“I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of,” he says in his remarkable autobiography, “Chronicles: Volume I” (2004), and you believe him. He was, as usual, thinking only about his sound. It is always the sound that interests Dylan about a song, and one of the reasons that he is only semi-articulate in interviews is that you can’t really describe a sound. It was Guthrie’s sound that attracted him, not Guthrie’s lyrics. When he heard Guthrie for the first time, he explains in the autobiography, “a voice in my head said, ‘So this is the game.’ ” It was a lonesome sound; he knew he could get it.
Without comparing myself to Bob Dylan I have to say that is exactly my feeling towards music. It is about the sound. The aural landscape if you want to get precious. Lyrics are secondary. If I want meaning, message, philosophy and so on, I read a book. When I listen to music I want to swim.
If you want a message, buy a newspaper. “Songs are songs,” Dylan says
from BOB ON BOB
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