Bob Dylan Quotes On Music Every True Fan Will Appreciate

Bob Dylan once called himself "a poet first and a musician second," as The Spokesman-Review quotes. The Nobel Prize-winning singer-songwriter, whose work led the mid-60s folk rock boom, didn't just woo listeners with deftly crafted poetic insights when singing, though, but also when speaking. Time and again in interviews, he seems to speak for true music fans everywhere.

Unsurprisingly, interviewers often ask Dylan about music and songwriting. Equally unsurprisingly, Dylan's answers are often as obscure and meandering as they are blunt and unflappable. The same goes for his lyrics. We've got the totally on-the-nose "Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call / Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall" from 1964's "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (one of his best songs beyond "Blowin' in the Wind"). Now compare that to the impenetrable "Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial / Voices echo, 'This is what salvation must be like after a while'" from 1966's "Visions of Johanna" (a song that captures the poetic soul of folk rock). Such nigh-mystical phrasing only adds to the credence and weight behind Dylan's words about songcraft.

And indeed, Dylan really did and does understand songcraft and what makes music matter. Whether it's his assertion that "nobody that's going to kill traditional music" from a 1966 Playboy interview on Interferenza or talking about how important one's physical environment is to experiencing and creating music, he knows what makes his craft special. Here are some of Dylan's best quotes that music fans will appreciate. 

You might have found yourself saying or thinking the same at some point, especially if you play an instrument. As Expecting Rain quotes Bob Dylan way back in 1964 when he released his landmark album with the song of the same name, "The Times They Are A-Changin'," Dylan said: "I had to write what I wanted to sing 'cos what I wanted to sing, nobody else was writing." Indeed, that's the mark of a true artist: He did it because he had to.

This quote may feed into the romanticized poet archetype a bit, but this is Bob Dylan, after all. In a 1991 Song Talk interview on Interferenza, Dylan spoke about obeying the spontaneous impulses of the soul when songwriting: "The best songs to me — my best songs — are songs which were written very quickly." The time it takes to write such songs, he said, ought to be the same as the time it takes to write them down. That's pretty fast. Then again, plenty of legendary songs were written in mere minutes.

It seems like every generation bemoans the death of music. But because all fears are born from hopes, true fans believe in what Dylan said in a 1966 interview with Playboy on Interferenza: "There's nobody that's going to kill traditional music." The rest of the quote is stuffed full of bits that ought to make music lovers grin from ear to ear, like, "All these songs about roses growing out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels — they're not going to die."

The quote might seem hypocritical given Dylan's entire life, status, identity, and career as a songwriter (including his 125 million albums sold) until you hear his addendum. As he said in the aforementioned 1991 Song Talk interview on Interferenza, "The world don't need any more songs. ... There's enough songs for people to listen to." But, he says, there's always room for more songs, provided they're from someone "with a pure heart [who] has something to say." 

From the 1991 interview with Song Talk on Interferenza, Bob Dylan said of songwriting, "If you see me do it, any idiot could do it. ... Everybody writes a song just like everybody's got that one great novel in them." Judging by the rest of the interview, Dylan was trying to differentiate between entertainment and art, and writing any old song vs. really understanding music. Anyone could do it, sure, but only some songs are going to stick. The rest will vanish, leaving behind the best.

Any musician and music lover will tell you that one's environment changes everything about one's feelings and creations. From the 1991 interview with Song Talk on Interferenza, Bob Dylan said, "The environment to write the song is extremely important. The environment has to bring something out in me that wants to be brought out." He continues by saying that songs come from the biblical Tree of Life and the concept of love inherent to ancient Greek democracy. 

"You go into your kitchen and try to write a song, and you can't write a song," Bob Dylan said in a 1969 Rolling Stone interview. This quote doesn't have anything to do with kitchens, specifically, but rather how mundane places and experiences don't stimulate creativity. Like many music lovers and true fans envision, Dylan's statement connects to romantic notions of music flowing from magical sources and fantastical places.

Many music fans assume that the best songs come from personal experience, where the lyrics and music help to purge the soul. Dylan said as much of himself in the 1991 interview with Song Talk on Interferenza: "It's been more confessional than professional." He was also referencing confessional poetry, an inward-facing poetic trend that rose to prominence in the 1950s and '60s when his career took off. But Dylan also says that different people write music for different reasons, which is something that music lovers understand.

In his 1966 interview with Playboy on Interferenza, Bob Dylan talked about his distaste for "message songs," i.e., songs with a direct activist bent or political agenda. "A song leaves your mouth just as soon as it leaves your hands," he explained. According to Dylan, when a songwriter tries to articulate a message, it's always different when put into song form. And when it's communicated to someone else, it's different, too. And once spoken, folks expect it to stay the same. But as music lovers know, feelings and opinions change. 

In the 1991 Song Talk interview on Interferenza, Bob Dylan went back to his identity as a poet and described something that true fans may envision about the deepest musical artists: "Poets don't go to the supermarket. Poets don't empty the garbage. Poets aren't on the PTA. ... Poets don't... poets don't even speak on the telephone. Poets don't even talk to anybody. Poets do a lot of listening." Dylan was partially making fun of himself and his label as "our greatest living poet," but it's true that without listening, there's nothing really meaningful to say.