The unlikely genre Bob Dylan called “the other side of heavy metal”
There have been many great songwriters throughout history, but few have matched the continued talents of Bob Dylan. From his early period as a folk hero, to his Nobel Prize win, the American musician has repeatedly affirmed his songwriting genius. Inevitably, with such a long and storied career in the music industry, Dylan’s musings on the state and development of music have more weight to them than most – even if they are as bizarre as equating heavy metal to bluegrass.
It should come as no real surprise that Dylan holds an appreciation for bluegrass music. The style, which originated in the 1940s, has its roots in country music and the folk tradition that first inspired the songwriter on his path to musical greatness. On the other end of the spectrum, it’s unlikely that Bob Dylan and heavy metal have ever even been uttered in the same sentence.
From the earliest days of Black Sabbath, to the hair metal scene and Scandinavian black metal, the genre has always been broad but has never witnessed any overlap with the folk hero of Dylan.
It is fair to assume that, upon listening to the abrasive tones of heavy metal, most people would not find any comparisons to the old-school Americana of bluegrass, but then most people are not Bob Dylan. Throughout his artistic career, the songwriter has repeatedly shown that his mind works in a different way to most people. So, as you might expect, his various writings on music and genre tend to follow a different path to many musicologists and scholars. For instance, in his recent book The Philosophy of Modern Song, he drew indisputable parallels between the two seemingly disparate genres, hypothesising, “Bluegrass is the other side of heavy metal.”
Continuing in this, at first glance, bizarre claim, Dylan writes, “Both are musical forms steeped in tradition. They are the two forms of music that visually and audibly have not changed in decades.” Adding, “People in their respective fields still dress like Bill Monroe and Ronnie James Dio.” Which, in fairness to Mr Dylan, is fairly hard to dispute.
If you look at the lineage of virtually any musical genre, you can track its development and history pretty easily. Take indie rock, for instance, and you’ll see that modern indie rock shares very little in common with that of the earliest bands in the genre, like Buzzcocks. In contrast, if you look at both heavy metal and bluegrass, the modern acts within these genres still share a great deal of similarities with the style’s progenitors.
There is not a single metal band currently in operation that does not owe something to the pioneering sound of Black Sabbath and, if you look at the current metal scene, everyone is still dressed as though it’s the 1970s. The same is true for bluegrass, which has never really evolved past its 1940s beginnings. In fact, that old-school style is part of what makes the style so endearing to fans in the modern age. Both genres are, to a certain extent, living in the past and existing off of nostalgia.
While Dylan’s claims might have appeared ridiculous and wildly inaccurate at first glance, once you delve into the reasoning behind the claims, it starts to make sense. In many ways, that has been the blueprint for Dylan’s entire career; start off with something that seems radical and divisive, and then build upon it to arrive at something irrefutable.
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