Dylan obsession

There are artists you admire and there are artists you love, and for me Bob Dylan has long fallen into the former category. I have been listening to him, sporadically, since I was a schoolboy, when his rebellious stance and imagistic, freewheeling lyrics had an obvious appeal to a bolshie adolescent at a boy’s boarding school who fancied himself as a poet.

But while I can appreciate that such albums as Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited and Blood on the Tracks are compelling and lyrically profound, it would be dishonest to pretend that I listen to them often. Looking at my shelves I’m astonished to discover that I own 16 of Dylan’s individual albums and no fewer than six best of/essential/greatest hits collections. Quite a few of these numerous discs, I fear, have never been played all the way through.

What is it about Dylan that prevents my admiration from turning into deep affection? There’s so much that’s palpably right about him: the manifest integrity, the artistic daring, the fact that he is still out there, performing more than 100 gigs a year, and releasing albums in his sixties that are regarded as among the best in his entire catalogue.