I'm a huge Springsteen fan, and yet if either he or Bob Dylan had to be erased from the world's hard drive, I would save Bob Dylan's work for sure - he's the greater talent, and by leaps and bounds and skyscrapers and rocket blasts. But Bob Dylan is an alien to his public.
A panoramic vision of Bob Dylan, his music, his shifting place in American culture, from multiple angles. In fact, reading Sean Wilentz's Bob Dylan in America is as thrilling and surprising as listening to a great Dylan song.
We didn't have the phrase 'style icon' when I was young, but I have to say, I really copied Bob Dylan when I was younger: a little bit of Bob Dylan or a lot of Bob Dylan and the French symbolist poets - I liked how they dressed - and Catholic school boys.
I'm also a big Bob Dylan fan. The songs on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - which is one of his best early albums - they grow out of some of his difficulties with Suze Rotolo, and "Hard Rain," people say it had to do with the Cuban missile crisis - probably not. He denied it. I believe him, but it certainly had to do with the time.
but right now it's Bob Dylan Bob Dylan Bob Dylan all the way.
Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They're my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He's just really cool.
I was comparatively late in understanding Bob Dylan's overwhelming importance as a songwriter. Everybody who does my job exists in the shadow of Bob Dylan. There are two categories: Dylan and everybody else. It's as simple as that. And it's going to be that way until he dies.
My favorite Bob Dylan record is the very first one where he sings one Bob Dylan song and the rest of them are his interpretations of the Dust Bowl-era folk songs, or even going back as far as the mass influx of people coming into the U.S. during the gold rush. His interpretations of those songs are incredible.
I've met Bob Dylan's bodyguards, and if Steve Earle thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table, he's sadly mistaken.
I have no doubt that if I met Bob Dylan, it would be disappointing - and annoying to him. But that's why I like Bob Dylan.
I timed my previous wife's pregnancy to the moment to have my son born on Bob Dylan's 50th birthday. There is no bigger Bob Dylan fan than me. You don't just time the day and impregnate your wife to get your kid to be born on Bob Dylan's 50th birthday.
If they made a movie about Bob Dylan, I would love to play a young Bob Dylan; I mean, I've got the wild hair.
And what makes Bob Dylan stories interesting is that the only person who can decide their outcome is Bob Dylan, so you never know how they're going to go.
I want to see Bob Dylan do sketch comedy. I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan.
If I wasn't Bob Dylan, I'd probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.
Bob Dylan is someone that - I don't care how long into the future it is - somebody will still play Bob Dylan. He will always survive.