Bob Dylan

MUCH better songwriter than singer...

He's way too conceited for me, his ego seems to ruin the possibility of respect. I'd much rather listen to Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen. Maybe I'll warm up to Bob Dylan in the future. To me, he seems overrated.

Hero.

As the old saying goes, "Amateurs borrow. Professionals steal."

Zimmy was one of the greatest thieves in show biz history. He stole from beat poets and every folk singer on MacDougal Street, usually making their work his own.

Perhaps the one exception was his version of House of The Rising Sun. He stole the arrangement - note for note  - from Dave Van Ronk who never failed to mention this fact in interviews for the next half century.

An icon as a songwriter and deservedly so, but I have always thought his singing left alot to be desired. 'Like A Rolling Stone' was a fine song and I took a strong liking to his version of 'Knockin On Heavens Door' too.  Dylan is a very strange character, but a legend nonetheless.

 Dylan was asked one time what made you decide to go the rock-n-roll route?

Dylan said, "Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?"

And that's how you became a rock-n-roll singer?

Dylan "No, that's how I got tuberculosis."

Strange very strange. 

Brilliant songwriter, an easy choice as the American poetic voice of the latter half of the 20th Century.

Don't like his voice? So what. It is just fine for selling the songs he writes, and its a hell of a lot more interesting than the pap that gets smeared across most radio airtime.

Obviously he has little appeal to the kind of imbeciles who think American Idol showcases talent, but who really gives a rat's ass what they think anyway?

How the greatest American songwriter since WWII, a guy who had more influence than anyone else on the transformation of rock and roll from juvenile fuzzy warbles to a genre with significantly more heft, is rated so low on this list is truly astounding.  This tells you that Rateitall is generally populated by children, dopes, clods and cultural squares.  Dylan has written more great songs than anyone currently living, and a sizeable percentage of his canon has become standards.  Anyone who is anyone has performed and recorded his songs for over 45 years, and certain performers made careers out of his material.  He's just an OK guitar player and pianist (although his work on keyboards has been greatly overlooked), but, also a very adequate harmonica player.  He always took a lot a crap about his singing, but if you listen to his early records you'll find that he certainly knows how to put a song across.  His phrasing, pacing and diction are quite accomplished, and he always found the proper emotional register of the song.  These days his singing is very spare, but, that's the function of doing so much singing for 50 years and being a very heavy smoker at one time.  He's the man who truly brought poetry to the American popular song, making the efforts of frauds like Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, etc., come off as really thin and trivial.  The only downside to him is the seminal influence he had on that dreadful crap music, but, since his influence was stolen rather than imposed, I'll give him a pass.  After all, you listen to the supercharged rhythms and rhyme schemes of "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and "It's All Right, Ma," and then listen to what the slackjacking hip-hop imbeciles are doing in imitation, and you'll see a universe of difference.

This list is a joke!  Dylan is five stars, no question.  If you don't like his voice, then you probably don't like Randy Newman's voice or Tom Waits's voice either.  Thether he can sing like Roy Orbison is beside the point.  Interestingly, Orbison had no problem teaming up with Dylan in the Traveling Wilburys.  Anyone who rated him lower than a three, get real!  Redeem yourselves and go back and change your vote (star number).  Too many great songs to list.

George Harrison of the Beatles:
"Dylan is so brilliant. To me, he makes William Shakespeare look like Billy Joel."

Alex Ross:
"If you look through what has been written about Bob Dylan in the past thirty-odd years, you notice a desire for him to die off, so that his younger self can assume its mythic place."

Andrew Motion, British Poet Laureate:
"He's one of the great artists of the century. He comes on the scene at a very high level, then (with a few glitches here and there) extends himself steadily --- usually staying one step ahead of his audience. [Enumerating what it is about Dylan that he especially likes:] The concentration and surprise of his lyrics; the beauty of his melodies (and the rasp of his anger); the dramatic sympathy between the words and the music; the range of his devotions; the power of self-renewal; his wit; his surrealism; the truth to experience... [Speaking of how Dylan's lyrics, unlike most rock lyrics, can stand alone without their music:] He doesn't (as Robert Lowell said he did) 'lean on the crutch of his guitar.'"

Johnny Cash:
"I love Bob Dylan, I really do. I love his early work, I love the first time he plugged in electrically, I love his Christian albums, I love his other albums."

