The 1960s singer Bob Dylan called “the greatest live act” he ever saw
Bob Dylan didn’t get into the music business to be the massive showman that everyone else was.
Mick Jagger and Elvis Presley had that kind of ground covered, and with a guitar in his hands, it wasn’t like Dylan was going to be making the same kind of dance moves that some of the original rock and roll stars were making. He was far more content to let his music do the talking, and a lot of his heroes were known for doing the exact same thing whenever they got out onstage.
If you think about it, a lot of Woody Guthrie’s stage presence was never meant to be too showy in the slightest. He liked the idea of making music that had a bit more resonance than the average pop song, and when he sang ‘This Land is Your Land’, it was like he was trying to break down the barrier between the musician and the audience as much as possible whenever he sang.
But Dylan was after a different kind of thrill whenever he started making some of his classics. He needed to make songs that left the audience thinking about the greater problems with the world, but that’s a hard tightrope to walk. It’s hard for anyone to tell whether someone is speaking their mind or using a song as an excuse to give a sermon, but Dylan always knew how to thread that musical needle perfectly.
He could talk out of both sides of his mouth occasionally, but he didn’t want to ever claim that he had all the answers, either. He was simply an entertainer who had a bit more on his mind than most, but he also knew that the music that he was making came from the power that he put into it. He needed to make people believe that he was doing everything he could to get his music out there, and that came from listening to the greatest legends that came well before rock and roll had even started.
Because, really, the greatest showmen in rock history came from the blues, and you can hear it in the way that they performed. Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters had a certain swagger to the way that they sang, but when you listen to any record that Howlin’ Wolf ever made, you would have sworn that he was singing about the kind of swagger that was developed in the underworld.
His voice was enough to scare virtually anybody, but the fact that he stood still onstage was what won Dylan over, saying, “Howlin’ Wolf, to me, was the greatest live act, because he did not have to move a finger when he performed — if that’s what you’d call it, ‘performing.’ I don’t like people that jump around. When people think about Elvis moving around — he didn’t jump around. He moved with grace.”
And when you look at the countless artists that he inspired, it wasn’t like the rest of the world wasn’t paying attention. Robert Plant knew that he was listening to a legend when he first heard what Wolf could do, and when you listen to what ‘Percy’ did in Led Zeppelin, a lot of it was just a higher version of what he was doing, only this time with a bit more theatricality added into the mix now and again.
So while Dylan had his fair share of moments where he could get a bit more animated onstage, Howlin’ Wolf was the perfect example of less is more back in the day. He didn’t want to be doing strange dance moves in between every one of his songs, because if you have songs that were as gritty as his were, it was much easier to stand there and let the music speak for itself every time you sang.
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