I’ve been laying low lately, not blogging, but I have to say something about Bob Dylan on his 80th birthday.

I’ve blogged before about Dylan, but he’s too important not to celebrate again on this day. It’s hard to exaggerate Dylan’s importance – to music, to his generation, and to me. He did so much, broke so many barriers – redefining what a popular song could be about … establishing the songwriter-as-performer as the new paradigm … bringing poetry and the ambition to create Great Art into rock-and-roll … demonstrating that unconventional vocalists can have a place in music … pioneering folk-rock, confessional-rock, stream-of-consciousness rock, and other genres.

And, as prickly, enigmatic, and individual as he was, he captured the thoughts and feelings of his entire generation. I know that Dylan bristled at being called “the Voice of his Generation,” but that seems to be the case. (something better; but that is what he is. I don’t like to be the case ) I know that I responded deeply, viscerally, almost innately to Dylan’s music when I heard it, growing up in the Sixties. And I still do.

Like so many millions, I devoured all his early records. I vividly remember tripping on LSD and listening to “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” on the floor in front of the speakers in the living room of my parents’ house (they were out or some such). I never heard such music: so vivid, so alive. Dylan managed to verbalize what we all were feeling. I don’t know how he did this: genius?

I looked back and saw that I had three references to Dylan in my book WHAT IT WAS LIKE, which is about teenagers in the late 1960s. I don’t think you could write a book about the Sixties and not include Dylan.

Of course, after his ascendancy in the Sixties, he continued to make music. Maybe he didn’t have real hit records anymore (“Like A Rolling Stone” reached #2 on the pop charts) or have a white-hot streak of brilliance like the fourteen-month period in which he released “Bringing It All Back Home,” “Highway 61 Revisted,” and “Blonde On Blonde,” but he did continue to write great songs.

I love his later songs – “Not Dark Yet” … “Mississippi” … “Things Have Changed” … “Dignity” … “Make You Feel My Love” … “Tight Connection to My Heart” … “Ring Them Bells” – as much as the songs from his prime years.

I admit that his singing can be a problem. Sometimes he’s a great vocalist and the perfect deliverer of his songs; sometimes he’s like your drunken uncle at Thanksgiving. Sometimes his devoted fans listen with their hearts, not their ears.

I admit that I stopped buying every album after BLOOD ON THE TRACKS. Maybe it was too much Dylan, for too long. His albums seemed to run hot-and-cold, and there was so much else to listen to.

I’m not crazy about how he re-writes all his great songs when he performs them these days, but I understand: he wants to keep things fresh, and he can’t really carry a tune, so he couldn’t reproduce his studio vocals even if he wanted to. (Too much cigarette smoking?) And he wants to be unpredictable. But, most often, the new versions are usually worse than the originals; all they are is different. That’s why I never collected many Dylan bootlegs. But I am glad that I saw him live: once, with Tom Petty. And it was a thrill, seeing him: no question.

Dylan became famous when he was twenty-one, and since that time, he’s always concentrated on protecting himself and his gift. Being evasive is how he kept artistically – and probably personally – alive.

But finally what matters is his songs. Five hundred songs (or nine hundred? Who knows the real number?) Supposedly, Dylan has delivered boxes and boxes of material to the Bob Dylan Archive at the University of Tulsa. In any case, his is a great achievement.

Lately, I listen to lots of Dylan covers, maybe more than cuts by the man himself. The Dixie Chicks singing “Mississippi” … Sheila Atim from the play THE GIRL FROM NORTH COUNTRY singing “Tight Connection to My Heart” … Shelby Lynne and Alison Moorer singing “Not Dark Yet” … Sarah Jarosz singing “Ring Them Bells” … Joan Baez singing “Farewell, Angelina” … Adele singing “Make You Feel My Love”

Even now, decades later, Dylan’s words can perfectly capture my current state of mind:

"People are crazy and times are strange

I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range

I used to care, but things have changed"

He’s our Shakespeare -- mysterious, paradoxical, infuriating, endearing -- embodying all the contradictions of our age.

And, finally, at a time of increasing anti-Semitism, I’m proud that he’s Jewish. He’s a major Member of the Tribe. Remember Dylan and George Gershwin and Stephen Sondheim and Richard Rodgers and Leonard Bernstein and Saul Bellow and Leonard Cohen and Steven Spielberg and Dorothy Parker and Mike Nichols and Bernie Sanders and Julie Taymor and Tony Kushner and Irving Berlin and Tom Stoppard and Arthur Miller and J.D. Salinger and Jon Stewart and Frank Gehry and Aaron Sorkin and Mel, Albert, and James L. Brooks and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Barbra Streisand and Fran Lebowitz and Stanley Kubrick and … ….. You get the idea.

“It’s not dark yet … but it’s getting there.”

Here are some of my favorite Boblinks –

Bob’s official site – lots of goodies

http://www.bobdylan.com/

Expectingrain – one of most important Dylan sites

https://www.expectingrain.com/

Sheila Atim performs “Tight Connection to My Heart” from THE GIRL FROM NORTH COUNTRY – Sheer magic. She won the Olivier Award in the West End for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical in 2018, beating out Alexander Hamilton’s sister-in-law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0grZUoUhn_k

The Dixie Chicks (now just “The Chicks”) singing MISSISSIPPI, in Sheryl Crowe’s arrangement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IoVshhawZQ

“My clothes are wet, tight on my skin / Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in”

A documentary about Winston Watson, who played drums for Dylan for a number of years. Worth your time if you’re a Dylan fan. Some personal insights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmrxlnpEmh4

Joan Baez sings Dylan’s FAREWELL ANGELINA (live, 1969)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s890UR94go0

And from Zimmy himself --

Bob Dylan – “Simple Twist of Fate” – from 1975, with Scarlet Rivera – This blew my mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1NSLicflcc

Bob Dylan – “Dignity” – always a first-class wit, and this song is Bob at the top of his game, written in 1989 – from a 1994 live “MTV Unplugged”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5NbvGJJ3tM

“Met Prince Phillip at the home of the blues

Said he'd give me information if his name wasn't used

He wanted money up front, said he was abused

By dignity”

Long live Bob Dylan!!!