Bob Dylan/YMMV

• Archive Panic: To date he's released thirty-four studio albums and fifty-eight singles. Then there are the many live albums, Bootleg Series albums, and other compilations.
• Awesome Music: Here's a fun game. Find any familiar rock artist from the same era. Compare their first album entirely before Highway 61 Revisited to their first entirely after. (Even The Beatles? Especially The Beatles.)
• Broken Base: The split between "Dylan the protest singer" and "Dylan the rockstar" is legendary.
  • It is easy to forget that the outcry over his conversion to Christianity, with the first tour unexpectedly switching to an all gospel format with no pre-conversion songs and forty-minute onstage lectures, was probably a bigger break even than the "going electric."
• Covered Up: All too often (this list could take its own page), with Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower" being the most prominent example, and it's often considered to be * better* than Dylan's version. Dylan himself seems to think so since he apparently now plays the song in Hendrix's style in live performances.
  • "Blowin' in the Wind" (Peter, Paul, and Mary)
  • "Mr. Tambourine Man" (The Byrds)
  • "My Back Pages" (The Byrds, The Ramones)
  • "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (Warren Zevon, Eric Clapton, Guns N' Roses, Cold Chisel)
  • "Maggie's Farm" (Rage Against the Machine)
  • "I Shall Be Released" (The Band, The Heptones)
  • "It Ain't Me Babe" (The Turtles)
  • "Quinn the Eskimo" (Manfred Mann's Earth Band)
  • "If Not for You" (George Harrison)

Bob Dylan: [Introducing "To Make You Feel My Love"] This is a song I wrote for Garth Brooks. Regrets, I've had a few...

• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Many of Dylan's songs have overt connections to civil rights and/or philosophical and social themes.
• Genius Bonus: Numerous references in his songs to everything from Shakespearian characters and historical figures to pop culture and current events.
• Genre Turning Point: The day he started playing rock music.
• Growing the Beard: "Blowin' In the Wind" marks the start of his truly original, thoughtful songwriting
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The numbers 12 and 35, as in "Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35", when multiplied, produce a certain number which in the 1990s rose to prominence within the stoner subculture.
• Moment of Awesome: After the infamous "Judas!" heckle during a 1966 concert at Manchester Free Trade Hall (not the Royal Albert Hall, as is commonly believed), Dylan responds, "I don't believe you. You're a liar!" He then turns to the band and shouts, "Play fucking loud!" Then comes the thundering opening chords of "Like a Rolling Stone".
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: When he switched from acoustic to electric, many of his fans were not happy.
  • When he switched from electric to country music for a couple of years, fans were not happy either. Ditto when he converted to Christianity and would only play his then-recent Gospel songs in concert for a while, totally abandoning any of his pre-Gospel work. Those who aren't diehard fans, who don't follow his work very closely, often have this reaction to his newer music (specifically his new, more gravelly, growly voice), and this applies double for when such people go to his concerts: questions of why he plays keyboard all or almost all of the entire time, and not his guitar, abound. With the announcement of a Christmas album coming out, time will tell what if any backlash it will inspire.
  • Even before "going electric", Dylan faced criticism from the folk community for ditching protest songs in favor of a more impressionistic, surreal type of lyricism.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?: Just about everything Bob Dylan ever wrote. It doesn't even seem to matter what he says in interviews about what a song does or doesn't mean (although more often than not now he just avoids those sorts of questions altogether).
  • The Bob never answered those questions; he's just more subtle now. Ed Bradley asked him in the 2000s if his latest album was a new departure, and Bob ran Bradley into the dirt with a story about how an old jazzman showed him this "mathematical chord progression" that emotionally effected the listener every time. Back in 1965, some (even more) hapless reporter asked Bob about his "message," eliciting the scathing reply:

"What's my message?" Bob seizes a mercury arc light from the coffee table. "'Keep a cool head and always carry a light bulb!'"

• • Or the Playboy interview by Nat Hentoff: Bob ended up editing all his answers into surrealistic evasions, with Hentoff's cooperation. (Allowing the subject to edit his answers is SOP at The Paris Review, interestingly. But not like that.)