PODCAST: BOB DYLAN A HEADFUL OF IDEAS Season Two: 4) Songs About Bob Dylan

Songs About Bob

EXTYRACTS  FULL TEXT HERE

 It is a commonplace that Bob Dylan made possible the emergence of a whole generation of singer-songwriters. It is not surprising, therefore, that a number of them have chosen to pay ‘tribute’ to him in song. Not all of the references to Dylan have been complimentary, however. Writing a song about the greatness of another songwriter is not an easy task. Most of these songwriters merely use the figure of Dylan to explore their own concerns. Some are simply in awe of the great man. Cat Power’s Song to Bobby begins by expressing her devotion to him as a teenager and goes on to express her amazement at getting a phone call from his management asking her to support him on tour. Other songwriters merely name drop Dylan (or use an alias for him) to make a specific point. In his devastatingly personal God from his ‘primal scream’ album John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band (1970), John Lennon recites a litany of heroes, gods and gurus in which he claims he no longer believes. The name ‘Zimmerman’ (which, by now, pretty much everybody knows is Bob’s ‘real’ name) is given pride of place as the penultimate name in the list, after ‘Elvis’ and just before… (gasp!) Beatles. Don McLean’s famous ‘potted history of rock and roll’ American Pie (1971) contains the line …and the Jester sang for the King and Queen, in a coat he borrowed from James Dean…

Dylan, of course, is ‘The Jester’. In The Seeker, one of The Who’s most eloquent and forceful singles, Pete Townshend laments that Dylan – along with The Beatles, Timothy Leary and others – has failed to provide answers to the spiritual questions he has been asking. Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, in a song about his own ageing, worries that he has now grown ‘Bob Dylan’s Beard’. Belle and Sebastian’s Like Dylan in the Movies justify the reference by telling the girl to ‘Don’t Look Back’.

MARC BOLAN

Marc Bolan (who was so into Dylan that his adopted surname is a contraction of that of his hero) mentions Dylan or refers to him obliquely in a number of his songs, such as Ballrooms of Mars (1973), one of his characteristically fey poetic fantasies. He is more cryptic in his rather splendidly tongue in cheek hit single Telegram Sam, which includes the line …Bobby’s all right, Bobby’s all right/ He’s a natural born poet, he’s just outa sight… It’s also possible that Marc also modelled his trademark ‘corkscrew hair’ on Dylan circa Blonde on Blonde…

Another composition in the same vein, which is one of the best known ‘Dylan tributes’, is David Bowie’s Song to Bob Dylan from his brilliant 1971 album Hunky Dory, which also contains ‘tributes’ to Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground (Queen Bitch). The song is a highly accomplished pop confection. Bowie memorably describes Dylan’s voice as being …like sand and glue… Its most moving line is the archly observed: …Gave your heart to every bed sit room/ At least a picture on the wall… But then Bowie proceeds to appeal to Dylan to …Give us back our unity, give us back out family/ You’re every nation’s refugee… This is perhaps rather strange coming from Bowie, who was never a ‘political’ songwriter. Even more bizarre is the song’s chorus: …Here she comes, here she comes, here she comes again/ The same old painted lady from the brow of the super brain…. There is a little bit of Bowie’s current interest in Nietzschean philosophy thrown in here, but it is downright weird for Bowie to imply that Dylan had been corrupted by showbiz, personified as that ‘same old painted lady’, especially considering that Bowie himself was about to make it big in a dazzling array of stage costumes in which he often appeared as nothing less than an (admittedly rather alluring) ‘painted lady’ himself.