Billy Joel on the “most important solo artist of our time”
Being an artist often involves capturing the present moment rather than focusing on the future. Many of the greatest artists aim to document the here and now through their work, and if they’re fortunate, their music can resonate even more profoundly in the years to come. While Billy Joel acknowledges that he may not have been as influential as The Beatles, he readily admits that Bob Dylan has earned the distinction of being one of the most important figures in modern music.
Coming from Joel’s background, though, Dylan was far from the musician most people on Long Island envisioned. Kids had already started jumping on the bandwagon of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones around that time, and it was going to take a lot more guts to be just a guy onstage playing an acoustic guitar, especially with a voice as unique as Dylan’s steering everything thing along.
However, Dylan’s legacy now has almost nothing to do with the quality of his voice. His trademark nasal delivery does make him identifiable right off the bat, but it was as much about what he was saying as his tone of voice. Tunes like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ were becoming standards for being unafraid to ask the hard questions about society, and no matter how many love songs the British Invasion spat out, Dylan reminded everyone that there was more to life than empty romantic tunes.
The Beatles didn’t take long to jump on the bandwagon with John Lennon’s harmonica on ‘I Should Have Known Better’, but it was more than just going along with the times. Dylan had a clear vision of how he wanted to express himself, and despite getting the boo-ing of a lifetime when he first went electric, he wasn’t about to roll over and play another folk tune again.
This was a case of Dylan flying into new territory, and since The Byrds had turned his songs into electric jangly pop songs, he could do the same thing, too. Although he would eventually go all over the map and make people wonder what the hell he was doing, even misfires like Self Portrait still had some moments on them that reminded everyone of his signature wit.
Although Joel couldn’t claim to be anything more than earnest when he started cutting his teeth, he remembered picking Columbia Records as his record company because of Dylan, saying,
“Here was this raspy singer who got no radio play, had no hit singles, had nothing going on except that he was Bob Dylan–and they had the sense to see what that meant. They stayed with him and put out those records, and he’s ended up being the most important solo artist of our time.”
And it’s not like Joel set the world on fire right out of the gate, either. ‘She’s Got A Way’ had done modest numbers on Cold Spring Harbor, but he seemed to be in danger of being a one-hit wonder after ‘Piano Man’ for a while before hitting on classics like The Stranger and 52nd Street put him on firmer ground.
But that’s the way that most artists are allowed to grow. It’s impossible to expect someone to hit it out of the park on their very first release, but if you let them work out the bugs of their sound, there’s no telling where they will go once they have a firm grip on what they want to create.
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