The musician Bob Dylan called a “visionary of high order”
Come to think of it, Bob Dylan really isn’t all that different to Walt Whitman. They are both prolific poets, both with stratospheric minds, and both with their own hero captains steering the ship.
But where Whitman devoted his captain’s ode to Abraham Lincoln, Dylan devoted his to the producer of Eurythmics. They are certainly two different worlds, but the essence of the message remains the same nonetheless: in the singer’s eyes, presidents and kings don’t even come close. Indeed, the real mark of a master is to become one of the world’s greatest progenitors of synth pop and still remain as creatively effervescent as you ever were. After all, could Lincoln manage that?
This is, admittedly, a very long-winded way of saying that Dave Stewart, the other half of Eurythmics, has always been hailed as Dylan’s ultimate hero, so much so that he has dubbed him the ‘Captain’. To those not familiar with the pair’s friendship, this may seem like one of the most bizarre crossovers, at least in musical terms. One is a folk and rock idol primarily of the 1960s and ‘70s; the other took over the mainstream pop scene of the ‘80s – in many ways, from a sonic perspective, they couldn’t be situated at further away ends of the spectrum.
But on the other hand, it is also equally true that talent breeds talent, and when one man has spent a lifetime being a beacon to his own cause, he must develop a striking eye for finding those qualities in other people, even if they arrive from totally different backgrounds to his own. To this end, when Stewart first rocked onto the scene, Dylan was flabbergasted. Here was the true artist he had longed to have in his company and, to use his own words, a “visionary of high order”.
“Captain Dave is a dreamer and a fearless innovator, a visionary of high order, very delicately tractable on the surface but beneath that, he¹s a slamming, thumping, battering ram, very mystical but rational and sensitive when it comes to the hot irons of art forms,” Dylan once enthused of his clearly prolific friend.
But what he also recognised, beyond the walls of Eurythmics, was someone who would stop at nothing until he knew his work was truly original, continuing his flood of compliments by adding that Stewart is: “An explosive musician, deft guitar player, [and] innately recognises the genius in other people and puts it into play without being manipulative.”
In Dylan’s traditional sense, he couldn’t just deliver some quick praise and be done with it, however. His ode to Stewart turned into more like an elegy in itself, though thankfully, neither is yet to join the other side. In spite of this, he continued: “With him, there¹s mercifully no reality to yesterday. He is incredibly gracious and soulful, can command the ship and steer the course, dragger, trawler or man of war, Captain Dave.”
With poetry and pop music combined, it’s clear that, as unlikely a duo they may be, Dylan and Stewart are an inimitable force. Just like their own fair captains, in many ways.
Without having any idea how Stewart would feel about being likened to America’s great president, there’s no way of telling how much this comparison actually stands up to reality. However, if Dylan is in the picture, it’s almost guaranteed that he will attempt to paint the most glowing picture to make it work – and, in the process, convince us all that Stewart might just be the man to guide us through those choppy waters.
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