If Not For You...

There are many musicians, both male and female, that I’d consider “heroes”, or “heroines”. Artists like Johnny Cash, Patty Smith, Janis Joplin, Pete Townsend and Neil Young to name but a few.

For me however, there is one who stands tall above the rest. That ladies and gents, is Bob Dylan. So it is I am tasked with an attempt to sum up just how and why this man is a hero of music.

Therein lays the problem.

How do I, a person with his own opinions and feelings, hypothesise on what it is that makes Dylan a hero? It’s impossible. His music is so cathartic and personal that each listener takes something different and entirely unique from each of his wonderful songs.

And so I come to the conclusion that Bob Dylan isn’t a hero to a collective group of individuals, he is merely a hero to the individual. It just so happens that literally millions of people the world over feel the same about him.

That is the beauty of Dylan. A song as potently beautiful as ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ is to one person an ode from one man to his drug dealer; whereas to another it can be something as simple and pure as being the quintessential hippy anthem. It is a true gift to be able to write something that can possess a different interpretation each time it is read or heard.

Dylan wasn’t the first musician to take an active role in radicalism and revolution. He won’t be the last either. In fact, he was reluctant at first to even be considered as a figurehead for civil momentum. He did however; use his rapidly rising notoriety to highlight many of the things wrong with the world.

He didn’t just place the proverbial spotlight on activism; he gave it the momentum of a freight train, turned the spotlight into a headlight and sent it careering towards the people’s consciousness.

Songs like ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ weren’t stirring in the conventional sense; they weren’t a call to arms. Dylan was just 21 when he wrote the song, yet its maturity and message resonate so strong you’d be mistaken for thinking he wrote it yesterday.

It was this obvious maturity that caused the hippy movement of the 60’s to place so much faith in Dylan. His wisdom and astuteness instilled confidence in others. The fact that he was a reluctant leader only made him more endearing.

Dylan’s longevity is remarkable and the shelf life of his songs is almost unrivalled. The majority of his most potent material was recorded during a time of monumental unrest in America. The Civil Rights movement was in full force and Anti-Vietnam sentiment raged across the country.

Yet for music that was so blatantly aimed at certain events, the message still translates today. The majority of Dylan’s songs could easily be used to sum up sentiments about Afghanistan or the ridiculousness in which the Bush administration handled the dire situation faced by residents of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

For me personally, Dylan is just special.

His songs are so caustic, so emotive, so personal, so catchy and so brilliant that even the dreaded greatest hits compilations are a joy to listen to as they band together all his obvious classics, sending you on a personal rollercoaster that covers every aspect of the emotional spectrum.

He can make you dance on ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’. He can make you telephone your loved one with ‘If Not For You’. He makes it OK to be a bastard on ‘It Aint Me Babe’. He makes you chuckle with ‘Tombstone Blues’. He makes you want to rebel with ‘Maggies Farm’. He can make you feel like you can do anything, simply by holding himself up as an example.

The man even makes it respectable to do a fucking Christmas album!

They say you should never meet your heroes, but, if I could have an audience with Bob Dylan I’d find it hard to complain. To be able to sit there and listen to all his stories and have him play 'Mr. Tambourine Man' just for me. Ah, I’d die a happy man.

Hunter S. Thompson used to use Dylan’s music as ‘fuel’ when he was writing. That’s exactly what it is; fuel. Fuel for change, fuel for activism, fuel for the brain and most importantly; fuel for the soul.