Discovering Bob Dylan

By Trent McMartin Oct 1, 2005, 14:00 GMT

I don’t know anything about Bob Dylan. I used to consider his music “old person” music from a bygone era. I watched the Martin Scorsese directed documentary American Masters No Direction Home: Bob Dylan recently and the film offered some insight on Dylan’s life and music during his critical peak in the early to mid sixties. The footage captured in the film was extraordinary fully encapsulating the emotions Dylan was going through at the time with his reluctance to take the helm as a generation’s unofficial spokesman.

I’ve always heard about the influence Dylan had on contemporary music. Many credit him as the individual who brought folk music out of the coffee shops and into the mainstream. Others call Dylan a forerunner to the genres folk rock and country rock. I’m not going to analyze the man and go off on some Greil Marcus-like rant since I’m oblivious too much of his music and don’t look at him as god like or anything. I’ve heard the big hits and have no favouritism to any Dylan era having really first encountered the singer in the late eighties when he was a member of The Travelling Willburys. Even then I paid no attention to him thinking Roy Orbison was the stand out performer of the bunch.

I just want to understand why everyone thinks he’s so great. Why is his appeal so lasting? Why is someone who plays pop music the subject of countless debate, analysis and reference? I want to cut through the bullshit and discover Dylan on my own terms without any outside influence from any popular music publication, Internet forum or Scorsese movie.

With the exception of a few great artists, I never had the chance to make my own realization based upon my own pure, original thoughts. I wasn’t alive when The Beatles played Sullivan, or when Hendrix played Monterey or when The Ramones were a CBGBs fixture. The only modern day act that made waves on an international scale where the media didn’t corrupt my outlook was Nirvana. I’m not saying I was in Seattle at some dive watching them before they were famous. But they literally came out of nowhere and the media was clueless at first. For a brief few months they were really unclassifiable. When I first heard Nirvana in late 91’ I never said ‘that’s a grunge band.’ There was no such word at the time. But I knew at the time that a revolution, maybe not on a cultural scale like hip-hop, but on a musical level was unfolding before my eyes. 

Maybe it’s inevitable. Maybe if you love music you’re destined to discover Bob Dylan sometime or another. I’m at the age now and frame of mind where I can truly appreciate good music of all varieties regardless of popularity. My previous attempts to comprehend Dylan and his music failed miserably in the past. I passed his music over numerous times for the contemporary music acts of the day. I settled for whatever someone else told me was good.

Nothing really manipulates my tastes now even if coincidently the new Bob Dylan documentary aired on PBS around the same time as my interest perked up in the singer. Perhaps the film’s release inadvertently influenced my subconscious in some way. The movie did leave me with more questions than answers. But I doubt it made much of a difference. I’ve wanted to discover Dylan long before No Direction Home was even a glimmer in Scorsese’s eye.

Now the question is where to begin? Should I start with a hits album or such classics as The Free Wheelin’ Bob Dylan or Highway 61 Revisited? Those would be logical introductions to Dylan’s discography especially since I’m impartial to any Dylan era. But I don’t really want to focus on his most well known material at first. I’m going to start off with something a little less known but not any less deserving of praise such as Dylan’s 1969 country album Nashville Skyline, which I discovered buried in my parent’s record collection. The follow up to the rustic classic John Wesley Harding and Dylan’s first full-blown country record (featuring Johnny Cash on one track), I figure it’s as good as any place to start.