How Bob Dylan Changed My Life

Photo Credit: Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK

I’m not quite sure when I became interested in Bob Dylan, but it’s been nearly half my life. In the past two or three years, a simple heavy interest has blossomed into a spiritually-tuned obsession. 

People who listen to older music are often looked down upon by some, and the further back in time that you go for music preference, the more your demographic of listeners inevitably collide with the baby boomers.

That never bothered me much, though. Since then I’ve seen three of Dylan’s live shows, made over a dozen YouTube video essays about him, listened to 40 albums worth of studio work and several bootlegs and live albums. 

People say Taylor Swift fans are crazy. People say BTS fans are crazy. No, Bob Dylan fans ARE CRAZY. Instagram has become an echo chamber of the algorithm feeding me posts from the vibrant Dylan community online.

I know Bob Dylan lyrics for every emotion, feeling, memory or experience. People may laugh if I say he’s like an old friend, but music is one of the ways that people make sense of the world and to say he’s done that for me is an understatement. 

Since there are so many eras of this artist’s work, there is such variety that saying Bob Dylan is your favorite artist is almost akin to stating that you have a dozen favorites. There’s protest Bob, electric Bob, folk Bob, country Bob, stadium tour Bob, divorce Bob, circus clown Bob, gospel Bob, 80s Bob, acoustic cover Bob, depressed Bob, blues and folk rock blend Bob, growl voice Bob, Sinatra cover Bob and finally the current era; Rough and Rowdy Ways Bob. They are all distinctly different in his voice, music style, appearance on stage and his character.

A common complaint with casual Bob Dylan listeners is that of course, they believe his poetry and lyricism are great, but his voice is terrible. I have learned to love his voice, which I admit is an acquired taste. The best way I can explain it is, would you want all actors and actresses to be beautiful and handsome? If Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” was conventionally attractive, I’m certain the film wouldn’t work half as well. He’s just the right mix of odd-looking and disheveled and you can almost trust he’s a regular person in the beginning, perhaps even someone relatable.

That’s how I feel about Bob Dylan’s voice. It’s sharp when it needs to be, piercing if the song requires it. Grave and serious sometimes, other times shouty and loud, sometimes crooning and soft. Other times, it’s emotionally evocative and touching in a way I’ve heard no other person sing. 

You see, the vocal gods didn’t bless Bob Dylan with a traditionally good voice. Singers like Freddie Mercury, Adele or Mama Cass are naturally-born amazing singers. Dylan was not. As a result, Dylan appears to have adapted his vocal range to fit whatever music he happens to be singing. His voice isn’t conventionally attractive, but in that it feels more human, singing like you or me. He projects with personality and selects character for what is needed. 

Many people strictly know Dylan for his 1960s work, but he has been a chameleon his whole career. He’s seemingly not trying to impress anyone. He hates the press and makes his own concert setlists regardless of what the audience wants. In the peak of his 1966 fame he escaped to live in the woods for eight years, and didn’t even show up for his Nobel Prize ceremony in 2016. So yeah, you can argue he’s also somewhat moody and grouchy, but who isn't? I’d rather a celebrity take a day off to nap then present themselves as happy when they are not. His production of art is not chained down or altered in any way by anyone’s expectations.

Part of the reason he remains relevant despite remaining elusive and distant, is his changing character. He reinvents himself and his music pretty often, and it’s not for attention. The story everyone knows is that he switched from political folk protest songs to electric rock ballads and made everyone angry in the ‘60s, yet he has done that his whole life. He doesn’t care what other people think, and that’s the way art should be. I would argue what was a much more jarring transition than the 1960s switch, was when Dylan in 1978 had been wearing a top hat and put on Elvis-style concerts with backup singers. Not long after he had a religious vision of sorts and changed to singing only original Christian music and preaching sermons at concerts only to revert right back three years later like nothing happened.

People have a hard time processing the fact that his songs don’t stay the same. Lady Gaga is a modern artist who also has had many distinct eras. Yet today if she performs “Poker Face,” despite it being an older song, she would most likely sing it the way it has always been sung. Bob Dylan would take for instance a soft acoustic song of his released in 1964, play it with the loud Last Waltz band in 1976, and again in 2002 during the bluesy Love and Theft tour, all in completely different ways. And in between he’ll not touch the song for 20 years and pull it out on a setlist randomly. Soon thereafter it’ll return to the vault.

He’ll change lyrics on the spot and many times the song won’t sound the same, which tends to make unaccustomed listeners angry. Instead of letting the song die upon its release, the art has an extended release, so that it is constantly evolving and changing, just like us humans. As an author revising his work, so is Dylan, bringing older material into the limelight in his new current style and reshaping it. His shifting backup band adds to this, too. Really, the only other person that achieved something similar in terms of being a chameleon that comes to my mind is probably David Bowie.

