The songwriters Bob Dylan said were out of his league
It’s hard to think of anyone like Bob Dylan getting self-conscious about their own songwriting.
Everyone has been trying to reach somewhere close to what he achieved during the 1960s on one of their songs, but looking through his catalogue, Dylan has always been chasing after what the next musical thrill was going to be rather than coasting on one sound for the rest of his career. From day one, he was simply in it for the love of the music, but he was the first to say that some other artists were in a completely separate category.
First off, it’s not like Dylan was going to be showing off his massive musical prowess whenever he performed. He was used to making the greatest hymns of the folk era, but when rock and roll started focusing on the chops that everyone had behind the scenes, it’s not like he was exactly itching to become the next version of Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix whenever he stepped out onstage.
He knew that his strong suit was in lyrics, and judging by his track record, his way with words was almost like listening to a jazz version of a rock and roll lyricist. Many of the jazz greats have been known to improvise some of the greatest lines of their career when they were in the moment, but what Dylan did over the course of four five, or even eleven verses helped paint a picture for what every one of his songs meant much better than any extended guitar solo ever could have.
But there were also songwriters that were interested in doing a lot more than simple chords to get their point across. There were people like Neil Young who were clearly disciples of Dylan’s work, but when you look at someone like James Taylor, his music was far more intricate than what Dylan could do. Nobody was thinking of the strange fingerpicking patterns that he did, which made his lyrics in ‘Fire and Rain’ all the more impressive whenever he performed.
The same could be said about Randy Newman. While the pianist had a voice that wasn’t exactly the cleanest in the world, what he did with his understanding of harmony was far beyond what Dylan had merely attempted. There were often satirical and downright nasty songs in his catalogue, but no one could argue with the kind of musical craftsmanship that went into it, especially when he had people like Eagles singing alongside him.
And despite Dylan having been a core part of rock and roll for years at that point, he felt that nothing even remotely put him in the same class as people like that, saying, “I still don’t consider myself in the same realm as someone like James Taylor or Randy Newman, someone who, in my book, is a ‘songwriter for the times.’ I feel my stuff is very hard-edged and not everybody’s cup of tea.” That’s fair, but also people that don’t exactly “get” Dylan might not always be listening hard enough.
While no artist should make their audience do their homework to understand them, Dylan’s way with words was far more interesting than whatever typical Top 40 song was out at the time. Even when making some of his later records, Blood on the Tracks helped show a more intense look at a dying relationship, while Time out of Mind helped remind everyone that legends have their own personal issues with mortality.
Dylan’s songs didn’t have the same kind of melodic sensibilities as Taylor or Newman, but he is one of the few cases where that almost doesn’t matter. He could do whatever he wanted as long as he had the right lyrics behind him, and even if the song itself wasn’t the hardest thing in the world to play, what mattered most was that it made sense to him before anything else.
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