While it’s fun to constantly talk about how hard it is to please a certain Bob Dylan, using his stoicism and high standards as a means to build a case about why he’s the most reputable musician in all of history, there’s one thing that proves this point just as easily: his songwriting.
As Paul Simon once said, “He’s telling you the truth and making fun of you at the same time”.
It’s the kind of songwriting that has no rules; the kind that can switch to different perspectives, tones, themes, and tropes without having to answer to everybody, just because he’s Bob Dylan. It’s the kind that earns places in other debates about the “right” way to piece together a song, like when Lindsey Buckingham turned to Stevie Nicks and questioned why she’d changed her pronouns halfway through a song, to which she challenged, “Would you say that to Bob Dylan?”
In Dylan’s world, there are no rules because he is the rules. He’s the rules as much as he’s an exception to them; the only person who can get away with doing whatever he pleases without anyone picking apart the details of his artistry just because. But is that solely because of what he’s achieved as a songwriter? Yes, he’s the only musician with a Nobel Prize, but so many other names arguably fall into the same lyrical camp, so what is it, specifically, that gives Dylan a bigger pedestal than most?
While it would be easy to go down the mystique route, arguing that he has always been just the right amount of detached from his audiences to exercise the perfect storm of intrigue and nuance, it feels just as fitting to look at all those he admires (and those he hates) for some sort of indication.
We listen to Dylan’s opinions because of his reputation, but do we also lend credence to anything he says because he actually knows what makes good art and what doesn’t? Whatever your thoughts on the singer, the simple answer is yes. Dylan knows better than anybody what true art is.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of his favourite artists are the ones who can weave in a good metaphor. As someone who led the very game of poeticism in storytelling, it makes sense why Dylan would observe the same quality in others, which is why he once praised Duff McKagan’s ‘Chip Away’. Ever the appreciator of songs about discovery in a delicate yet tongue-in-cheek manner, ‘Chip Away’ became one of the musician’s favourites because of how McKagan skirted around revelation, much like he does in his own writing.
“There’s a Duff McKagan song called ‘Chip Away’ that has profound meaning for me. It’s a graphic song,” Dylan told The Wall Street Journal, noting, “Chip away, chip away, like Michelangelo, breaking up solid marble stone to discover the form of King David inside.”
“He didn’t build him from the ground up, he chipped away the stone until he discovered the King,” he continued. “It’s like my own songwriting: I overwrite something, then I chip away lines and phrases until I get to the real thing. Shooter Jennings produced that record. It’s a great song. Dvorak, ‘Moravian Duets’. I just discovered that, but it’s over 100 years old.”
It’s probably one of the most revealing things Dylan’s ever said about his own approach to music, and an attitude that also explains his reputation as one of the hardest-headed critics out there. It’s not his style to entertain pretences, mostly because, to him, it’s all about what’s underneath those surface-level quirks. And, if there’s nothing there, it’s not worth his time to begin with.
