By Doug Draper
One of the very first record albums I ever bought in my life, when I was around 12 or 13 years old, was something called “In The Wind’ by the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary.
Happy Birthday Bob. May there be many more.
Track after track, that early 1960s album still stands up as a great folk album from that wild and wonderful Greenwich Village era, but the two tracks that stood out the most for me were ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ and ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’, both penned by a then very young immigrant to that Village scene who’d changed his name from Bob Zimmerman to Bob Dylan.
Those two songs, which I quickly learned how to play on a cheap acoustic guitar I owned at the time, were my introduction to Bob Dylan, and the rest is history. Whether it was Bob doing his own music or someone covering it – The Byrds with ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ and ‘My Back Pages’ or Jimi Hendrix doing an epic take on ‘All Along The Watchtower’ – I was sold, as were so many others.
Dylan who, believe it or not, celebrates his 70th birthday this May 24, injected the language of every great poet from Emily Dickinson to Allen Ginsberg into his lyrics and changed pop music for decades to come, influencing everyone from singer/songwriters Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Ani DiFranco to super groups like The Beatles, Rolling Stones and U2. After Bob and such songs as ‘Masters of War’ (still one of the hardest-hitting anti-war songs of all time), The Times They Are A-Changin’, ‘Maggie’s Farm’ and ‘With God On Our Side’ (for some as powerful an anti-war song as ‘Masters of War’).
Then, of course, there is the early epic hit by this master, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. In the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine, tribute it paid to Dylan on his 70th birthday and some of the best songwriters of the past half century comment on his 70 best songs. Bono from U2 writes the essay on this number one song and quotes what I agree are the best bit of lyrics from it, although there are so many others. They read; “You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns when they all come down and did tricks for you. You never understood that it ain’t no good, you shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you.”
There is so much more in the Dylan catalogue and I always felt I wrote a little better after listening to the words in some of his music.
Happy Birthday Bob and whatever gift any of us could give you would never equal the many gifts of great songs you have given us.
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