“Like marble pillars”: The 12 songs that made Bob Dylan
Regardless of how authentic an artist might seem, they are always partly a product of the influences and inspirations that fuel them. Bob Dylan might have seen further than any other songwriter, but he was happily propped up on the shoulders of those who came before as he wove his own act into existence.
This was telling from the very moment he first stepped out on stage in New York City. There was a sign that referred to Dylan as the son of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. In fact, he was such a literal father figure for Dylan as he first emerged in the folk scene that he would often introduce him at hootenannies by saying, “Here’s a song from my son, Bob Dylan.”
Yet, the would-be ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ singer had his eyes set on becoming a musical forefather himself, and quickly set about spinning his old influences into a whole new trip. “Dylan has invented himself. He’s made himself up from scratch. That is, from the things he had around him and inside him,” Sam Shepard once wrote.
The playwright who hit the road with the original vagabond as part of the Rolling Thunder Revue continued: “He’s not the first one to have invented himself, but he’s the first one to have invented Dylan.” With this act, Dylan has collated his influences and inspired others to expose their inner jigsaws. And as Dylan once said, “The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for anyone but inspire them?”
One of his first influences that grabbed hold of his suede lapels and shook his worldview into its stirring clarity was the great Woody Guthrie. There are only two original songs on Bob Dylan’s self-titled debut record amidst a slew of old folk standards. One of those is ‘Song to Woody’, which he proclaims is the first he ever wrote. As far as Eric Clapton is concerned, that song tells you everything you need to know about Dylan. You can’t define your greatest influence much more clearly than that.
At the time when Dylan first arrived in New York, ‘The Village’ was flooded with the first drabs of folk players who had poured off the pages of beat literature into gingham shirts. As a rule of thumb, they all performed shop-worn folk classics from time immemorial. Likewise, the radio waves were packed to the rafters with singers taking on the works of Tin Pan Alley songwriters. Genuine originality was in short supply. Hell, people didn’t even really realise it was missing.
This prompted Dylan to comment, “I always kind of wrote my own songs but I never really would play them. Nobody played their own songs, the only person I knew who really did it was Woody Guthrie.” So, he stood out as a firm figure to follow. And Dylan followed him extremely closely… almost literally, walking the path from Minnesota right up the hospital bed in New York where Guthrie lay. Therein, he tried to learn everything he could from the ailing master of four chords and the truth.
But ironically, by following another fellow’s word to the letter, Dylan learnt a lot about proud individualism and its importance in meaningful and world-changing art. In arriving at this conclusion, he came to realise that glowing individualism is what he had always admired in the icons he followed in his youth, too.
In fact, Dylan was just about 11 years old when he stumbled upon the Promethean moment, where your childhood is pulled out from under you, and a new world of depth and purpose presents itself. From that moment on, he always felt a kinship with none other than the country legend Hank Williams. As Dylan recalls in his memoir: “I became aware that in Hank’s recorded songs were the archetype rules of poetic songwriting,” he wrote. “The architectural forms are like marble pillars.”
This mandate of deeply grounded yet wondrously poetic tales set to simple melodic structures is one that would stay with not only the seismic force of Dylan throughout his career but the entire songwriting fraternity. When a young Dylan heard the news of Williams’ untimely passing, he recalled: “It was like a great tree had fallen.” He cites William’s epic ‘Pictures from Life’s Other Side’ as one of his favourite songs. He always has, and he always will. It’s ‘Gates of Eden’ a few decades before the fact.
Yet, there was more to Dylan than just the liberated songwriting he endeavoured to develop; he was also a true iconoclast. That much was clear when he embraced positively charged particles and paired folk with electrified rock ‘n’ roll. As Animals frontman Eric Burdon said: “You might say we were all exposed – when I say ‘all of us,’ I mean the same age group on both sides of the Atlantic – we were exposed to the root of true black music at the same time, and realised that that was the road that we wanted to take.”
And anyone who has ever rocked owes a nod of inspiration to Little Richard. As Dylan said upon the rock progenitor’s passing: “He was my shining star and guiding light back when I was only a little boy. His was the original spirit that moved me to do everything I would do.” Thus, it is no surprise at all to see his classic record ‘Lucille’ amid the 12 that Dylan selected as the most influential in his life when he chatted with Scott Cohen in 1986.
With the blues of Big Bill Broonzy providing rattling lifeblood, the fearless performative ways of Memphis Minnie, the poetry of Hank Snow, the dark mystique of Bill Moroe, the quirky, weird old American melodies of the Smokey Mountain Boys, and the rocking ways of Elvis, it is easy to see how each of his choices have influenced perhaps the greatest artist in human history – an all-American product at the right time and place.
As the fellow once said in The Big Lebowski, “Sometimes there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there”. In America, in the 1960s, that man was Bob Dylan. And he was the man for that time and place because he understood which way the wind was blowing from yesterday’s weather.
You can find the full list of records Dylan selected below, and we’ve even wrapped them up in a playlist, too.
Bob Dylan’s 12 influential records:
- ‘Lady’s Man’ – Hank Snow
- ‘Lucille’ – Little Richard
- High Lonesome Sound – Roscoe Holcomb
- ‘Tom Joad’ – Woody Guthrie
- ‘Mystery Train’ – Elvis Presley
- ‘Not Fade Away’ – Buddy Holly
- ‘Molly and Tenbrooks’ – Bill Monroe
- ‘Get Back’ – Big Bill Broonzy
- ‘Chauffeur Blues’ – Memphis Minnie
- ‘Riding on Train 45’ – the Delmore Brothers
- ‘Ida Red’ – the Smokey Mountain Boys
- ‘Pictures from Life’s Other Side’ – Hank Williams
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