The reason Bob Dylan sounded better in the 1960s and ’70s: “They all had some magic”
The 1980s couldn’t have been a more ill-suited decade for Bob Dylan, when you really think about it.
In the ‘60s, he was a folk troubadour, fitting for the rugged age. Then in the ‘70s, he could outright embrace his dream to be the frontman of a ‘proper’ rock and roll band. One that did away with the purism of folk music and instead sought to plug in the guitar and turn up the amp.
So the two decades split Dylan fans right down the middle. In the ‘60s, there was his triumphant emergence into the music world with his self-titled album and the folk masterclass The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, where his voice became the soundtrack of an era steeped in revolutionary purism.
Highway ‘61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde saw the transition take place and laid the foundations for the rockstar Dylan would become in the ‘70s. Blood On The Tracks and Desire shed the weight of commercial expectation and embraced the freedom his legacy had carved. He was in a league of his own, afforded to him by the widespread ethos of artistic authenticity that both musicians and fans adopted.
But the ‘80s marked a jarring right-angle turn that would undo the hard work of the counterculture soldiers. Neo-liberalism and capitalism would decimate the analogue beauty of the music industry, and in its place would come digitalisation, a word that was never destined to marry well with the great music of Dylan.
“Those records were made a long time ago, and you know, truthfully, records that were made in that day and age were all good,” Dylan explained, reminiscing over the simpler approach the ‘60s and ‘70s afforded.
He continued, “They all had some magic to them because the technology didn’t go beyond what the artist was doing. It was a lot easier to get excellence back in those days on a record than it is now. I made records back then just like a lot of other people who were my age, and we all made good records. Those records seem to cast a long shadow. But how much of it is the technology and how much of it is the talent and influence, I really don’t know.”
That quote was taken from ‘99, when Dylan had put up with two decades of stark difference. By then, the millennium beckoned, and a promise of an even more digital future awaited, which, now in 2026, has turned into a technological wasteland. Influence seems to be bleeding into the talent pool even more, and no longer are artists battling recording techniques, but the compounding evils of social media and streaming.
The shadow of those records continues to draw into this modern era, and we all, clearly, myself included, look back on those decades with rose-tinted fondness, a time when someone like Bob Dylan could hitchhike to New York with nothing but a guitar in his hand and become an overnight superstar. Have those times been completely lost? I’m not so sure, but could a Bob Dylan have existed today? I’m even less sure.
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