The band Bob Dylan said would last for 1,000 years
The entire career arc of Bob Dylan wasn’t really in the cards when he started putting together his first folk tunes.
The rock and roll sphere wasn’t cut out for someone like him strumming away on an acoustic guitar, but through the strength of the songs alone, everything from ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ to ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ was enough to hit someone directly in the chest when they heard him for the first time. In a world of rock and rollers, Dylan was telling people the truth as he saw it, but it took a few more years until the rest of the world started to catch on to what he was doing.
Not everyone was going to pay attention to some random kid from Minnesota when he was singing traditional tunes like ‘House of the Risin’ Sun’, but The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was the first time he hit on the magic. The tunes weren’t all composed by him, but everyone from The Stones to The Beatles had to admire the raw craftsmanship on display whenever he sang tunes like ‘Masters of War’ or delivered one of the greatest heartbreak songs of all time on ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right’.
But becoming an icon like that didn’t just come from Dylan having a few decent tunes. He became the voice of the people because he captured the sound of the times better than anyone else, and even if he wasn’t gifted with the most tuneful set of pipes in the world, it was easier to hear someone telling you their life experience than watch yet another cookie-cutter talking about partying every time the radio came on.
In fact, there’s something almost punk in what Dylan was doing. He didn’t play by the rules; he was going to make music on his own terms, and he didn’t care what any of the higher-ups thought about it, so all he was missing was a mohawk and he would have fit right in alongside bands like Sex Pistols and The Clash a few years down the road. But when classic punk died an ugly death after 1977, a couple of Irish lads were willing to pick up the pieces and push the genre forward.
That’s not to say that a band like U2 were punk by any stretch. They embraced the ethos of the genre when they made tunes like ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, but they wanted to sound like no one else that had come before them. The Joshua Tree was already beginning to reshape the landscape of popular music, and when they got the chance to reach the level of their heroes, The Edge remembered Dylan marvelling at how their songs were constructed.
Aside from being the most well-written hymns of rock and roll at the time, the guitarist recalled Dylan telling them that they would still be playing U2 songs a century after they were gone, saying, “I said to Bob Dylan, ‘People are going to be playing your songs for thousands of years. He said, ‘Man, they’re going to be listening to your songs too. It’s just no one’s going to know how to play them.’”
And it’s not like Dylan was really wrong, either. Despite being around for almost 40 years, the sounds on records like ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ still feels like stepping into the future, and while Bono’s antics might be more than a little bit insufferable for some people, you can’t deny that he brought everything he could whenever they launched into tunes like ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ or when they reinvented themselves in the 1990s with tracks like ‘One’.
But that’s because U2 never forgot the importance that those Dylan records had on them when they first started. Some of the biggest names in music come and go because they lose their momentum, but if the Irish legends kept coming out with great songs, there was never much to complain about.
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