Dave Matthews:
[Asked to name his favorites.] "It wouldn't be fair if I didn't name every Dylan record. It almost makes me furious sometimes, how good his lyrics are. You know, you aspire to things. I'm trying and trying [to write a song], and I'll get something and I'll say, 'That's pretty good,' and then I'll listen to Blood On the Tracks and think 'Who the hell am I kidding? What the hell am I talking about?' 'Come in, she said / I'll give you / shelter from the storm.' Asshole!"

Jeff Tweedy of Uncle Tupelo and Wilco:
"Overall, Dylan's probably my favorite of everyone. The Basement Tapes are something I can't get enough of and all the unoffical, unreleased basement tapes too. Desire is one of my favorite records of all time."

Luc Sante, author and teacher at Bard College, New York:
"Dylan is a complex, mercurial human being of astounding gifts, whose purposes are usually ambiguous, frequently elusive, and sometimes downright unguessable. At the same time he is a sort of communicating vessel, open to currents that run up and down the ages quite outside the confines of the popular culture of any given period."

Tom Waits:
"With Dylan, so much has been said about him, it's difficult to say anything about him that hasn't already been said, and say it better. Suffice it to say Dylan is a planet to be explored. For a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and a saw are to a carpenter. I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in - so the bootlegs I obtained in the Sixties and Seventies, where the noise and grit of the tapes became inseparable from the music, are essential to me. His journey as a songwriter is the stuff of myth, because he lives within the ether of the songs. Hail, hail The Basement Tapes. I heard most of these songs on bootlegs first. There is a joy and an abandon to this record; it's also a history lesson."

Paul Simon:
"I don't think [Dylan and the Beatles] influenced me a lot. I think it was inevitable; they were so powerful that you couldn't really escape the influence... As for Bob, I don't know. He's like the most mysterious of all the people of our generation. He's sort of impenetrable, really."

To fake for me,he is just a bussinesman.His music is nothink special.

To include Dylan in a list of Classic Rock Musician is inappropriately confining him to a genre and era.  It's like saying that Gershwin was a composer who had some great hits in the 30's or that Duke Ellington had a really good band.  Dylan belongs in a class of people who had a significant and enduring impact on art.  Just like there were painters of far greater craft than Picasso, there are guitarists and singers who are vastly superior to Dylan.  But both artists stripped their work of artifice and commercial concern and concentrated on expressing ideas, feelings and possibilities.

Yes, the electric stuff irritates me. . .but the complete body of work is terrific. . .if he never sang a note of music he'd be an above-average poet. . .

If it wasn't for Bob Dylan there wouldn't be a lot of protest songs out there. He is the King of protest, and brilliant.

Dylan is a genius in my opinion. Heavily influenced by Woody Guthrie (whom he actually met) in his formative years as a musician, he went on to carve a niche of his own, becoming arguably the greatest American songwriter/lyricist. The Beatles (John Lennon in particular) were big fans of his. Dylan's body of work is stunning. Forget his oft criticsed nasal whine; his unique phrasing and delivery more than make up for his lack of singing technique. Do not dismiss this legend lightly.

No one wrote significant lyrics until Bob Dylan emerged as the voice of a generation. It's probably hard for today's youth to comprehend what Dylan did. Sure his voice was ragged, but that was part of his charm. He was an earthy folk singer, a poet, not Perry Como. Bob Dylan pissed off grownups and questioned authority. Plus, he had some of the most talented musicians in the world behind him. Blonde On Blonde is the greatest American double lp ever.

I'm sick of hearing the "hes not a good singer" crap He was not tryign to be a pretty singer or a guitar or harmonica virtuoso he was a poet and he wrote some of the best songs ever. Timeless and classic and in my opinion the most influental songwriter in history.

Ugh! His songs are boring and has a crappy voice!

I can't believe that he is this far down the list. I have been to several Dylan concerts, and he delivers as opposed to some of the pap handed out a rock concerts. His influence is, in the USA at least, second to none!

don't care for his music at all

Very overrated.

SUCKS!

Rotten singer. Gives me a headache.

Bob Dylan is by far the most talented musician of all time.

The greastes lyricist in rock history. I believe he's as influential as the Beatles. Definitely not the greatest singer who ever lived, but he has his moments. Have never seen him live but will in the future.

voice? but a great writer and incredible influence

I saw an interview with graham nash and he said it correctly there is Dylan and Hendrix, and then there is everyone else! personally, i would put Skynyrd in there with them!!

I'm so tired of seeing the Beatles as the best ever. Bob Dylan deserves to be at the top. His music is timelss and will last much longer than any other.

One of the best! He is a terrific song writer.

Dylan is the best ever. I know that's a blank statement but it's true. he came along in the early 1960's and turned folk on its ear, man. And then he did the same for Rock. without Bob Dylan, the Beatles would've spent their career writing about puppy love and chicks.

