The lyricist Bob Dylan thought was in a league of his own: “Midwestern mindtrips”
There’s getting praise from one of the most celebrated artists of all time, undoubtedly a wonderful thing to have, and then there’s getting praise from Bob Dylan.
Not necessarily a hard man to impress, but a hard man to squeeze any emotion from outside of the realm of songwriting, Dylan has often kept his cards close to his chest with regard to speaking about the artists he has the utmost admiration for. While this isn’t a bad thing by any means, it does make it hard to read him and get a deeper understanding of what tickles his fancy.
That doesn’t mean that Dylan has never spoken out about his favourite artists, but his comments about others are few and far between, and it takes something special to get the folk bard to express his true feelings about another songwriter in more than just a handful of words.
However, in 2009, he revealed that there’s one writer in particular who was considered to be a peer of his for much of his career that he believed was almost untouchable in terms of his songwriting, and during an interview with The Huffington Post, he went into great detail about how he felt there were no other people close to his level of ability.
For much of his career, John Prine was likened to Dylan, often referred to by critics as being the logical successor to his place in the folk canon. While Dylan would never retire from his assumed post as the foremost folk singer, Prine was the sort of artist who kept him on his toes and demanded that he raise his game to new heights, and this was something that Dylan evidently admired about his competitor.
“Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism,” Dylan claimed. “Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. All that stuff about ‘Sam Stone’, the soldier junkie daddy, and ‘Donald and Lydia’, where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that.”
While Prine’s lyrics have often shared a similar sense of realism with the sort of things that Dylan typically writes about, observing the ordinary in American life and wryly twisting it into a gripping narrative that borders on satirical at times, there was evidently something about the work that Prine did that was enough to grab the attention of Dylan and cause him to fall head over heels for its intricacies.
While Prine was never quite revered by the general public in the same way as Dylan was, he still maintains a cult fanbase to this day, despite his passing in 2020, and plenty of new songwriters still look up to him as a source of inspiration for how to approach their own songcraft.
It’s a shame that the likes of his self-titled debut album and Sweet Revenge aren’t frequently mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde on Blonde, but for those in the know, much like Dylan, Prine was considered a master of his craft, and the kind of songwriter who doesn’t come around often.
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.