The singer Bob Dylan said was out of everyone’s league: “His gift is so great”
There’s no one on this planet who would claim that Bob Dylan is one of the most showstopping singers in the world.
He’s clearly great at his craft whenever he sings a song, but if you judge him on the same metric that you would someone like Freddie Mercury, there’s no question that he isn’t on that level. Dylan’s voice is more about setting a scene and telling a story whenever he writes a tune, but he had a keen ear for when he heard the right voice whenever the radio came on.
But even by rock and roll standards, Dylan was all over the place when it came to his personal taste. His biggest hero was Woody Guthrie, and while his voice was a lot rougher than what most people would expect, he wasn’t trying to put on any effects for his audience. He was the epitome of the everyman when he sang, and while the songs weren’t the hardest things in the world, it was more about making a statement every time he opened his mouth than trying to compete with Pavarotti.
The same could be said of how Dylan wrote a lot of his tunes. His voice wasn’t going to win any awards, but even when looking at the great versions of his classics that have been covered over the years, there’s no one else that could have brought the same passion and fire to a song like ‘Masters of War’ or the heartache to ‘Tangled Up in Blue’. But if you were looking for real passionate singing, it was going to come from the world of R&B rather than traditional rock and roll.
Elvis Presley could definitely sing his ass off, but when looking at what Motown was spitting out at the time as well, acts like The Temptations were miles above what rock and roll was doing. These were seasoned veterans who could make the greatest harmonies that the world had ever known, but even with all of the greatest artists from Hitsville, Dylan was stopped in his tracks whenever Aaron Neville opened his mouth.
His voice isn’t one that has a lot of authority in the same way that Johnny Cash might have, but the tenderness behind every word he sang was absolutely perfect. Whereas most people try to get everyone to listen to the lyrics every single time they play one of their tunes, Neville made you think about the emotion line by line whenever he sang, and as far as Dylan was concerned, there was no one else who could ever compare to him.
Others might have had more showstopping voices, but Dylan felt that Neville was a one-off that no one would ever replicate, saying, “He’s the most soulful of singers, maybe in all of recorded history. If angels sing, they must sing in that voice. I just think his gift is so great. The man has no flaws, never has. He’s always been one of my favorite singers right from the beginning.” But for as much as he loved Neville’s voice, how the hell was that kind of magic going to rub off on the folk rock icon?
He still sang with that nasally rasp in his voice whenever he opened his mouth, but when listening to how he approached his craft, he was always trying to make people think about his lyrics in the same way they did when listening to Neville. He wasn’t going to have the same diction and nowhere near the same range, but even up to his later records, Dylan was leaving space between every line so people could internalise what he said the same way that Neville did.
Most listeners might not have thought of Dylan as the kind to focus on proper vocal training, but he was always studying what he saw out in the wild. He was never going to be a replica of the greatest soul voices of all time, but if he could make people think about his songs in the same way that his favourites could, it would be worth it.
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