“It blows me away”: The Bob Dylan song Eric Clapton called a masterpiece
Bob Dylan being a musical genius is treated more like a fact than an opinion. Joan Baez sang of it, declaring, “You burst on the scene already a legend,” of the musician’s emergence in the 1960s folk crowd, and ever since, he has been held up as the shining epitome of lyrical talent. But as Eric Clapton found out, sometimes the artist needs to be viewed through fresh eyes in order to remind listeners of quite how good he is. Sometimes, it requires a deep dive back into the archive, which is where Clapton found one track that utterly reinvigorated his admiration.
It’s tough to pin down exactly what Dylan means to music or how he came to hold this position. He’s always about as a kind of God, with countless other legendary artists placing him in a league of his own. The Beatles once called him their “idol”, Sinéad O’Connor said that he made her want to be a musician, Nick Cave described his first meeting with Dylan as a spiritual experience. Across all genres and eras, artists have claimed the folk star to be a pioneering force and an essential door opener who has always had countless other important names to rise off the back of his inspiration and influence.
Even for someone like Eric Clapton, who is also considered to be one of the best of the best, Dylan has always appeared as a truly special artist. However, it must be tough to balance admiration and friendship, or easy to slip out of the habit of listening and appreciating the talent of a person’s music when they become a peer.
Dylan and Clapton have been thrown together repeatedly in their careers and had several mutual connections. They both appeared at The Band’s Last Waltz and worked with that same respected troupe of musicians. They were both close friends of George Harrison’s and worked on his debut album. They also both appeared at Harrison’s Concert For Bangladesh. As they milled around the same circle of revered rockers, they no doubt had countless more run-ins and were more than aware of one another musically.
But in the early 1990s, Clapton reinvigorated his love for Dylan after the release of one record made him revisit tracks beyond the man’s biggest hits. “I bought the bootleg album, and I haven’t stopped listening to it,” he said, talking about the first volume of Dylan’s now mammoth Bootleg Series, which compiles demos and studio outtakes from across his career.
In particular, one song stood out. “That song ‘Series of Dreams’ is a masterpiece,” he said, picking out the song which was recorded in 1989. He added, “It blows me away. The sound of it, the voice, and the general atmosphere is scary, beautiful.”
Admitting that while maybe before he’d been taking Dylan for granted or forgetting just how good he is amidst the world’s obsession with labelling him a genius, Clapton’s return to these lesser-known tracks served as a reminder that the world is right. “I’d forgotten what a master he is. I think he is the best,” he said.
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