Bob Dylan at 80 – three takes on his changing times
For all his achievements and acclaim, Dylan still has the capacity to catch his public unaware. A trio of books try to capture the conflict between trickster and soothsayer.
Dylan’s allusive lyrics, spanning low and high culture – from hepcat slang to Shakespeare – expanded the vocabulary of pop songs to the furthest limit. Bruce Elder
Bob Dylan arrived in New York in 1961, a novice folk singer from the flyover state of Minnesota. Across the Atlantic, an elderly artist showed him the way forward.
“In the world news,” Dylan recalled in his memoir Chronicles, “Picasso at 79 years old had just married his 35-year-old model. Wow. Picasso wasn’t just loafing about on crowded sidewalks. Life hadn’t flowed past him yet. Picasso had fractured the art world and cracked it wide open. He was revolutionary. I wanted to be like that.”
