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1. Actually, my mother discovered Bob Dylan. Well, she discovered him before any of us did. And by us I mean my dad, my 12-year-old brother and me, age 9. She was driving in her car one day and she heard “Like a Rolling Stone” on the radio and she drove directly to the record store in our town and bought the 45. The 45! Brought it home and played if for us when we got home from summer school. It was 1965. I didn’t like it at the time, but she did. Later that year my dad bought a Christmas album by Joan Baez, which was cool, but not quite as cool as what my mom did.
2. Lots of people change their names when they want to become celebrities, but usually their names are changed by someone else. An agent, a manager, an outside influence. Bob Dylan changed his own name. Because, well, who knows why? He just did. He created a character at the start of his career, before he even had a career. He was just guessing back then. But he seemed to know, at least he acted like he knew. He had seen the future, and the future was him.
3. All this fuss about the Nobel Prize for Literature is just silly.
4. What I mean is, good for them for giving him the prize, and silly of them or anyone else to think he would respond in any other way than the way he did. For goodness sakes he’s Bob Dylan. He was acoustic when it was the thing to be electric, electric when folk artists were acoustic, he’s playing songs sung by Sinatra now, he’s on the road touring at age 75. He just does his thing. Like a sunrise, or a freight train. No captions necessary.
5. But isn’t it fun to try to figure him out? And by fun I think I mean maddening.
6. If I could only hear four Bob Dylan songs, ever, here’s what they would be: Visions of Johanna, Tangled up in Blue, Positively 4th Street, and Desolation Row. If I could only sing four Bob Dylan songs, ever, here’s what they would be: I Shall Be Released; It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry; Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, and Every Grain of Sand.
7. But I would miss hearing and singing all of his other songs. Even “It Ain’t Me Babe” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
8. Dylan was actually born in Duluth, Minnesota, and spent the first six years of his life there, but like everything else about him, there has been a slight rewrite of the facts. He mostly grew up in Hibbing. And Hibbing just sounds right.
9. I saw/heard Bob Dylan in concert at Radio City Music Hall in 1988. Twenty-three years after my mother discovered him. He was good, not great, but he was Dylan. So it felt like an event. The Music Hall was the perfect venue for him. Old school but not stuffy. He didn’t say much. I don’t think he ever does. He sang for almost three hours. We got our money’s worth.
10. When I was nineteen I had a group of friends, all musicians, and our idea of a funny thing to do was to recite the opening of Shakespeare’s Henry V in a Bob Dylan voice. I don’t remember who started it, but the notion of hearing Bob Dylan say, “Oh for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention” cracked us up.
11. I wouldn’t want to date Bob Dylan, not now, not then, not ever. But I would love to have lunch with him some time. If I could bring my husband and kids. And my mom, of course.
12. I saw/heard Bob Dylan perform last July at Forest Hills, New York. It was the evening of the day of the horrendous shooting of policemen in Texas. The audience was edgy/sad/nostalgic and yes, happy in spite of everything. Mavis Staples was the opening act. She was fantastic and inspiring and thoroughly professional. She didn’t mention the shooting because, frankly what is there to say? She let the music speak for her. Then Dylan came out and did a two-hour set with one intermission. It was great. No talk, just songs. At the end he sang “Blowin’ in the Wind.” He sang it like a jazz solo. Too fast for a sing-a-long. He wasn’t going to give us that—no kumbaya moment. He sang it loud and strong. He let the words speak for themselves. “How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?” Pure art, pure science, pure beauty, pure poetry.
13. So yes, Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize. Which one? Take your pick.
