Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylanis an American singer-songwriter, artist and writer. He has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when his songs chronicled social unrest, although Dylan repudiated suggestions from journalists that he was a spokesman for his generation. Nevertheless, early songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements. After he left...
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth24 May 1941
CityDuluth, MN
It wouldn't kill you to stay the night anyway.
Well, I sing by night, wander by day. I'm on the road and it looks like I'm here to stay.
Last night I danced with a stranger, but she just reminded me you were the one.
Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's there
Just a reminder, if you tell anyone about what happened with Jonah last night, I'll destroy all of my writing and never play music again.
One night around that time, at Hammersmith, Bob Dylan was about to go into [his 1963 classic] 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright.He said, 'Hey, Bucky! Play mandolin on this.' I am not really a mandolin player; I could only play in certain keys. Halfway through, he stops the band, turns to the audience and points to me. He says: 'He isn't playing, he's miming.' And then: 'Should I fire him?' The whole audience yells.
Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
You have to work out where your place is. And who you are. But we're all spirit. That's all we are, we're just walking dressed up in a suit of skin, and we're going to leave that behind.
Once you think you know the song, then you have go and see how other people have done it.
A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life and certainly there's no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness.
I can picture the color of the song, or the shape of it, or who it is that I'm trying to appeal to, in the song, and what I'm trying to, almost, reinforce my feelings for. And I know that sounds sort of vague and abstract, but I've got a handle on it when I'm doing it.
There are degrees of happiness. You go from one to the other and then back again. It's hard to be completely happy when those around us are suffering and groaning from hunger.
Some of the old folk singers used to phrase things in an interesting way, and then, I got my style from seeing a lot of outdoor-type poets, who would recite their poetry. When you don't have a guitar, you recite things differently, and there used to be quite a few poets in the jazz clubs, who would recite with a different type of attitude.
People think that singing and playing is easy. It's not. It's easy to strum along, but if you actually want to really play, where it's important, that's a hard thing and not too many people are good at it.