“Unlike anybody”: The artist Bob Dylan called his musical brother
Most artists never try to look at their career as a full-time job. As much as Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed made their living writing brilliant pieces of art, it would be impossible to think of their craft as a nine-to-five every time they got the piece of paper in front of them. For most artists, it’s about driving the emotion out of themselves, and Bob Dylan thought that this heartland rocker was speaking his language when he heard him for the first time.
Then again, it was hard to pin down what Dylan was getting at during the best of times. Although he had a snide tongue talking about the injustices of the world in his prime, there would also be times when he would flip on a dime to writing traditional love songs that no one knew he could do, like ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right’ or the pure heartache of Blood on the Tracks.
It was a far cry from the political stuff that he was known for, but that hardly mattered to him. Being a poet of his calibre was about capturing a feeling between those stanzas, and if it managed to be angry, contemplative, or just plain funny, it did its job if it evoked some kind of emotion in the listener.
But Bruce Springsteen was a much different beast when he emerged on the scene. Though the stench of Dylan copycats had grown exponentially since The Freewheelin Bob Dylan, ‘The Boss’ seemed more concerned with writing about the characters that he met every single day rather than trying to tell people how they were going to live their lives.
Listening back to any of his tunes, Springsteen never claims to have any of the answers for the characters in his songs. He can only talk about the kind of things that he sees, and even if it’s bittersweet and doesn’t have a happy ending, he still puts a little hope in the equation for them to go through life.
Although Dylan was far more blunt than Springsteen could ever hope to be, he admitted that he felt a strange kinship to what he was doing through the years, telling Rolling Stone, “I love Bruce like a brother. He’s a powerful performer – unlike anybody. I care about him deeply.” And if you look at where both of them went in their later years, it’s easy to see their influences overlapping.
While Springsteen had been labelled as a Dylan decoy for the first half of his career, it’s easy to see The Rising as a template for what Mr Zimmerman would do later on Love and Theft. Each of them painted a grim picture of America and what the future holds for the country in the aftermath of something like 9/11, but whereas Springsteen was the light in the darkness, Dylan had a more philosophical angle when trying to understand the reality of the situation.
Because that’s what both Springsteen and Dylan were so good at. They never claimed to be the greatest poets in the world, but whenever someone puts on one of their songs, they are getting a good look at what America looks like for those who are on street level.
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.