Dislike the guy, but what a damn genius. Give yourself a treat: burn a CD with My Back Pages, All Along the Watchtower, Positively 4th Street, Mr. Tambourine Man (all 4 verses), Like a Rollin Stone (all 4 verses) and Tangled Up in Blue. Print out the lyrics and follow along and tell me there's another songwriter who is his equal. He wrote all of them in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Then burn Bob Dylan's Dream.

The knock on Dylan is always against his voice. Well, the man conveys more emotion, character, depth, and humor with his voice and turns of phrase thatn nearly anyone else in the history of recorded popular music. The truth about Dylan's lyrics is that while they are good, it his singing that makes them seem so great. His lyrics on the page seldom stand up the way they do in a song. And when Dylan is covered, other artists nearly always fall short of the Dylan's version. If you want pretty vocals go get some Mariah Carrey, if you want your soul stirred by one of the greatest voices of our time, go for Bob Dylan. His singing is transcendant.

Not the best singer or harmonica blower around,but an AMAZING songwriter.Prolific and ingenious.A true poet.

Great songwriter, not so great singer. I love The Byrds covers of My Back Pages and Mr. Tambourine Man. It's too bad more musicians don't try to emulate this man's considerable creativity.

he seems egotistical, kind of like he thinks you owe him something. he's a pioneer and a great poet but a little played out.

Bob Dylan, one of the few musicians that can actually be called an artist. Great songs, and a great voice. P.S. He didn't write Wild Horses, that was Mick and Keith.

He is incredible and wrote many incredible lyrics and wrote lyrics for various artists and people are still remaking his songs to this day. I just love when he plays that harmonica, it is great. Wild Horses I think is one of his most beautiful songs.

There was an amazing glow around Dylan when I saw him perform on Long Island in the summer of 1965. He did an acoustic first set and an electric second set that was . . . electric. It was an extremely moving experience, as was listening to each of his albums during the 1960s for the first time!

Bob has more talent in his left hand than most people could muster in their lifetime. I'll take Bob any day over the polished, empty swagging of the American Idols, Britney Spears, or any other artist that passes for popular entertainment these days. He is the man. Period. Wanna get turned on to Bob, but can't get past his voice? Give"The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" a shot for his early days, and then try "Blood on the Tracks" and "Time out of Mind" for some deeper stuff--nobody else could sing these songs.

TO MANY THE GOD OF ALL SONGWRITERS--AND WHO AM I TO ARGUE? HE'S HAD UNEVEN WORK THOUGH AND I DON'T THINK HE RESPECTS HIS OWN MUSIC. HE PLAYS SONGS A THOUSAND DIFFERENT WAYS--LIKE HE'S BORED OR SOMETHING. STILL--HE CAN WRITE SUPERBLY--HIS 'BLOOD ON THE TRACKS' WAS BRILLIANT. AND EVEN HIS LAST ALBUM WAS A SUPERIOR EFFORT. HE'S HAD MANY ALBUMS AND BROUGHT A LOT OF JOY TO A LOT OF PEOPLE--ME INCLUDED.

He is a god. There's nothing more to say.

Unreal.

Somehow he is being forgotten how influencial he was.For the life of me I don't know why.A great poet and a real voice of the times.A master.

I won't say any of you are wrong for not liking his voice, but I think you are. And for those of you who don't understand his lyrics, try reading them in silence (bobdylan.com). You don't need to be high to understand. Everyone can understand, in varying degrees. Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited, and especially Blood on the Tracks are my favorite albums of all time, from any artist.

excellentr writer terrible singer

forget elvis, bob was the king of rock. freewheelin blows my mind every time i play that album

Brilliant poet troubador for our and all generations. Always doing something new and exciting!

By far one of the greatest songeriters of all time. His songs will outlast The Beatles. I think that he's rated so low because of his voice, which I think is very underrated.

Love him, has the most unique voice and is great in concet. Bob Dylan is the best folk singer ever.

Inconsistent, as mercurial artists often are, but essential. Probably the most influential popular artist of the past 40 years, after the Beatles. And, he probably did more for the guitar manufacturers' bottom line during that period than any other artist, inspiring generations of angst-ridden teenage boys to flock to music stores. Personally, I've always been a skeptic about Dylan's "poetry" -- I think a lot of it is intentionally obscure hokum -- but his influence on other artists whose work I prefer (Springsteen, Waits, others) cannot be brushed aside.

Blonde on Blonde is still one of may favorites many, many years later.