The song Robert Plant called the story of his life
Bob Dylan is praised for his ability to weave complex narratives into music… talk to great lyricists about their favourite wordsmith, and it won’t be long before Dylan’s name is brought up.
Leonard Cohen is a great example – while the two are geniuses in their own right, and both have a writing style that is somewhat comparable, there was never any envy between them, and they were even mutual fans, to the extent that Cohen was always happy to see Dylan get the acclaim that he believed was well deserved.
The best example of this comes from when Leonard Cohen was asked how he felt about Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, he said it was “like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.” In other words, there is no debate, Dylan’s acclaim is merely a fact of life.
Dylan has been the artist who has influenced generations upon generations of songwriters. There are a lot of people who have gone into their music looking through the lens of Bob Dylan, hoping that they would somehow be able to convey the messages that he does in a succinct way. Bruce Springsteen was one of these writers, as his ballads dedicated to society’s flaws, human expression and nostalgia are all a Bob by-product.
“I want people to get the same experience from listening to one of my records as I had when I listened to Highway 61 Revisited,” he said. “The idea that something was revealed to them that was fundamentally true and essential, and gave you a view of your world, your country, your town, your neighbours, your family.”
Perhaps what’s most impressive about Bob Dylan, however, is the way that he continues to push for this level of excellence, despite already being considered one of the greatest artists on the planet, and even up to his most recent releases, Dylan is constantly striving for greatness, attempting to put together complex lyrics and continuing to reveal hidden gems to his listeners within his words.
In 2020, Bob Dylan released his album Rough And Ready, which saw him continue to deliver on the high bar he’s set for himself. As he gets older, he looks back at his life with a maturity and knowledge that only comes with the passing of time, channelling this newfound knowledge into the track ‘I Contain Multitudes’.
A fellow songwriter and lyricist, Robert Plant, was listening in and couldn’t quite believe how well Dylan describes the process of getting older throughout this song. When the Led Zeppelin singer heard the track, he was shocked by how well it resonated with him, but equally how well it resonated with everybody else. Dylan created a truly unique individual and shared experience, and it was as though he had condensed the story of his and everybody else’s life into a single snippet of song.
“I just went, ‘This is the story of all of our lives!’”, he said, concluding, “Except he’s taken the bends in a totally different way, the curves’… (He) could probably have written for about a week in that idiom, that way of seeing it all.”
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