I'm no Dylan freak. Never even seen him live. But he quietly crept up on me and never quite went away.

The thing that Dylan has is the capacity to surprise. You think you have a line on him and then sometime else seems to turn up. Just when I thought I had all of his good stuff, the bootleg series starts to appear and The Free Trade Hall Gig and the Rolling Thunder Review gig comes out and the next thing you know I'm reassessing everything I already have. An artist I thought was over familiar with to the point of actual boredom is now something brand new.

Then once he has waned for me again (which happens) what does he do next? No Direction Home comes out and his latest albums turn out to be wonderful. He both reminds me of what he has done in the past and then goes and has an Indian Summer as an actual songwriter.

And then once all this has happened he goes and presents the finest radio show on air. That to me (I work mostly in radio so I'm biased) is the most special thing of all.

I have read many biographies of him over the years but I don't know much about him. And I don't mean understand the enigma of Dylan, what makes him tick and all that guff. I mean know him. Is he married? How many children does he have? I know more about Jade Goody than I do about Dylan.

And because of this, he has the capacity to genuinely surprise. I can think of no one else who has consistently done that to me. This is, I feel, unique in this day and age.

Geek lovefest over. Maybe the next thing I need to do is actually buy a ticket. He remains the cheapest legend to buy a concert ticket for.

I was in no hurry to see BD on this visit as I haven't really enjoyed much that he has recorded in well over a decade; all of the albums I love were recorded years before I 'got into' him, and some are from before I was born. I took me until I was over 30 to appreciate him, but once you realise how deep the well goes the rewards of many of the 60s and 70s albums are endless. Time and again I have listened to those songs and gained strength from them when i hadn't any of my own. I am not a religious man, but I'm more than aware that I'm describing this in spiritual terms - all I can really say is that what moves me most in all the world is art and it's depiction of humanity in all its states, and when he's on song Bob Dylan delivers art of a very high order.

His recorded output is a stunning achievement. There have been a few clunkers but that's to be expected in a career spanning over 40 years.

From an historical perspective, the first 10 years worth of albums should also be viewed in the context of Dylan's 'spokesman for a generation' role in the 1960s.

I agree that, as a live performer, he's become something of an oddity - intriguing to some, dreadful to others, a historical sideshow to yet others - but don't let that blind you to the quality of the recorded work.

because he's an important figure in the history of popular music rather than because I enjoy it. You can't feel like a proper muso until you know his stuff. Getting through his discography is like getting to the end of Ulysses. It feels like it must be good for you in some way.

A remarkable catalogue in breadth and depth - so yes there is the longevity thing. You want to know more about the person who ctreates all this and before ya know it is a hobby as well

He is a poet to rank with many of repute. The test being - do the lyrics stand up in print sans music- they do. And to prove he can write - read Chronicles -very well written as well as interesting

Yes he plagiarises /adapts whatever from a rich history of folk and blues. But only the churlish would say he hasn't added to it.

He is a complete individualist and remains so resolutely.

If you are younger you are getting him at the arse end of his career.Most of his shows these days are disappointing - he is arthritic and the voice is shot but troubadoring is his muse . So there is a bit of tribute in attending his shows too.

There are worse obsessions

... once say that Chronicles is made up of what was going to be the sleeve notes of three album rereleases? Would maybe explain the inconsistent style at least.

As for the punctuation, he was a big fan of Kerouac, the worst writer of all time (I mean with pretensions to the artistic and the literary by the way, don't go slinging Jeffrey Archer at me), could be a bit of influence bleeding through there?

it's good to know someone else out there feel the same about the Zimmerframe.

It's amazing how much shite people put up with about him (expensively crap gigs and the like). And how much they still bang on about him.

To me, i've tried him out and got absolutely nowhere. I bought the recommended one, Blonde on Blonde, Bringing it all back home etc and really really wished i was listening to something else. So i did. I obviously don't get it and nor do i want to.

It does get boring reading about him ALL the time. It makes you feel somehow inadequate and missing out on musical appreciation.

But you know, to me it's like cheese. I hate cheese. Yuck it's horrible. But i'm always being told 'how, HOW, can you hate cheese, there's so many different tastes'. Well yes there are and most of it tastes horrible and i'll be damned if i have to eat 15 different ones to get ton one that doesn't taste like crap and i'll never eat again anyway.

I felt so strongly about this recently that i rang up Word to complain! Pissed as a fart on my Honeymoon in Maritius. Sorry Alex.

