Why Bob Dylan Matters

It is an essential part of Dylan’s genius that he is constantly evolving as an artist. This

His artistic genius—in his words, music, and voice—create pain, but precisely because of the brilliance of his art on this album, these songs produce recompense for the loss of love and the memory of what had once been.

in part because of the sublimation of life experience into art, which is the essence of the album

It wasn’t until 2013, when Dylan put out The Bootleg Series Volume 10: Another Self Portrait, with alternate, live, and overdub-free versions, that the brilliance of this period truly came to light, as Marcus himself would eventually acknowledge

a return to a new, creative version of the folk traditions that had always been in his blood

The song is still urgent in its questions, but it can’t, couldn’t ever, be attached to any one historical event or condition

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind / The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” Is the wind blowing the answer away from us, never to be heard, or blowing it toward us, about to right the injustices of those nine urgent questions? Roman

To this day, the attitude of anyone old enough to have had a position on that war probably lines up pretty well with what they think of Bob Dylan the man, even after all these years

It is through song that we give depth to the sentiments for which mere speech is at times of crisis insufficient

Seven years after those songs came out, as Dylan relates in his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, it was the message, not the music, that the media and general public recalled