Bob Dylan’s Attempt to Emulate a ‘Cool’ Musician Completely Backfired
Bob Dylan has been performing for decades, and he once switched up his style to emulate another musician. He has likely perfected his onstage demeanor after years of touring virtually ceaselessly. Still, he greatly admired the other musician. Dylan found the other artist impressive onstage, but he said that the performing style did not go over well for him.
Bob Dylan said there were a number of musicians he admired
Dylan said that he gets strong emotional reactions while listening to music.
“A great song is the sum of all things,” he told The Wall Street Journal (via his official website). “It could be the turning point in your life. Louis Armstrong does it like a scat singer, Jimmie Rodgers can yodel it. It’s timeless and ageless. It’s a field holler, it’s blood and thunder, it’s on easy street and in the land of milk and honey. It’s everywhere. It can be sung by a lead singer or a backup vocalist; it’s non-discriminating. A great song touches you in secret places, strikes your innermost being, and sinks in. Hoagy Carmichael wrote great songs, so did Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer.”
He believed that many different artists were writing good songs.
“The Oasis Brothers, I like them both, Julian Casablancas, the Klaxons, Grace Potter. I’ve seen Metallica twice,” he said. “I’ve made special efforts to see Jack White and Alex Turner. Zac Deputy, I’ve discovered him lately. He’s a one man show like Ed Sheeran, but he sits down when he plays. I’m a fan of Royal Blood, Celeste, Rag and Bone Man, Wu-Tang, Eminem, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, anybody with a feeling for words and language, anybody whose vision parallels mine.”
Bob Dylan tried to emulate a musician
Another artist Dylan greatly admired was Miles Davis. Not only did Dylan like his music, but he had great respect for his performing style.
“Miles Davis is my definition of cool,” he told Spin in 1985. “I loved to see him in the small clubs playing his solo, turn his back on the crowd, put down his horn and walk off the stage, let the band keep playing, and then come back and play a few notes at the end.”
Dylan liked this performance style so much that he decided to emulate it himself. It didn’t go over well for him.
“I did that at a couple of shows,” he said. “The audience thought I was sick or something.”
There’s a reason this didn’t go over well for him
While Dylan admired Davis’ performance style, not everyone did. Per The New York Times, “Mr. Davis and his younger followers never made an effort to entertain his listeners and has been roundly criticized by reviewers for sometimes turning his back during a performance or walking off stage or refusing to smile or to announce his personnel or the selections they play.”
Davis said that he did this because he wasn’t playing music for critics.
“I’m not being vain or anything, but that’s the way I am,” he said. “I play for myself and I play for musicians.”
Dylan takes a similar attitude to Davis though, in that he plays music for himself, not reviewers or even audiences. It’s possible that with other musicians, Dylan might have come across as better than he’d thought.
It’s more likely, though, that the move didn’t go over well because of the differences in their music. There are major differences between Davis, who played the trumpet, and Dylan, who played guitar. Dylan would make a less dramatic reentry on stage. He is also the lead vocalist, and most audience members are specifically there to hear him sing. Dylan leaving the stage mid-concert it would be confusing, not dramatic.
