The best song ever written about Bob Dylan, according to Bob Dylan
How many artists do you think catch themselves off-guard and say out loud, ‘Fuck, I’m actually pretty talented?’ Surprisingly enough, Bob Dylan might be one of them.
To some, Dylan could be seen as the textbook definition of an egomaniac: his steadfast decisions to do things fiercely on his own terms, even when that can sometimes prove to be a detriment, show a sheer stubborn-mindedness that only someone who has themselves at the epicentre of their world can master.
But by that very same token, you could also say that Dylan has the total opposite of an air of arrogance. He most often hides from the spotlight rather than embracing it, and doing things in his own way simply shows what he’s comfortable with. In short, the bloke is a very tough nut to crack, and the truth of his life still remains a mystery to many.
All of this is to say that it may have come as a rather out-of-the-blue to hear the introspective musician voice favour about another artist and one of their songs. And this was not just any song: this was a song about him. It might have seemed indulgent, but it was a moment of realisation for Dylan that sometimes, you’ve got to embrace the love.
In his typical fashion, however, he was completely straight to the point about it. It was during a 2017 interview, when the range of songs devoted to the ‘Tambourine Man’ by other artists was brought up, including John Lennon’s ‘Yer Blues’ to David Bowie’s ‘Song for Bob Dylan’, that he gave his definitive answer on his favourite song ever written about him.
It was neither of those two, though. That prize of crowning glory went to Ricky Nelson with his song ‘Garden Party’, in which he referred to “Mr Hughes hid in Dylan’s shoes wearing his disguise”. Yet this may not have been as unexpected a response as you may have been led to believe, because if Nelson had one fan, it had always been Dylan.
The pair were practically the same age as each other, and whether it was this shared sense of becoming in the folk music world or that he just liked his sound, Dylan had felt a connection to Nelson for a very long time.
“I’d always felt kin to him,” he wrote in the first volume of his autobiography.
“He sang his songs calm and steady, like he was in the middle of a storm, men hurling past him,” Dylan continued with regard to Nelson, “His voice was sort of mysterious and made you fall into a certain mood.” It is easy to see why ‘Garden Party’ won the vote, then.
In a lot of ways, that reveals more about Dylan’s personality than any other so-called story or tale about his ambitions. He simply loves the artists that he loves, in a tight rotation, where frankly, it’s difficult for anyone else to get a look in. When it just so happened that it worked out that one of those musicians wrote a song about him, then that was just the cherry on top of the cake.
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