You will probably agree that Bob Dylan (1941) is a pop-culture colossus.
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As Andy Gill pointed out in an article for The Independent, there are at least 70 reasons for his relevance, out of which I am selecting my favourites:
1. Because he wrote the song "Blowin' in the Wind".
2. Because he made teenagers interested in poetry again. He offered a route into symbolists like Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire, and City Lights beats like Ginsberg, Corso and Ferlinghetti.
3. Because when Martin Luther King Jr gave his legendary "I have a dream" speech, Dylan wasn't just in the audience, he was on stage a few feet from Dr King, having just sung "Only a Pawn in Their Game" and "Blowin' in the Wind".
9. Because of his unique mixture of gravity and comedy. Even on albums that included songs as serious as "Masters of War" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", there would always be room for a surreal, jokey talking blues or two.
10. Because he wrote "It Ain't Me, Babe", the world's first anti-love song.
13. Because he wrote "Mr Tambourine Man".
20. Because he refuses to let a lack of aptitude or technical competence prevent him from painting pictures, writing "novels" (Tarantula), or making films (Eat the Document, Renaldo and Clara).
28. Because he's the hardest working man in showbiz, with a Never Ending Tour that just goes on and on. Dylan plays between one and two hundred gigs worldwide every single year, with minimal fuss.
32. Because he wrote "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" when barely out of his teens, a string of apocalyptic images which altered the way topical singers thought about writing protest songs. He described it as a song in which each line was the start of an individual song he was fearful of not living long enough to write (this being the era of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Armageddon seemed just around the Bay of Pigs).
40. Because he made the harmonica fashionable, and showed pop culture how expressive an instrument it could be.
46. Because he wrote "Like a Rolling Stone", frequently voted the greatest single of all time, and a song whose seismic impact in the pop scene of 1965 was like the drawing back of a curtain.
47. Because of the way he constantly revises his classic old material in concert. Infuriating for some, this process of revision is a vital way of keeping the songs interesting for him, and for his audience. There's no danger that a Dylan show will just be a facsimile run-through of heritage tracks.
51. Because he brought an unparalleled – then and now – philosophical and artistic depth to the humble pop lyric, incorporating a wealth of literary, religious and historical references within surreal "chains of flashing images", as Allen Ginsberg described them. And unlike his imitators, he managed to make them mean something.
53. Because when he wrote a protest song, it made a difference. Thanks to "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", his powerful 1964 account of the death of a poor black serving-woman at the whim of a Baltimore society blade who served a derisory sentence, the killer in question, one William Zantzinger, lived the rest of his life in bitter ignominy.
64. Because, when Bruce Springsteen inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he said: "Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body – he showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual."
67. Because Tom Waits called him "a planet to be explored... for a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and a saw are to a carpenter".
70. Because he took the 2008 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power".
The song we have selected is"I Was Young When I Left Home", whose lyrics hold a great similarity with the song "500 Miles Away from Home". You can listen to Bob Dylan in a home recording here or in the cover by Marcus Mumford (1987) in the video link below. Enjoy!
"I Was Young When I Left Home"
I was young when I left home
An' I been out a-ramblin' round
An' I never wrote a letter to my home
To my home, lord, to my home
An' I never wrote a letter to my home.
It was just the other day
I was bringin' home my pay
When i met an' old friend i used to know
Said, "Your mother is dead an' gone
An' your sisters all gone wrong
An' your daddy needs you home right away.''
Not a shirt on my back
Not a penny on my name
But I can't go home this a-way
This a-way, lord, this a-way
An' I can't go home this a-way.
If you miss the train I'm on
Count the days I'm gone
You will hear that whistle blow hundred miles
Hundred miles, honey baby, lord, lord, lord
An' you'll hear that whistle blow hundred miles.
An' I'm playin' on a track, ma'd come an' woop me back
On them trusses down by Ol' Jim McKay's
When I pay the debt i own to the commissary store
I will pawn my watch an' chain an' go home
Go home, lord, lord, lord
I will pawn my watch an' chain an' go home.
Used to tell my ma sometimes
When I see them ridin' blind
Gonna make me a home out in the wind
In the wind, lord in the wind
Make me a home out in the wind.
I don't like it in the wind
I go back home again
But i can't go home this a-way
This a-way, lord, lord, lord
An' i can go home this a-way.
I was young when i left home
An' I been out a-ramblin' round
An' I never wrote a letter to my home
To my home, lord, to my home
An' I never wrote a letter to my home.
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