He may be, but he's certainly not a great poet. Leonard Cohen hits the spot lyrically far more often than Dylan - to be honest, Morrissey on a good day is a far better lyricist than His Bobness, and I say that, even though I'd rather listen to Dylan than the Smiths these days.

The reason Bob Dylan gets acclaim as a poet is that the English professors who make these statements (stand up, Christopher Ricks) tend to be the kind of nerdy white guys who make up his fanbase. I can see no other reason.

(waits for arrival of angry Dylan fans...)

Crack! The opening snare crack, the voice keens in “once upon a time…” and Rock’s story begins

I'm Dylan Agnostic. I consider his output to be of almost monstrously variable quality. And yet,I consider him to the most important single figure in pop/rock

I wish he were not. I wish it were Joni or Jimi H or Bowie - Donald Fagen - or countless others I value and actually listen to far more, whose work contains more precise diegesis or illuminative mimesis .

But - put simply - they could not have existed without Dylan. By being himself, or rather by pulling strands of the myth of The Outsider and of The Fall and reinventing himself as the universal electric troubador - he invented the possibility of Rock.

The possibility of pursuing an idiosyncratic vision; of songs of greater length; of the use of “poetic” language; of distance and alienation from, rather than identification with or personification of the audience. He gave confidence to Lennon to become "Lennon", Hendrix to become "Hendrix", Jagger to become "Jagger" and similarly every other major Rock persona that has come after.

“Rock” as opposed to “Pop” begins with the opening snare and first vocal moment of “Like a Rolling Stone”. Of course, there were concomitant strands of artistic endeavour - Elvis, The Beatles, even The Kingsmen - all played a part a part in Rock’s creation but it is that opening snare crack that is the moment when the chrysalis breaks and a terrible beauty is born.

... I agree with you about the poetry thing. Much of Dylan's lyrics strike me as drivel. I love the story Robbie Robertson told about the first time Dylan played him Tombstone Blues. The song ended, and Robertson's response was "How can you even remember all that shit?"

But believe it or not, for me it's not what the words mean as much as they way that he sings them. He gave the gift of self expression to a lot of non singers out there, and for that I'll always be a fan.

Clive James gave a pretty good (imo) assessment:

http://www.peteatkin.com/cjcream3.htm

"As a critical estimate of Dylan comes within reach, it will always be necessary to remember that we seek it out of gratitude. If we place limitations on his achievement, we place them out of our desire to see exactly how much has been done -- which is the
only way we will be able to see what needs to be done next. A purely descriptive survey of his work can only give us an account of subject matter, leading us into the fallacy by which it is assumed that certain subjects ('protest' for example) have been exhausted.

What Dylan has exhausted is not any kind of subject matter, but a specific kind of approach to the song: the approach that relies on the indiscriminate imagination.

If rock is ever again to produce anything to equal what he has done, it will have to be something considered, disciplined and integrated. No resonance without clear statement: no radiance without clean edges. That's the rope which, by breaking it, the most talented songwriter in rock proved to be binding."

... He's probably hitting the nail on the head. Personally I have no interest whatsoever in Bob (though I do love Arlo Guthrie's version of 'Gates Of Eden' and Judy Collins' 'Tom Thumb...') and, especially, I don't understand why anyone would want to go to any of his live shows these days. If you want to fork out a load of money, sit/stand in a huge atmosphere-free arena and spend an hour or so being treated contemptuously by some whining shadow of an enigma while trying to work out if he's singing anything you can put a title to, it's your look out... I honestly can't imagine why so many people dedicate their lives to writing books about him. Still, their lives to spend as they see fit.

It's more out of a kind of fealty to his Bobness rather than any hope or expectation that his next performance/album/whatever will blow you away. It's a kind of thank you and paying of respects deemed due.

Feel free to tell me how wrong I've just got it (like the Massive needs any encouragement in that department).

I knew it wouldn't take long.

From what I read (although, as must be clear by now, I don't follow his career with that much interest)the clunkers mainly reside in the latter part of the 40 years.

It appears to me that most fans await new work with grimaces & crossed fingers rather than expectation and excitement and the 'stunning achievement' of his output seems more likely to suffer a sort of collective watering down.

have just done a 'Blagger's Guide' to the man, which is quite amusing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jxxxk/The_Blaggers_Guide_to_Bob_...

I have to agree with the original poster. His songs are all nice and pleasant but there's nothing that really grabs me and I fail to see why so many of his fans (including a few of my friends) think of him as a god.

