I think the above probably qualifies as a clickbait title, though it’s not really intended to be. Bob Dylan fans are annoying.
Honestly, I was already planning to write about this before
some guy in an American paper reacted to Paul Simon selling his back catalogue by
saying Simon would only be a footnote to Dylan anyway.
That’s classic Dylan fan. It’s also classic non-Dylan fan to
react by saying Dylan’s a terrible singer, as lots of people have been doing
today.
It''s all boring stuff, meaningless arguments played out over
decades. And not really my issue either way. I just had a certain thought which
I wanted to share about quite why being a Dylan fan is such a heavy,
unparalleled, self-perpetuating industry, which hopefully someone could find interesting
without being a massive Dylan fan themselves, and not being bothered too much
by the fact that I am.
It’s simply this; being a Dylan fan is rewarding – I
hesitate to say, uniquely rewarding. It’s a journey which, if you go on it,
prompts you to restate your faith/renew your vows at regular intervals.
However much you think you know, there’s always more. I
don’t think it’s like that with the other greats. I’ve been a massive Bob Dylan
fan since I was 16, I’ve bought more of his music than anybody else’s, listened
to it more than anybody else’s, and even in the last couple of years, I’ve
heard songs he’d written that I’d never heard before which I’ve found
brilliant.
I’m not one of those Dylan fans who thinks there are no bad
Dylan albums, who worships Dylan as a prophet, who puts Dylan on such a
pedestal that I think no one else has done anything else comparable. Other
people have written songs as great as Dylan’s written, released albums as great
as Dylan’s released.
But, with him, there’s just so much stuff, and it’s hidden
in such unlikely places. And it rewards.
Other folk don’t have a Basement Tapes, a born-again
Christian period, a bootleg series, a Rolling Thunder. Or maybe they do, but I
guess, it’s that, with Dylan, for a sizeable portion of the fandom, it’s the supposed ephemera that become the heart of the canon.
Like, most Stevie Wonder fans’ favourite Stevie Wonder album
is Innervisions, Talking Book, or Songs in the Key of Life, right? His best
albums and best songs are broadly agreed? That applies to most great artists.
There’s nothing bad or diminishing about that. There’s a solid magnificence, a
guaranteed glory to most artists’ best stuff.
Dylan’s so random. Nashville Skyline was supposed to be this
little, insignificant country curio, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, thinking they're the only one, that it’s their favourite Dylan album.
The Christian period was meant to be a best-forgotten
disaster, then gradually you’d hear some people saying “it’s actually really
good” and you ignored that for years, but then, you give it a proper, proper,
listen, and then, on the right day, you hear something like Solid Rock, on
Saved, and it blows your socks off.
Other great artists don’t have demos which weren’t finished
and were left off their moderately rated 22nd studio album
(Infidels) which, like Blind Willie McTell, are broadly considered by fans now
as one of the greatest songs ever written.
Dylan is, if you’re a fan of his, a genius for many things,
but he is, above all, a genius for keeping you on your toes. Maybe he doesn’t
give a shit but maybe he gives more of a shit than anyone else, sees the long game like nobody else, and sees value
better than any other.
So this is why Dylan fans are so annoying. Because they’ve
worked so hard on the journey and been given so many rewards for it. Because
the first thing they hear about Dylan is that he can’t sing, and they, by
definition, think he can sing magnificently. Because the second thing they hear is
that he’s over-rated (of course, by definition, fans of everyone else think
he’s overrated because he’s rated the highest), and they build their arguments
as to why he’s not.
There are more books about Bob Dylan because there’s so much
material that is on the surface and so much that is below the surface. Because Dylan fans are typically literate men who think they have it in them to write a book about him. So there are 100s of books, 100s ...
Because everyone else followed him – The Beatles, The
Stones, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Springsteen, The Band – they all
did what they did because of something he did…
Oh, you know, I’m sounding too much like a fan now, I’m
trying to persuade, and that’s not what I intended really.
It’s the journey, innit. That’s all. You get to the heart of
other folk much more quickly, whoever they are … Dylan’s always got a bit more,
and that makes us just that bit more annoying than everybody else.
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