Like a Rolling Stone - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

”People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent”- a quote by a person who did, and, probably still does, what he believes in. Yes, he is no one but Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan. Born as Robert Allen Zimmerman, in Minnesota, Dylan was inspired by early rock stars like Elvis Presley, when he started writing and performing folk and country songs, towards the end of high school. While attending the University of Minnesota, he started using the name “Bob Dillion”, marking the start of his music career. In 1960, he dropped out of college and moved to New York. This was the time when his idol, the legendary singer, Woody Guthrie was hospitalised with a rare hereditary disease. He visited Guthrie regularly and even wrote “Song to Woody”, a tribute to his ailing hero.

In the fall of 1961, he started getting rave reviews in the New York Times which got him a contract from Columbia Records. That is when “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” took off officially, as one of the most original and poetic voices in the history of American pop music. He was probably one of the first persons to question that “How many years must a man walk down, before you call him a man?”- a question remembered and repeated by millions. As “The Times They Are A-Changin’” released, it established Dylan as the definitive songwriter of the 60s protest movement.

Bob Dylan was a man with a big heart, for sure, but also one which was given wholly to many. One of those fortunate human beings was Joan Baez, with whom he got involved during the movement. Another of his significant relationships was with his first wife Sara Dylan. When he clearly proclaims “Sara, Sara; Loving you is one thing I’ll never regret”, he simply spreads love all around.

Dylan again proved that he was a fighter, when, after a near-fatal motor accident in July 1966, he took a year to recover in seclusion. Delivering hits like “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, “Like a Rolling Stone”, “All along the Watchover” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, he showed us all what music should be like. He has not only been honoured with Grammy wards, Academy and Golden Globe Awards but also bestowed with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Nobel Prize in Literature, of late.

At the age of 75, too, he had to face quite a lot of criticisms for being awarded the Nobel. It is agreed that society has not yet learned to recognise literature in all its forms, but they can surely try and accept the plain truth. The truth that Dylan sang of love with a power of conviction everyone wants to own. He was no longer compared to Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams, instead to Blake, Whitman and Shakespeare.

With the public expecting folk songs, there stood a man with a guitar, combining the languages of the street and the bible into a symphony that would make us see the world from an absolutely different angle. In the most unlikely setting of all - the commercial gramophone record – he gave back to the language of poetry its elevated form, lost since the Romantics. Not to sing of eternities, but of what is happening around us. Thus, recognising that revolution by awarding Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize was a decision that seemed daring only beforehand and already seems obvious.By means of his works, Bob Dylan has changed our idea of what poetry can be and how it can work. He is a singer worthy of a place beside Ovid, beside the Romantic visionaries, beside the king and queen of the Blues, beside the forgotten masters of brilliant standards. If people in the literary world groan, one must remind them that the Gods don’t write, they dance and sing.

I believe we all can now say, that to make a difference, we should have faith in ourselves for a change. Deriving inspiration from this person, who brought the worlds of music and literature like no one else had, who protested as well as loved, who fought but never gave up; we can set out on the path we have made ourselves. Ending with the note that His Dylanness will be loved through ages, I proceed to find an answer to the question-

“How does it feel, how does it feel?

To be without a home,

Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?”