That said, I've always favoured rhythm over melody so maybe it's not for me.

...he never felt the need to "collaborate" with Phil Collins during the 80's

Dylan has so brilliantly cultivated a compelling, enigmatic, mysterious charisma, partly by design, partly by being himself, that he has a devotion like no other. Like the femme fatale lover who drives you crazy by forever seeming to wrong foot you and make you constantly anxious about whether they really care about you at all.

All those ambiguous lyrics - as the Clive James quote says, we know he can deliver the brilliant, precise line but there's so much else that could be read as insight into the true secrets of life or could be just vagueness and meaningless surrealism - sometimes words that can be whatever you want them to be.

I agree with Sheevemaster's view about the enormous signficance of his acheivement. But I think overall it's been mostly diminishing returns, with notable exceptions, since the mid-seventies. Dylan himself admits he doesn't know how he came up with the classic mid-sixties period work and is unable to do it again, part of the reason for the alternative versions. He is a fascinating character though and I enjoy reading about him - in Chronicles etc.

why a particular musician is so important to me, but I'll give it a go.

I have never heard another songwriter who has the capacity to convey such a variety of emotions as Dylan can. There's angry Dylan, jealous Dylan, lovesick Dylan, bitchy Dylan, joyous Dylan and so on.

Without wishing to come over all 'Pseuds Corner', time and again in his songs he manages to convey something fundamental about what it means to be alive in a way that affects people at a very deep level.

back in the knife drawer mister sharp!

Sorry - this was meant to respond to Archie V. But I missed again. So Phil Collins did get in on the act after all.

I became interested in Dylan when I was seventeen (like a lot of people did, I imagine- nobody ever starts liking him when they're twelve) and it was "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "It Ain't Me Babe" , in particular, from the Greatest Hits CD that made me want to explore the rest of his back pages. Still, I've never been able to bring myself to buy his "rubbish" albums from the 80s.

Vocally, I love the way his voice evolves throughout the years; I can even stomach his contempory albums for a brief period. It's almost as though he gets bored singing in one style, and decides to go for something entirely different.

"While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him."

Zimmy

With Bob Dylan there are two possible reactions.
That of Ewan McColl in 1965, during the electric controversy, i.e. that he's a practiced-in-the-art-of-deception fake.
Then there are people who think he's the single most important artist in Rock & Roll history and that lesser mortals such as Presley, Lennon/McCartney & Jagger/Richards are merely serfs in his court. The fry that swim around the two boats, committed one day, disparaging the next, are the 'bait fish' that provide the two diametrically opposed camps with their daily dose of entertainment.

... I used to be really into Dylan in my mid-20's. At the time I remember feeling a little annoyed that no-one else I knew liked him. Whilst browsing in HMV a 'bobcat' came up to me and started enthusing at great length about every bleeding album (even 'Down in the Groove') - frankly the experience put me off Dylan rather quicky.

Due to the influx of Dylan threads on here at the moment, I wont start another one. However, I was interested to hear the general opinion on the new Clinton Heylin book?

I've never read any Heylin before, but he strikes me as being a fairly arrogant person? He spends so long slagging off other writers; especially those of the internet in his introduction that it has a tendency to put you off the rest of the book.

I've just been very lucky I guess . Saw Bob once in 1988 and he was extremely good, and Van twice, No Guru tour, and outdoors in Chester 2001 - both excellent, plus fantastic longer set with a few classics and Van in a good mood ( Chester )! The Pentangle gig in Cardif last year was utterly sublime.

like a bowl of soup. It all depends when you arrived at the party.

I came to Dylan at the wrong time. Desperate to know what it was all about, I'd absorbed Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, Highway 61 et al and loved them. Then I dashed down to the record shop to get his new one, Under the Red Sky.

It was shite. I never recovered the initial excitement I'd felt in those first few weeks of discovering him.

What I don't get is why so many go back for more, whether it's buying each inevitably disappointing tossed-off album or attending this week's debacles, to get punched in the pocket again and again.

or is the Bob just ever so slightly...well over rated? Does anyone really enjoy listening to It's alright Ma compared to, i don't know, say Agadoo.

and some like Dylan and there's probably some that will have 'Forever Young' and 'We're Having A Gang Bang' played at their funeral. Just cos someones influential and legendary doesn't mean you have to give em the time of day. There's a string of artists that make others weak at the knees that mean zip to us that we could all name. Why should Bob be any different?

