Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (24 May 1941) is an American folk and rock singer guitarist and activist. Born, Robert Zimmerman, he took the name Bob Dylan, in tribute to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
Bob Dylan is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential songwriters of all time. Dylan elevated songwriting by introducing more poetic, philosophical and introspective lyrics, which inspired countless singer-songwriters all over the world: The Beatles, Joan Baez, Barry McGuire, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, ...
He scored several hit songs, including "Blowin' In The Wind" (1963), "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (1963), "The Times They Are-A Changin" (1964), "Like A Rolling Stone" (1965), "Mr. Tambourine Man" (1965), "Everybody Must Get Stoned" (aka Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, 1966), "Just Like A Woman" (1966), "All Along the Watchtower" (1968), "Lay Lady Lay" (1969), "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (1973) and "Tangled Up In Blue" (1975). Many of his songs have been covered, some becoming hits in their own right. Several of his 1960s albums have become classics, along with his 1975 album Blood On The Tracks.
Between 1962 and 1965, Dylan played acoustic music. When he changed to electric guitar in 1965, it polarized audiences, but brought him more attention from rock fans. A mysterious and difficult to categorize figure, Dylan has reached a legendary status in the music world. He has often received awards, including the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature as the first musician to win this prize.
Earlier in his career Dylan had a relationship with fellow folk musician Joan Baez. Dylan is also depicted on the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
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Zappa and Bob Dylan
Zappa mentioned Bob Dylan in his list of influences inside the sleeve of "Freak Out!" (1966), under the heading: "These People Have Contributed Materially In Many Ways To Make Our Music What It Is. Please Do Not Hold It Against Them".
Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man is quoted during Zappa's Billy The Mountain and Debra Kadabra.
Flakes, a song on FZ's Sheik Yerbouti album, contains a Dylan parody, with guitarist Adrian Belew doing the Dylan "voice". FZ asks in the background, "Wanna buy some Mandies, Bob?". Mandies is slang for no longer manufactured British Methaqualone based tablets Mandrax which were similar to Quaaludes.
Bob Dylan visited Zappa on December 22, 1982, showing up at his door, in the freezing cold, to play some songs on the piano. Dylan asked Zappa to produce his next album for him, but he never contacted him afterwards. "Infidels" was produced by Bob Dylan & Mark Knopfler and released in 1983. According to Joe Travers, interviewed by Masato Kato for Player Magazine (2009), Zappa and Dylan's sessions were recorded by Mark Pinske at the time, but the master cassettes were lent out and their current whereabouts are unknown. [1]
Frank Zappa about Bob Dylan
What is your conception of your Dream Girl?
Frank Zappa: "(...) Any girl is all right as long as she doesn't have hair like Bob Dylan." - Frank Zappa in: Fifty-Four Fab, Boss Questions ..., Interview by Michael Vosse, 1966.
"Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' was a monster record. I heard that thing and I was jumping all over the car. And then when I heard the one after that, 'Like a Rolling Stone', I wanted to quit the music business, because I felt: 'If this wins and it does what it's supposed to do, I don't need to do anything else', but it didn't do anything. It sold; but nobody responded to it the way that they should have. (...) It didn't happen right away, and I was a little disappointed. I figured, 'Well, shit, maybe it needs a little reinforcing." - Frank Kofsky interviews FZ, 1968)
"I don't think they're doing anybody a favour except themselves. You don't think for instance, that unreleased tapes by people like Dylan and so forth have any value for the listener? I would say this – if those tapes were intended for release, then I'm sure that Dylan or whoever would have put them out. I wouldn't appreciate somebody taking something I didn't want released and putting it out. That's not doing a favour to anybody, except the bootlegger who's going to trade in on the name of the artist. - Frank Zappa, Frank Zappa: Portrait of the Artist as a Businessman, interviewed by Rob Partridge/Paul Phillips, Cream, January 1972.
"As for Dylan, 'Highway 61 Revisited' was really good. Then we got 'Blonde on Blonde' and it started to sound like cowboy music, and you know what I think of cowboy music." - Frank Zappa. Interview in Playboy (1993).
Bob Dylan about Frank Zappa
On 13 February 2022, interviewed by Jeff Slate for The Wall Street Journal, [2] Dylan said that, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown measures, he listened to Freak Out!: "I listened to The Mothers of Invention record Freak Out!, that I hadn’t heard in a long, long time. What an eloquent record. No doubt about it, Zappa was light years ahead of his time. I’ve always thought that." [3]
See also
- Frankie Meets Bobby, a strange bootleg where the A-side consists of Zappa concert performances and the B-side of Dylan concert recordings.
