You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

One look at me and most people would never guess that my choice for all-time greatest singer/songwriter would be Bob Dylan.  (I'm a little tightly-wound and just a wee bit on the conservative side). :)  However, he has remained my favorite musician for the past twelve years, and that is far longer than any other performer has held that honorific.

Truly, I have always been a fan of folk music, but Dylan was a different kind of folk; he was (and is) a different kind of everything, and honestly, I didn't really get him at first.  The voice. The obscure lyrics. The voice.  If you've heard him at all, you know what I mean.

However, I purchased a Dylan CD on a whim in 1999, and after listening to it over and over again, I fell in love with him. All of him. The voice. The obscure lyrics. The intriguing character of the man.  I realized, the voice is just who he is, and you're not necessarily supposed to understand the lyrics.  In my opinion, this is one of the things that makes him truly great.  He never pretended to be a good singer, just an artist, and the whiny, nasal sound eventually becomes a thing of beauty to the person willing to give him a chance.  The brilliance of the lyrics is that they can mean anything to anyone at any time in his or her life; they're fluid and their meaning shifts as the listener ages and grows in life experience.  

(He didn't try to make excuses for his sound.  He didn't [and doesn't] make excuses for anything.)

My first Dylan CD was his original "Greatest Hits."  I listened to it, excited to have a new folk master to add to my already-vast collection.  Unfortunately, I didn't love it.  I had always liked the songs "Just Like a Woman," "Blowing in the Wind" and "Like a Rolling Stone," but many of the other songs alluded me.  After listening to it a few times, however, I found a number of personal mood boosters among the tracks and soon discovered that hope, humor, fear, envy, rebellion and nostalgia found a home within the lyrics.  The whiny, beautiful voice simply became the vessel through which the soundtrack of my early twenties was delivered.  

It was a time in my life when I was trying to discover who I was, what I believed, who I wanted to love and how I wanted live.  In short, it was my personal version of the 1960s; I suppose Dylan's music was oddly appropriate for this child of the '80s.

Over the years, I have collected many, many Dylan albums, and as his style has changed over his multi-decade career, my appreciation of him has grown.  He can write war, hate, love, envy, religion, and a multitude of other themes in a way that earns him a spot in the pantheon of the greatest creative writers of all time.  When I taught American lit, I would bring in his music and copies of his lyrics to study alongside other great modern American poets. As a writer, he touches people on an emotional level, and his words mean something different to everyone who hears them.  And whether you "get him" or not, his work has withstood the test of time.  The same could be said for most of the great writers throughout the centuries, could it not?   

More than anything, I suppose his music represents something personal to me, a time in my life that I like to frequently revisit. For me, Dylan's music will always remind me of grad school, friends I don't see often enough, late nights, date nights, and a turning point in my way of thinking.  I am honored that he was along for my ride. He will truly "make me lonesome when he goes."

For the record, here are my favorite Dylan masterpieces:

1. "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go"
2. "Subterranean Homesick Blues" 
3.  "Just Like a Woman"  
4. "Forever Young"
5. "Shelter From the Storm"
   
6. "Things Have Changed"
7. "Hurricane"
8. "Brownsville Girl"
9. "Shooting Star"
10. "Not Dark Yet"