This time next week it'll all be back to what a c**t George Lamb is and the crapness of Mojo\Uncut\Farmers Weekly (no Pig Of the Week anymore, thats when I cancelled my subscription).

I have been a Dylan fan since 13 and took 43 years before I saw him live, bought his albums sporadically through the years and but am now collecting his studio albums on CD, he is a constant in my life for the past 45 years, I enjoy reading other peoples views on him and especially his concert reviews I think people who have followed him through the years know they arent going to get a chatty concert just him his band and his songs in whatever form he performs them on that particular night, long live Bob

.. happy to watch documentaries on him and I fully understand and appreciate his influence and utmost importance in the role of rock down the years. It's plain that without him things would have been a lot different and many bands who I love may never have existed.

But I can't think of anyone else who consistently let's their fans down on record and in concert but is forgiven for all this and people keep coming back for more. That is quite a feat.

I am curious about him but in the end I find listening to him sing to be an academic exercise rather than an enjoyable experience. Give me The Byrds all the time.

Can we talk about XTC now?

Like so many of the respondees here, Dylan is a performer who, for me, has always been hit and miss. Yet the gauge of the man is how many times you here a song by another artist, get gobsmacked by it, investigate and find it was written by the Bobster. Proof lies in songs like 'Every Grain Of Sand' by Emmylou Harris, 'Boots Of Spanish Leather' by Nanci Griffith, or 'Trying To Get To Heaven' which I first heard on a Bowie bootleg (Glastonbury Messiah??). Every time I hear a new Dylan tune by someone else that impresses me I go and find the Dylan album it came from, if I can, and listen to the original - sometimes impressed, quite often letdown. There are many other examples of songs I didn't rate when I first heard them by Bob, that became entirely memorable by others - Jason & The Scorchers version of 'Absolutely Sweet Marie' on their first EP is a clear case in point. The man is a fantastic songsmith, but does not always do justice to his own material, it seems to me. Luckily there are others out there who can interpret these songs, polish them till they shine, and offer them up to our unworthy ears, and remind us of Dylan's worth.

The Good: I think there’s one aspect of Bob Dylan that tends to be overlooked.Whether or not he’s some great sage or seer or whatever is clearly debatable. What isn’t is that he could, at one time, seemingly effortlessy, turn out fantastic commercial pop songs. Tambourine Man, Mighty Quinn, Wheels On Fire, I Want You, All I Really Want To Do, Just Like A Woman, Heaven’s Door, Simple Twist Of Fate, Lay Lady Lay, Positively 4th Street etc etc. are all simply great pop songs. They’re hits. I realise this isn’t what serious Dylan-heads cherish about Dylan but nevertheless it’s not to be sniffed at. If Bob Dylan had never played a single show or made a single record he could still have had a lucrative career as a Brill Building-type hack pop songwriter (and that’s a noble calling as far as I’m concerned).

The Bad; I don’t really know enough about Dylan, or indeed about poetry, to sit in judgement on whether his lyrics are great poetry or a bit silly and pretentious (I suspect it’s a bit of both), but the one thing he did do - although it wasn’t necessarily his fault - is place the notion in rock music’s collective head that it was a good thing to try to be profound, “deep”, solemn, have “something important to say”. I’d say on balance that this hasn’t gone well.

The Ugly. For a while there back in the ’60s Bob Dylan was a strangely beautiful creature. Sadly, this is no longer the case.

Great points Richard

I would add to your list All Along the Watchtower, She Belongs to Me, It Ain't Me Babe as further examples of that craft.

It seems to me Dylan is at his best writing in this focussed, disciplined style. And, at his worst when he comes over "all poetic, like".

The best poetry expresses a thought or emotion in a succinct, telling way - as does the best Pop. A point Dylan himself avcknowledges in his famous comment about Smokey Robinson.

Tim Collins's post, way back, sums it all up for me: "It feels like it must be good for you in some way." We're all different, aren't we? If we all liked Bob that much, there'd be nothing else to discuss, will there? We'd be all saying: "Isn't his latest album just ACE?" "Yes, isn't it?" "Yes..." etc...
I have that sort of - well, not quite horror - but certainly what the Inland Revenue would class as evasion when it comes to certain music. I don't even own a Beatles album. That's because I've been told I should, it's good, they're brill. There's only so much you can bear before you go a bit punk.
I've not yet broached this with Cobweb Steve but I'm not entirely convinced by Radiohead. There's an awful lot of noise which doesn't seem to make sense or to fit.
Perhaps it's just me...

