The moment Bob Dylan stopped being “great”, according to Paul Simon
Sometimes, a waining of musical greatness comes down to the old age that every dog has its day. Other times, however, a blemish on the copy sheet is a result of the daring drive that made the musician great in the first place. Thus, while Bob Dylan‘s discography may have a few duds, that doesn’t stop him from being perhaps the most preeminent artist of our times.
In fact, Dylan himself also afforded Paul Simon this lofty praise when he opined, ”I consider him one of the preeminent songwriters of our time.” But his diminutive buddy has often toed-and-froed when it comes to repaying the compliment. Much of this stems from one night at Gerde’s Folk City, the gingham-clad hot spot in Greenwich Village, where Simon & Garfunkel were about to appear for the very first time.
At the back of the dingy room, with the carpet so beer-sodden your shoes stuck to it like the wrapper to a warm boiled sweet, Dylan was hanging off the shoulder of the music critic Robert Shelton. They’d been drinking and chatting for hours. But now the room suddenly took on a wildly different ambience as the folk duo strode out onto the stage and commanded silence with a deep, hearty inhale – the international signal that a sincere performance was about to unfurl. But Dylan was still intoxicated by giddiness, and as soon as they started performing, he burst out laughing uncontrollably.
This unfortunate incident set the two contemporaries against each other, and all in all, it could’ve quite possibly been a laughing fit hat changed the course of history. While Dylan and Simon have sure seemed friendly over the years, even appearing on stage together, this awkward hurdle was never quite surpassed. Thus, Simon has often been scathing and praising in equal measure. And there is a marked moment in Dylan’s discography where he switches tact.
“I thought that second Dylan album, Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, was fantastic,” Simon told Rolling Stone in 1972. “It was very moving. Very exciting.” And he claims that the original vagabond was able to sustain that right up until towards the end of the decade. “Dylan was great, I gotta say he was great,” Simon said. “I don’t feel that at the moment, but I feel that he was great.”
Simon continued to say that Dylan might have a future as a writer but that his days as a trailblazing musician were no longer shining through. More recently, Randy Newman reflected a similar sentiment. He commented: “Dylan knows he doesn’t write like he did on those first two records. The tremendous praise that the last two have gotten, I’m not so sure [that would have happened] if they didn’t have his name on it.” By ”first two”, he surely means first ten, but nevertheless, in 1997, Dylan did indeed know that he wasn’t perhaps at his most profound.
But purple patches return, and since then, he has exhibited further magnificence – not that was needed to affirm his greatness. Even Simon has latterly placed him among the best songwriters to ever do it, even if he did feel things slipped a little away from the pinnacle upon the dawning of the 1970s.
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