The guitarist that changed Bob Dylan’s life: “Like I’d been hit by a tranquilliser bullet”
Forgive me if this sounds pretentious and an atypical way to start discussing Bob Dylan; the first law of thermodynamics is as appropriate to music as physics. The law states that energy is a constant. It can be transformed from one form to another but can be neither created nor destroyed — music functions in much the same way.
It is constantly being passed from artist to artist, transforming in their hands into something new before being passed on once again. It’s an ending cycle of reinterpretation, adaptation and creative generosity. But before I get too carried away, all of this is to make one simple point: nobody comes from nothing, not even the great Bob Dylan. There’s one guitarist who had an overarching impact on his career.
The influences behind the legendary songwriter’s music are as important as the songs themselves because they also tell a story. They tell us where Dylan came from, who he was in those early days before he’d heard of Woody Guthrie, and who he was afterwards.
Dylan has always made a deliberate effort to shroud himself in mystery, escaping the conventional route at every turn. Yet, underneath the mask that he wears for a living, he’s a human, albeit an extraordinary one. Like every other artist, he’s a product of his musical environment and the result of the work that he listened to at a formative age.
In a similar way that Dylan has influenced countless artists since he made his grand entrance into the music industry in the 1960s, there is more than one crucial figure that played a pivotal role in establishing his artistry.
Any Dylan fan will already know how Woody Guthrie changed his life as a young musician. However, for Dylan, Guthrie’s magic lay in his songcraft and his fluency at painting a picture with words.
Although his lyricism is vital to what makes him Bob Dylan, there’s more to him than words alone. While Dylan has always been a singer and songwriter, he’s also always performed and written those songs with a guitar. There’s one artist who clearly influenced Dylan’s guitar style. He, like Dylan, was more myth than man. He had a supernatural talent for guitar playing. He is, of course, Robert Johnson.
The story goes that Johnson, a uniquely talented guitarist from the Mississippi Delta, went down to the railroad tracks one day and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his musical ability. Johnson’s guitar laying was characteristic of the Delta blues style. Making heavy use of a bottleneck, Johnson’s music evokes a life spent on the road, performing on street corners, in juke joints, and in nightclubs all across America. It’s a style that can be heard in everyone from BB King to Gary Clarke Jr.
That supernatural guitar playing certainly wasn’t lost on Dylan, who first heard Johnson after an executive from Columbia Records handed him one of his records. He would later recall that first experience, “From the first note, the vibrations from the loudspeaker made my hair stand up. The stabbing sounds from the guitar could almost break a window. When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armour. I immediately differentiated between him and anyone else I had ever heard.”
Johnson’s guitar style stayed with Dylan for some time, soaking into him without him even being aware of it. It was an unconventional way to play the instrument, but it struck a powerful impression on Dylan, who was enamoured with the unique way that Johnson handled a guitar.
In his autobiography, Dylan claims Johnson’s music “had left me numb like I’d been hit by a tranquillizer bullet…Over the next few weeks, I listened to it repeatedly, cut after cut, one song after another, sitting staring at the record player. Whenever I did, it felt like a ghost had come into the room, a fearsome apparition.”
As a character who always dug deeper than surface level, it’s no surprise that Dylan was inspired by more than Johnson’s guitar playing. As a folk singer, Dylan wasn’t that interested in being a virtuoso. He was more interested in Johnson’s mythological status, the story of a man who meets the devil at a crossroads and takes control of his own fate.
For a 20-year-old from a small town trying to make a new life for himself, it sounded like an intoxicating prospect. Johnson not only shaped Dylan’s view of the guitar as a musical utensil but also helped him leave his life as Robert Zimmerman behind and evolve into Bob Dylan. If Dylan had never decided to start wearing the cloak of mystery, his career and legacy may have been far more ordinary than it is today despite his musical gift.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.