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To bob or not to bob4/11/2014 No songwriting blog should be allowed to exist without a tip of the hat to Bob Dylan. Although I'm no Ph.D in Bob Dylan (Some people actually write dissertations on Bob Dylan), he is worthy of first name basis and heretoforth in this post, he will be referred to as Bob.
Ah, to Bob or not to Bob. It's a love/hate sort of thing. Probably the way Bob feels about talking about himself, too. Some people love him, some people hate him. A student of mine told me he saw Bob in concert a few years ago and, "I swear he said nothing but, 'Hey! Yeah! for 45 minutes." I saw Bob in 1988 in Tampa and it was legendary. The sheer body of work is unfathomable. But let's think back to young Bobby just starting out as a folk singer. He didn't fall out of bed a great songwriter. Those hundreds of songs didn't write themselves. He had to start somewhere. Where did he get his songwriting education? From books? From seminars? From college courses on songwriting? Well, from songs themselves. He listened. He studied. He learned every song in the genre he could find. And let's face it, most of the great songwriters of our time learned to write songs this way. Not that I haven't read books and gone to seminars about songwriting. I have. Not that I don't have more to learn on the subject. We should learn all we can, but it's sort of like reading a book about how to make love. A little knowledge is fine, but you're really nowhere unless you're doing it. (Smile) Anyway, many of those that we think of as the "greats" probably never took a course. Did Keith Richard or Paul McCartney or Paul Simon? (I know he taught a class in songwriting, and who better, but I don't know if he ever took one.) Whether people like a song or think it's a hit is subjective. Besides, fear is the death of art. This is what I love about Bob. He just does what he does--fearlessly. I sort of subscribe to this notion: that a song is a song. If people like it, all the better. After all, you gotta make a living. But it is what it is. Whatever I (or Bob or you) write is totally valid. No one can write my song. Whatever I say, I've said and it's ok. Let's face it, Bob rhymed "used to it" with "juiced in it". I may roll my eyes and shake my head when I hear it, but that line is in the number one song on Rolling Stone's Top 500. Think about it. You wrote what critics and fans call the greatest song of the rock 'n roll era. You actually set the bar. And you did it without giving a poop what anyone thinks. God bless you, Bob.
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