The “cutting edge” singer Bob Dylan never got to appreciate
Bob Dylan was never going to be everyone’s cup of tea when he first started breaking out the acoustic guitar.
He had his finger on the pulse of what the world needed to hear half the time he made one of his tunes, but if everyone else was used to the golden age of pop singers, hearing someone with a sandpaper voice speaking his mind was going to take a little getting used to before they could fully appreciate it. But even when Dylan started making his first amateur inroads into the mainstream, he felt that there were some artists that he never got to fully understand during their prime.
But when Dylan first emerged, there was nothing else like him at the time. The world had seen what Woody Guthrie could do with a guitar in his hands, but Dylan seemed to be fulfilling the dreams that his idol never got to. ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ were clearly indebted to the kind of music that Guthrie was making in the days before rock and roll, but even if most of Dylan’s fans ran away from the likes of Elvis Presley, Dylan was endlessly fascinated with rock and roll.
He liked the idea of teenagers losing their minds to artists like Little Richard, so when he started to gain a lot more traction for his words, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ was the watershed moment for him. His music didn’t have to be tied to an acoustic guitar anymore, and while the rest of the folk scene felt that he was making all the wrong choices by going electric, it was all done in the service of making tunes that could help reshape what the mainstream was supposed to be.
After all, that’s what good rock and roll was all about back in the day. No one really had the time to fully understand what this weird amalgamation of country, blues and soul was the minute that Presley shook his ass for the first time, but no one could deny the way that it made people feel. This was music that gave energy back to the youth of America, and it practically spat in the face of the kinds of easy listening songs that everyone threw on when they were hosting a party in the early 1950s.
The biggest names before rock and roll were people like Frank Sinatra, and while there was certainly room for people like him on the charts, Dylan didn’t understand what that kind of music brought to the table. ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ would have remained a central figure in pop no matter what he sang, but when looking at Bing Crosby, Dylan felt that he never got the chance to internalise that kind of music when he was working on making protest songs like ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’.
Crosby still had a fantastic voice, but Dylan remembered feeling a bit put off by Crosby when he first started, saying, “I don’t think what we call pop music today is any worse than it was. We never liked pop music. It never occurred to me (in the 50s) that Bing Crosby was on the cutting edge 20 years before I was listening to him. I never heard that Bing Crosby.” And while the edgier version of Crosby looks quaint today, it was all a part of the evolution of pop music.
Sinatra and Crosby look like the height of class to modern eyes, but for someone that was coming up in the age where everything was centred around more sophisticated people, hearing singers that had a bit more of an edge to their voice is actually what got the ball rolling for rock and roll. Sinatra may have said that rock and roll was nothing but a bunch of noise to him, but he may very well have helped get the ball rolling for the genre by being a bit more dangerous than the average pop singer at the time.
So while rock and roll pop might change with the times and spin many other genres in its wake, the pop giants will always be susceptible to becoming a little bit jaded about the past. Each genre has its time and place to make an impact on society, and while some of the retro aesthetics do end up bringing those genres back to life, it’s hard to see the true impact of what Dylan or Crosby were doing if you don’t know the details around their tunes.
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