

What draws me (and I'm sure countless others) to Dylan is that he is able to span the whole spectrum of human emotion better and more completely than any other artist of whom I'm aware. Please note that I am not just talking about lyrics - while I do often find Dylan's lyrics fascinating, they are not the only aspect of Bob that draw me to him. To me, music is primarily a medium by which an emotion, or a thought, or an atmosphere, or a mood (or whatever) is conveyed from the artist to the listener. For all my love (sometimes) of high technical proficiency or complexity or various things like that, I ultimately see music as more than just notes on a page. The question must then be raised - why?!!! While I dislike a good number of Dylan's albums, particularly in the latter half of Dylan's career, my decision to give Bob the coveted five-star artist rating (which only the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Sly & the Family Stone can claim in addition to Bob) is one of the easiest ones I have ever made with regards to this website. This may surprise you - from my experiences, most people who enjoy art rock tend to despise Dylan, yet while a primary focus of this website is prog rock and the like, I have a GREAT love of Dylan as a whole. Tambourine Man" or Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower," you couldn't care less about Dylan's takes. You also probably think that Dylan songs are always made better when other people cover them, and while you admire the Byrds' version of "Mr. You probably hate his "unlistenable" voice, you hate the fact that most of his songs are based in "simplistic" patterns, you hate his lyrics that don't make any real sense, and you hate the fact that he opened the door for anybody with a guitar and a desire to sing to make music, even if they weren't talented in a technical sense. If you take this approach, I'd estimate that there's a good 90-95% chance that you despise Dylan and consider him a talentless hack. There are many people in this world for whom music is mostly based in technical features, and they think of music as merely a collection of notes, chord progressions, time signatures, whatever.

No artist better exemplifies the above ancient platitude, and I fully believe that the attitude of anybody towards Robert Zimmerman as a whole is strongly correlated to the degree one agrees with it.

Before The Flood (Bob Dylan And The Band).The Basement Tapes (Bob Dylan And The Band)."The Most Important Part Of Music Is What Isn't The Notes" Bob Dylan Completely confused by the rating system? Go here for an explanation.
