Many guitar players are still learning the chords to the songs of Bob Dylan. Tab arrangements of his songs are being downloaded from the internet by people whose daddies did not even have glints in their eyes when the songs were written.
Bob Dylan is one of the big time songwriters of the universe, carried a guitar around all the time, always played guitar on stage but does he qualify as a guitar hero? Bob Dylan composed his songs on the guitar and anybody who has seen "No Direction Home", Martin Scorsese's documentary on Dylan, knows that he lives and breathes music. But he is essentially a rhythm guitarist - a guy who sings and plays the guitar. Can we learn anything about guitar playing from him? Maybe he doesn't "do" much but it seems hard to believe we cannot benefit from watching a guy who expressed himself on the guitar without even thinking. It's part of his language.
Take "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", a song written for a movie nobody cares about any more. The movie has vanished from our hearts and minds but the song has stayed. Just like "All Along The Watchtower", a song expressing the confusion an individual feels in a complex and hostile world. This song has lived in our consciousness for many years, too, but probably because of the definitive version made by Jimi Hendrix.
Bob Dylan's music was born in the era of the protest song. The sixties was full of young people protesting about the injustices of society. The war going on in Vietnam was the catalyst but people had been unhappy with straitlaced American and European society for many years. The main gripe in the protest movement was personal freedom. White people griped about how black people were not free. They complained about being sent to a war that was unjust. They were not happy with the homemaker's role that was forced upon women. They felt generally stifled by society.
Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' In The Wind" is the definitive protest song of the nineteen sixties. It is a list of the ills of mankind with a suggestion that the solution is an ongoing matter for anybody who cares. Rolling Stone magazine made a list of the 500 greatest songs of all time and "Blowin' In The Wind" came in at number 14. Forty years after it was first released. That song carries a whole lot of power.
Of course Bob Dylan wrote many other songs that became icons in their own way. "Just Like A Woman" was supposed to be about Dylan's affection for either Joan Baez or a New York socialite who moved in the Andy Warhol circle. A song about a woman, but this too is on Rolling Stone's list of all time greats.
"Blowin' in the Wind" was recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, a folk trio who could mesmerize huge crowds of music lovers at their concerts. Three hundred thousand copies of the song were sold in the first seven days after it was released. Many people have said that Bob Dylan might not have sold records in those numbers relying on his own singing. I still think we lose out if we do not get to know his songs and his guitar playing.
By: Ricky Sharples
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