Reflecting on the Canonicity of Bob Dylan

 

The artist in rock and roll history who has the most literary significance, and perhaps the artist who is the most responsible for moving forward the boundaries of artistic expression in English-speaking culture in the rock and roll era, is Bob Dylan. He grew up in Minnesota and came to New York City in the early years of a cultural revolution and began integrating himself into a folk music tradition that was increasingly indebted to rock music as it pushed itself to the popular consciousness. His songwriting is potent and features an insistence on running back and forth between the interpersonal and the political. In that expressive space, he opened up a way for Americans to consider how their personal lives and their yearnings fit into a bigger picture in our changing landscape.

 

One other major feature in assessment of the canonicity of Bob Dylan as a primary figure in rock music history and rock influence is his enigmatic image. That is where he shows his greatest relationship to Elvis, in my opinion. Where Elvis carried the “Mystery Train” of the rock star to the public imagination, Bob ran further with that concept and toyed at times with avant-gardism and maximalism, confrontational public statements and murky lyrics. He has been, for the past sixty years, contributing to an ever-growing catalogue that often is baffling and surprising while maintaining artistic throughlines that allow his body of work to make a handful of coherent statements about late capitalism and anxiety.

 

Bob got into the concept of the rock album fairly early in his career, and became one of a handful of rock artists who established the album as the primary vehicle for rock expression as the genre matured in the global force that it was in the 1970s and 1980s. He is a singles artists’ singles artist, too, releasing a number of major top ten hits in the wild times of 1960s rock/pop radio. One of them, “Like a Rolling Stone,” inspired a number of younger singer-songwriters while also breaking the unremarkable rule that a hit single had to be under three minutes long.

 

Then there are the amazing turns of phrase in highlights like “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “I Shall Be Released,” and “Shelter from the Storm,” and the inflections in his unique voice that make an album unmistakably a Dylan album. His artistry as a guitarist, as a poet, as an actor, and as a frontman could be, in each case, the topic of another long essay. I have taken a long time to relax and roam about in the expanses of his albums in my 41 years of life, and there are those who have taken a lot more time than me to analyze his writing and his creativity. There are few other musicians, from any time in modern history, who have been the topic of a body of analytical and critical work as large as the body of written work about Bob Dylan.

 

The concept of the singer-songwriter predates Bob, and one could make a good argument that a few of the 1950s rock and roll stars who write their own material have been influences on his writing, but the concept of the singer-songwriter has been permanently changed as a result of his huge longtime influence. In the past 20 years or so, his writing has put forth an argument that aging and rock and roll can coexist in creative and surprising ways, featuring echoes of the prominence of wise older folks in the blues and tall tale traditions that he had been drawing on since his fresh-faced-but-yet-angry New York City debut in the folk scene that he got into. For a 2020 list, I controversially ranked Bob at #2 ahead of The Beatles, and though I’ve put his overview one position lower here, one could still make an argument that he belongs higher, and it would be very tough to reposition his work out from the top 10.

 

Biographical Information: born on 5/24/1941 in Duluth, Minnesota

 

Chart History:

·         Hot 100 singles in Billboard: 23

·         Top 40 singles in Billboard: 12

·         Top 10 singles in Billboard: 4

·         #1 singles in Billboard: none

·         Top 200 albums in Billboard: 72

·         Top 100 singles in Cashbox: 23

·         Monthly listeners on Spotify on 6/20/2022: 8,725,189

 

RIAA Certifications: 5+ Platinum certifications, 5+ Multi-Platinum certifications

 

Halls of Fame: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1988)

 

Total Releases: 99 albums, 272 singles and EPs, 286 compilations, 28 videos

 

Major Awards: 10 Grammys and Lifetime Achievement Award