the editing and they put that album together using material that perhaps Dylan might not have used. Dylan hated everything about that album. But the poster proliferated.

You do things and you have no idea of why they enter the public consciousness and this is one of those things because it represents an entire generation's interests and it's Dylan, who is a compelling figure.

I never did hear his reaction to it. I always assumed he just wanted to forget about it.

Bob's a rock star, a world icon, a songwriter and performer who has influenced and inspired millions and affected our music and our world in a profound way. But at heart, I believe, if someone asked him how he thinks of himself, he would say he's only a minstrel boy. I say, long may he wander in the raw poetry of time! Happy Birthday, Bob.