But wait, it doesn’t end there. Dylan is a mythology first and foremost, and everything about his persona, music and history adds to this. The recent 2024 biopic “A Complete Unknown” isn’t completely historically accurate, yet if you’re a die hard Dylan fan, you’ll understand this is exactly the point. His autobiography, “Chronicles: Volume One,” is pretty much fiction. The Scorsese “Rolling Thunder: A Bob Dylan Story” documentary from 2019 has characters and stories in it that are outright fake. Dylan has always been a terribly unreliable narrator, dodges questions and presents more cryptic questions, and perhaps this is a way he stays present and away from the pressures of fame by pretending it’s not there.

In addition, he heavily borrows from other music. For instance, in his early career as a folk artist, he leaned into the tradition of folk music which was to play what had been played by your father, and his father, and all fathers before him. Songs, words and melodies in folk tradition are passed around and borrowed, not in a plagiaristic way but more in a sharing of ideas and paying tribute. Bob Dylan in his early career borrowed a lot of these things and made them his own by adapting them to how he saw the world in that current moment.

In his late 1960s country period, when he played on a Johnny Cash TV show, he became Cash, in a way, and mixed it with his own creative spirit. Whether it be the Rolling Thunder Revue touring band, gospel singers, George Harrison, or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, he absorbs these talents and grows and grows. 

While collaboration perhaps is not Dylan’s strongest suit, his ability to shape shift from genre, to idea, to concept and to theme, is what keeps him alive. My favorite album of his, 2001’s “Love and Theft” is a blues rock tribute that contributed to his growth as a person and an artist. His latest studio work from 2020 is full of allusions and references to pop culture and humanity, because those are what contributed to his creative being.

It cannot be denied that his impact on modern music is immense. Part of the reason why the fanbase stays alive is that new things are being discovered every day. This isn’t entirely unique to Bob Dylan as an artist, but it makes everything more fresh and more exciting. In the early ‘90s, Dylan and his team began releasing their own bootleg compilation albums. Many artists at the time had their concerts recorded illegally, bootlegged and sold off as that was the only way to access owning artist content that wasn’t a CD or vinyl. Remember, there was no music streaming.

In these self released Dylan bootleg editions, upon which the series now has 18 editions and is still continuing, never before unseen content is revealed decades later. Such content included forgotten demos, alternate takes with different lyrics and musicians and live recordings from tours. Sometimes there are released brand new songs that have never seen the light of day for decades. On top of YouTube concert videos and forums on websites compiling concert audios, there is endless content to discover.

He’s been touring nonstop (save during Covid) since the end of the ‘80s. It is surreal to see someone who has had such an impact on your life in real life. Many who are uneducated on his setlists are expecting to hear greatest hits like any other artist at this age, yet Dylan divides us just as he did in the ‘60s by playing what he wants. 

Since I’ve listened to all of his studio albums, even the songs that are considered deep cuts make me excited to hear live with his great band. Sure, he sounds old, but he IS old. And that feels genuine, at least to me. Even if the songs don’t sound exactly the same, the ever changing arrangements of classics is exciting to see unfold, like theatre.

He isn’t even the greatest person to be honest. He introduced marijuana to the Beatles, dumped Joan Baez for a shotgun marriage, may have released 1970’s “Self Portrait” just to alienate fans and turns off many by how grumpy he sometimes is. 

At the same time, he played a big role in the Civil Rights movement, performing in front of Martin Luther King Jr. at the March On Washington. He made other civil rights-themed songs throughout his career, has supported the LGBTQ+ movement, made a Christmas album for charity and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama. He helped create a sense of normalcy for songs past radio expected length, so let’s forgive him for playing an electric set at Newport Folk Festival, shall we? Those people just weren’t ready to hear the future.

Dylan’s lyrics and music provide a constant and reliable soundtrack to the ups and downs of my life. He is a comforting familiar embrace of lyrical poetism, genuine feeling and expression in an otherwise confusing and cruel world.

I engage with the fan community on Instagram, have endless bits of information and lore at my disposal and in my journey of knowledge I have learned a lot about myself through the love of music. 

Bob Dylan will turn 85 this May, and I cannot thank him enough for how he changed my life. The pursuit of self-actualization, the mystery of not knowing everything in life is imbued in his work. Many of his songs end right before the message is revealed. When asked about song meanings, he is vague. It’s up to us to interpret, not him. That’s the beauty of his art, as every one of our interpretations can be correct based on how we feel. As he sings on “Key West Philosopher Pirate,” that’s my story, but that’s not how it ends.