I wouldn't wanna go to a Dylan gig (despite me living a stones throw from the O2) but the new record is pretty good!

...that being a fan of current BD is like keeping a bunch of dead flowers in a vase because they remind you of how beautiful they used to be.

Why don't people spend their money supporting newer artists instead of someone who doesn't seem to care about anything anymore (except maybe money)?

And maybe if people stopped subsidising BD he might get the message that it's no longer up to scratch and find a way to reconnect with some inspiration... I for one believe it is possible, although hugely unlikely.

...that yug23 has a point to consider: "instead of...supporting...someone who doesn't seem to care about anything anymore" is an admirable attitude to take. I like Da Zep but why pay inflated prices to see a bunch of old people reproducing the bits from when they were 30 years younger - but not as well as then - and paying loads more for them. Me, I'm a Floyd fan but I wouldn't have paid to see a reunion post-2005 (even if all 4 had made it to the stage in time. R.I.P. Richard Wright: just bought Wet Dreams, as a kind of memorial) but I would consider going to see The Australian Pink Floyd Show.

I am of the generation for whom the first Dylan album was Blood On The Tracks, and I still think it is an extraordinary record by any standards. If you took it, plus, say,The Freewheelin'; Highway 61 Revisited, John Wesley Harding, and Time Out of Mind, I just can't think of another artist who has produced work of that calibre and difference over a 40 year span. Not everyone can put up with that voice, or the often slipshod production, but listen to the songs. Not poems, by the way. Read them on the page and they simply dont have the rigour that good poetry has - but hear them on record, supported by the melody and performance and for me you have a body of work which is truly one of the outstanding artisitc contributions of the last 50 years. And thats why so many of us keep listening and turning up to the concerts...

oops sorry - I clearly thought that last post was of such definitive importance I sent it twice

is to provide a rapid gig or two or a takeover of the bbc and the hype grabs people, they must have it no matter how shite it is.

Last week, U2, the week before The Killers, this week Dylan.

I'm not really a Dylan fan, I've got 10 or so albums of his and I'd never let them go.

My age means I was late into him, first album I ever heard was the Budokan album and I loved it, ditto Street Legal. I moved a bit further back and still love the rolling thunder tour and admire a lot of his sixties output.

Modern Times was rubbish, this one is worse and it's the fawning that does me. His past reputation will always hold him in esteem, rightly so.

It's not that his current output is at zero compared to past glories, it's just that it seems a hanging offence to criticise him.

Half a dozen of my mates trekked down to Laaaandan. All are avid Dylan fans, all were apalled, not just at the sound and the quality, but at the fact that he couldn't seem to be arsed.

They tell me it was a bit, this is what you're given and appreciate it because I am the Bob Dylan.

The sad thing is that his Radio Shows are such a joy to listen to, why can that not come over in his live shows.

It's probably true to say that if the Beatles were around now they'd be ELO and the Stones are probably Bon Jovi's Dads, but how does he get away with it?

Hmmm... I am of the generation for whom the first Dylan album was Bob Dylan ... he and me have been going strong ever since. He makes them. I buy them. Can't think of one disappointment. Even Down in the Groove and Knocked Out Loaded had something worth hearing ... the new album is great, too ... charged with the blues as Bob plays and sings it ... I was in Dublin on Tuesday night to see him action ... I wasn't (like the Word's observers) disappoointed ... he rocked the place and left the vast crowd both shaken and stirred. Hope he comes back soon. Cheers.

and failed. I feel frustrated by the fact I genuinely rate, say, Paddy McAloon or Ed Harcourt or Stuart Murdoch as better songwriters. I feel it makes me look somehow shallow or tasteless. But I just don't get it - Just Like A Woman sounds like such a dirge to these ears. But N million people can't be wrong and all that... (Or can they? I've always thought Nirvana, Jeff Buckley and Prince were rubbish, too. Maybe I should stop trying. The Beatles are pretty good though. No Belle & Sebastian, obviously, but pretty good.)

because his songs are my own Picture of Dorian Gray

For me Dylan is an artist I sometimes like and sometimes don't. He has albums and songs I think are excellent that I'm happy to have in my collection and some stuff that's very weak and laughable. He's an intriuging personality. I usually don't have a problem with his voice, I thought he did well with the vocals on Modern Times. I previewed his latest release on i-tunes and I thought he sang well on one track and on the rest his voice sounded overly raspy and worn out.