Bob Dylan is THE performer of our Time

I had been looking forward to the documentary on PBS about Bob Dylan for over a month; I even had it marked on my calendar. I watched and taped it last night and tonight there will be second part! I'm so excited!

Some great lines from the first half:

Dylan was taking about a certain old timer singer/songwriter in one of the cafes getting really drunk one night and saying to him, "Remember, stay away from fear, envy, and don't be mean." Dylan said he thought that was good advice.

Joan Baez was talking about reading one of his songs and how she never understood what they were about, so she sat down with it and tried to write out what she though all the lines were saying. When she gave it to him he laughed and said, "It doesn't mean anything! Years from now all these ass****s are going to try to figure this shit out and make stuff up about what this means and think they know but they don't F***ing know!"

Dylan stole about twenty records from someone back in Minnesota where he was enrolled in university (never went to classes though). When the guy found him he talked his way out of getting beat up. (These were records by the great folk artists of our time which Dylan said were as hard to come by as hen's teeth.) He explained the theft by saying he was at that time on a "musical expedition."

About his early song writing, Dylan says he wrote the songs because he needed to sing them. In other words he needed to sing a certain kind of song, and since these songs didn't exist yet he had to write them.

My opinion: I've often though about him as a great song writer first, since so many of his songs went on to become hits by other artists. But I see now that he was a performer of the highest rate. The clips from his performances proved that to me. Here is my favorite comment by Dylan about the days of singing in coffee houses, "There were plenty of good singers there, many of them were talented and could sing, but I could see that they didn't know how to get inside the people's head, they didn't reach them. You have to be able to reach at least one person while you are up there."