Bob Dylan on the simple reason he became a songwriter
For millions worldwide, Bob Dylan is the greatest songwriter to ever grace the earth. However, Dylan never grew up dreaming of becoming the songsmith of his generation despite the demeanour he radiates, and it was a path he fell into for one simple reason.
While music was always part of his life from an early age, it wasn’t until Dylan felt he had something to say that he began to write his own songs. At the start of his career, he was comfortable singing tracks written by others, which was adequate for a while. He was yet to fully form a perspective on life which he felt was worthy of translating to music until Dylan believed he had material within him that deserved to be heard.
Rather than sit down with a pen and paper, Dylan uses his subconsciousness as the vessel for his writing. Many of his most-loved songs have derived from a place he couldn’t locate, such as ‘Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)’, which appeared on his 1978 album Street-Legal.
When asked about the origins of the aforementioned song during an interview in 1985 with Scott Cohen, Dylan provided an illuminated response and explained in the purest terms why he initially entered the songwriting business. “The best songs are the songs you write that you don’t know anything about. They’re an escape. I don’t do too much of that because maybe it’s more important to deal with what’s happening rather than to put yourself in a place where all you can do is imagine something,” he began by noting.
Dylan then used Edgar Allen Poe as an example of a writer who could write about an event he’d not experienced, which can still successfully translate to somebody who has been through the ordeal he described.
He continued: “Now, I don’t think that’s an illegitimate way to go about things, but then you got someone like Herman Melville who writes out of experience–Moby Dick or Confidence Man. I think there’s a certain amount of fantasy in what he wrote. Can you see him riding on the back of a whale? I don’t know. I’ve never been to college and taken a literary course. I can only try to answer these questions because I’m supposed to be somebody who knows something about writing, but the actual fact is, I don’t really know that much about it.”
The legendary singer-songwriter then turned the tables on himself and explained why he picked up a pen: “I don’t know what there is to know about it, anyway. I began writing because I was singing. I think that’s an important thing. I started writing because things were changing all the time, and a certain song needed to be written. I started writing them because I wanted to sing them. If they had been written, I wouldn’t have started to write them.”
Dylan powerfully concluded: “Anyway, one thing led to another, and I just kept on writing my own songs, but I stumbled into it, really, It was nothing I had prepared myself for, but I did sing a lot of songs before I wrote any of my own. I think that’s important too.”
In simple terms, songwriting was Dylan’s calling, and although he didn’t know it at the time, he had a burning desire to get his thoughts out to the world. He believed they offered a unique perspective on current events, and because nobody else was saying these things, the weight rested on his shoulders.
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