Bob Dylan’s love for Ricky Nelson despite having “no chance of meaning anything”
There’s no higher praise for any musician than a stamp of approval from Bob Dylan.
This statement rings more true considering the two most well-known facets of his personality: one, that he rarely gives praise unless he really means it, and two, that he famously refrains from giving interviews unless he really wants to. But this also means that when he does discuss the artistic abilities of others, his evaluations are nuanced and detailed and actually say a lot about his skills as an artist, too.
For instance, when discussing one of his favourite-ever Beatles tracks, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, he once said, “They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid… I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go.”
And similarly, with Johnny Rivers, he proved his penchant for being drawn to those just like him: “It was obvious that we were from the same side of town, had been read the same citations, came from the same musical family and were cut from the same cloth.”
What’s even more interesting about Dylan’s words of affirmation is that they often come coated with a thin layer of criticism, like he can’t help but downgrade his own appreciation with a more reasonable or justified explanation of a certain artist’s place in history versus their achievements as songwriters or storytellers. Like he can’t help but deliver compliments in the classic, Dylan-esque back-handed way.
When he was once discussing his love for Randy Newman, for instance, in the haze of hyping up his tracks ‘Louisiana’ and ‘Sail Away’, Dylan framed this around where he fell short as a performer, saying that he might not have had the best stage charisma but that never stopped him from writing music that soared far beyond the standards of others: “Randy might not go out on stage and knock you out, or knock your socks off. And he’s not going to get people thrilled in the front row. But he’s gonna write a better song than most people who can do it,” he said.
Dylan expressed a similar kind of attitude when it came to Ricky Nelson, almost like he owned the authority to be so openly critical while praising his work, not just because of his own reputation but because he appreciated him on a level no one else did, giving him a free pass to be as open and honest as he wanted. The troubadour has admired Nelson for a long time, once labelling his song ‘Lonesome Town’ as a “great minor masterpiece”.
He also once called 1972’s ‘Garden Party’ one of his favourites, as well as expressing his love for the singer in a broader sense in his book Chronicles: Volume One. But while he expressed his endearment to how Nelson could sing a song with a soothing, calming tone, like he’s “in the middle of a storm, men hurling past him”, he also reflected on his major disadvantage: that Nelson’s kind of music was outdated.
“His voice was sort of mysterious and made you fall into a certain mood,” he wrote, adding, “I had been a big fan of Ricky’s and still liked him. But that type of music was on its way out. It had no chance of meaning anything.”
Now, this could be easily seen as merely another example of Dylan’s familiar cynicism, but he did have a point. Nelson’s work was still majorly popular in certain spaces among those who favoured the traditional feel of rock ‘n’ roll. But as the 1960s and early 1970s emerged, culture called for something a little less safe, in part to go alongside the counterculture movement, with the pull towards things that were far more innovative and reflective of the times.
And while ‘Garden Party’ could be seen as a counterargument to this claim, it also proved the dissonance that comes with audience expectation and older hits, against the need or necessity for newer, more current music. Either way, Dylan spotted this disconnect while still acknowledging how much he loved and will always love his music, despite the strange cultural disparity that fought to push him to the sidelines.
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