Dylanophilia

By expressing no preference between a Rod Stewart version of a Bob Dylan song and the Dylan original, I have, I know, exposed myself: I'm not a big Dylan fan. I've got Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited, obviously. And Bringing It All Back Home and Blood on the Tracks. Anyone who lokes music owns those four. And I'm interested enough to have bought The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3, and that live album we now know wasn't recorded at the Royal Albert Hall. The reviews of Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft convinced me to shell out for these two, as well, although I can't say I listen to them very often. I once asked for Biograph as a birthday present, so with that and The Bootleg Series I've got two Dylan boxed sets. I also, now I look, seem to own copies of World Gone Wrong, The Basement Tapes and Good As I Been To You, although this, I suspect, is due more to my respect for Greil Marcus, who has written so persuasively and brilliantly about Dylan's folk and blues roots, than to my Dylanophilia. And I have somehow picked up along the way Street Legal, Desire, and John Wesley Harding. Oh, and I bought Oh Mercy because it contains the lovely "Most of the Time," which is on the High Fidelity soundtrack. There are, therefore, around twenty separate Bob Dylan CDs on my shelf; in fact I own more recordings by Dylan than any other artist. Some people–my mother, say, who may not own twenty CDs in total–would say that I am a Dylan fanatic, but I know Dylan fanatics, and they would not recognize me as one of them. (I have a friend who stays logged on to the Dylan website Expecting Rain most of the day at work–as if the website were CNN and Dylan's career were the Middle East and who owns 130 Dylan albums, including a fourteen-CD boxed set of every single thing Dylan recorded during 1965 apart from–get this–Highway 61 Revisited, the only thing he recorded during 1965 that sane people would want to own. He's pretty keen.) I can't quote whole songs–just the odd line here and there. I do not regard Dylan as any more important, or any more talented, than Elvis Presley, or Marvin Gaye, or Bob Marley, or several other major artists. I have no opinion as to whether he was a poet, and especially not as to whether he was a better poet than another poet, I don't own any bootlegs, I have no desire to see him play live again (I saw him twice, and that was more than enough), I have no theories about any single song...I just like some of the tunes, and that, I have been led to believe, is Not Good Enough.

--Nick Hornby, 31 Songs. Take a look. I bet you have a Dylan album or two in your iTunes library you didn't know were there. 31 Songs is published under the title Songbook in the states.

(This post is dedicated to Eric Axelrod. I gave Eric a copy of 31 Songs as a gift years ago, and then borrowed it when he was done. It has sat on my bookshelf ever since. My bad, you can have it back now.)


Songbook by Nick Hornby [Amazon.com]