The one musician Bob Dylan is certain “never made a bad record”
There is something about the mercurial nature of Bob Dylan, which means that we hang off every single word he shares. It isn’t just that he is rightly considered the greatest lyricist of the last century, meaning his words carry a certain weight when picking out the best songwriters in the world, but that he has spent so many years both in the spotlight and hugging the shadows that when he now does decide to speak candidly, we cannot get enough of it.
Such is the expectation for his every on-record breath that Dylan basically avoids doing any serious interviews. He might pick up the odd publication from time to time and give them a tasty soundbite, but for the most part, he keeps his opinions off the newspaper pages. So, if he were to share his thoughts on particular songwriters, chances are they would arrive at the person in question first. That was certainly the case for Lou Reed.
As one of popular music’s greatest innovators, it made sense that the late Velvet Underground leader Lou Reed was a perennially animated bag of emotions. Known to be a cranky curmudgeon with much say about many of his most prominent peers, the New Yorker added another string to his cultural bow by documenting a host of memorable hot takes. Yet, for all the hate, one man Reed always loved was Bob Dylan, a historic artist who managed to evade the vitriol via the quality of his music.
From being bored of glam rock contemporaries Roxy Music to labelling one of music’s other resident contrarians, Frank Zappa, as nothing more than a cheap and pretentious “loser”, Reed’s sharp tongue lashed a host of favourites in his time. Demonstrating the profoundly against-the-grain nature of the proto-punk hero, he also maintained on numerous occasions that he had always hated the work of The Beatles.
When speaking to Lou Smith in 1987, Reed outlined why, for the most part, no one needs to listen to the lyrics of rock ‘n’ roll. He said Bob Dylan was practically the only artist who conceived incredible lyrics, something he stood by after the interviewer questioned if John Lennon and The Beatles are in league with the Duluth troubadour on this front.
After maintaining he liked the Lennon solo track ‘Mother’ and clarifying that he wasn’t being snide but honest, Reed explained: “I have no respect for those people at all, I don’t listen to any of it all, it’s absolute shit. The thing that I’m really interested in is, you get it in some Dylan songs, you get barrages of it sometimes, and you know I’ll tell you”.
“To hear a song and also not only have the music and the melody be wonderful but get that other thing that engages your mind, that’s fantastic,” he added. “And when you’re not doing that, then it has to be replaced by like a visceral, physical thing, and that’s another kind of rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s great too, you know, like The Stones.”
Reed continued: “Dylan’s thing has the magic [of] familiar poetry.”
According to Reed, Bob Dylan was also a fan of his work. He claimed that the ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ songwriter once told him that he never made a bad record, and given their shared penchant for incisive poetry and genuine musical experimentalism, you’d have to take this as authentic.
In one of his more candid moments in the discussion, he revealed: “Bob Dylan said a very nice thing to me once; he said, ‘You never made a bad record’. You know, this is really nice.'”
Whether Reed ever made a bad record or not is up for debate. One might find his experimental Metal Machine Music completely intolerable to listen to, while others might cherish the daring nature of creating such an industrial cacophony of sounds. Likewise, there may be some people… somewhere, who like his collaboration with Metallica. But, whether you agree or not, Bob Dylan was kind enough to compliment Reed that way, which, considering his hero worship of the singer, might well have been the greatest award of Reed’s life.
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