Bob Dylan at 80: A Sober Assessment

Graham Cunningham:

It pains me a little to say it, given my own past devotion, but some cold perspective is needed here. Bob Dylan was—from 1962 to the early 1980s—an extraordinary singer-songwriter and, in terms of quantity of great material, simply without equal. For the last 40 years, though, he has mostly been trading on the reputation he built in those years. There are exceptions to this judgment, yes, but not many: the 1983 Infidels album, a few tracks on the 1997 Time Out of Mind, and “Things Have Changed” from the soundtrack of the 2000 film Wonder Boys, for example.

Did Dylan deserve the Nobel Prize for Literature that he won in 2016? I’m not sure; he’s probably not sure, either. He was consistently good for about 20 years, an amazingly long time for a rock star. And he can take credit for spawning a whole musical genre. Many other songwriters in the same musical territory, such as Paul Simon or Bruce Springsteen, have, at their best, been as good or almost as good—but not nearly so often, or for so long.

The truth is, Bob Dylan, now 80, will never get “back on form.” Aging rock stars don’t do that; no one does. One of the most quoted lyrics of “Murder Most Foul” informs us that “It’s 36 hours past Judgment Day.” Dylan has been unquestionably the most influential songwriter of his era; no one can take that away from him. But as a long-time fan, I can’t help but wish that he had hung up his songwriting boots decades ago. His musical stature could then have remained closer to that of artists who die young, unsullied by the inevitable failures that must come to all careers—even one as extraordinary as his.