Like a Rolling Stone

I always wanted to stop when I was on top. I didn’t want to fade away. I didn’t want to be a has-been, I wanted to be somebody who’d never be forgotten.

I feel that, one way or another, it’s OK now, I’ve done what I wanted for myself.

I see that I could stop touring at any time, but then, I don’t really feel like it right now. I’ve got no retirement plans...[Bob Dylan]

Nobody ever counted off for Bob Dylan: 'One‑two‑three', nobody did that. He had a metronome in his head, his foot started going, everyone else latched on and that was it.

No matter what he cut, when he cut it, how he cut it or who he cut it with, it was always the same. He was a genius, and I never told him how to sing, when to sing, what to sing or where to sing.

And I also never said, 'I don't like this,' or 'I don't like that.' I liked everything he did. I was awed by him and what he could do.

(Bob Johnston, producer)

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55 years ago: Bob Dylan releases 'Nashville Skyline'

Bob was a real hotbed of songs, very charismatic. He was never in one place too long, always moving on. Then when he started gaining fame at a much higher rate than me, our criss-crossing became less frequent.

One night at the Gaslight, he uncorked “Chimes Of Freedom” for the first time. I stood at the back thinking, ‘What the hell happened to this guy since I last looked? Who gave him the Ten Commandments?’

It was borderline comical, because he’d always had this real kinda scufflin’ aspect to him, a real ragamuffin character. Then all of a sudden here he was with the strength of a Greek play every time he opened his mouth...[John Sebastian]

Most people who write about music, they have no idea what it feels like to play it. But with ''Chronicles vol.1'' the book I wrote, I thought, ‘The people who are writing reviews of this book, man, they know what the hell they’re talking about.’ It spoils you.

They know how to write a book, they know more about it than me. The reviews of this book, some of ’em almost made me cry – in a good way. I’d never felt that from a music critic, ever...[Bob Dylan]

It was a very important cover for Bob. And the reason is the first four albums he did, he’s a folk singer. He’s in folk singer clothes, he looks, you know, ‘Oh, woe is me.’

On 'Bringing It All Back Home', he’s a prince in his blazer and his beautiful cufflinks, sitting with this beautiful cat and a ravishingly beautiful woman behind him in a red dress. It was a change. Everything was changing...[Daniel Kramer, who shot the album cover]

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On this day in 1965, Bob Dylan released “Bringing It All Back Home”

I hate all the labels people have put on me, because they are labels. It's just that they are ugly and I know, in my heart, that it's not me.

Bob Dylan

I think my future plans will involve composing, recording and performing. I'll go on doing what I do for a long time. If you're looking for me when I'm ninety, I'll be on a stage somewhere...
[Bob Dylan, 1991]

When I listen to Bob Dylan I have that same reaction to some of my own stuff. And the only other person I can think of who does that for me is Dylan...[Lou Reed, who was born today in 1942]

I don’t consider myself a songwriter in the sense of Townes Van Zandt or Randy Newman. I’m not Paul Simon. I can’t do that.

My songs come out of folk music and early rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s it. I’m not a classical lyricist, I’m not a meticulous lyricist.

I don’t write melodies that are clever or catchy. It’s all very traditionally documented...[Bob Dylan]

I think everyone mentions Bob Dylan, but he's someone I just admire so much as a songwriter. I think people write songs, and then there's Dylan songs. He's one step ahead of just everybody else...[Tom Odell]

I have heard him say he came to New York to ‘make it,’ but that’s bu****it. When he came to New York, there was no great folk music scene, no chance of making a career out of the sort of music we were doing.

What he said at the time, and what I believe, was that he came because he had to meet Woody Guthrie. We all admired Guthrie and considered him a legend, but none of us was trucking out to see him and play for him.

In that regard, Bob Dylan was as stand-up a cat as I have ever known, and it was a very decent and impressive beginning for anybody’s career...[Dave Van Ronk, who passed away on this day in 2002]

I’m under the impression that people aren’t really paying attention to my records, I’m aware that I don’t sell records like I did in the ’80s or the ’70s.

And that’s OK as long as I can play, and the right crowd is going to come and see it properly.

I don’t follow what records are at the top of the charts. I ceased doing that a long, long time ago...[Bob Dylan, 1997]

At Newport Festival 1965, during Bob Dylan's performance, I couldn't understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, ‘Maggie’s Farm’ and the sound was distorted.

I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, ‘Fix the sound so you can hear the words.’ He hollered back, ‘'This is the way they want it.''

I said ‘'Damn it, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable right now.'’ But I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, ‘'you didn't boo Howlin’ Wolf yesterday. He was electric!’'

Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.

[Pete Seeger, who passed away on this day in 2014]

The album answers to no one and was made for everyone. It is the work of someone who is not just seeing through himself, but looking through us, and still making us see things that we haven't seen before...[John Landau]

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On this day in 1975, Bob Dylan released 'Blood On The Tracks'

His first trip in England in the winter of 1962/63, was actually crucial to his development. He set about exploring the network of London folk clubs, visiting a different one almost every evening for two weeks.

If you listen to ''Freewheelin'', most of which was made before he came to England, and you listen to 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' after that, there's an enormous difference in the way he's singing, in the sort of tunes he's singing, the way he's putting words together.

Bob Dylan's a piece of blotting paper when it comes to listening to tunes. It had an enormous effect on him...(Martin Carthy)

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On this day in 1964, Bob Dylan released ''The Times They Are A-Changin''

You see all this electricity speaking, all this wizardry, pull out the plugs and probably very few of these people could move you, because they can't play. They are dominated by the electricity.

Guys like Elmore James played acoustically and used electricity so they could be heard in a crowded room.

They weren't depending on electricity to hide talent they didn't have. I don't want a bunch of flaky sounds. It's a dead end...[Bob Dylan]

Joyce Carol Oates once said about Bob Dylan: ''When we first heard this raw, very young, and seemingly untrained voice, frankly nasal, as if sandpaper could sing, the effect was dramatic and electrifying.''

If, for Leonard Cohen, songs made up a tower, songs for Dylan are a Monument Valley of varied terrain and big skies, with plenty of room for him to project his own mind-movies, submit his own testimony as to how these songs came to be, where they landed, and what can be deciphered from their echoes...[Gene Seymour]

I started being me about the songs, not writing objectively, but subjectively. I think it was Bob Dylan who helped me realize that, not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work...[John Lennon]

He was shot dead on this day in 1980.

The best songs are the songs you write that you don't know anything about. They're an escape.

If you can imagine something and you haven't experienced it, it's usually true that someone else has actually gone through it and will identify with it...[Bob Dylan]

In the '60s there was a lot of people coming out of schools who were taught politics by professors who were political thinkers, and those people spilled over into the streets.

What politics I ever learned, I learned in the streets, because it was part of the environment. I don't know where somebody would hear that now.

Now everybody wants their own thing. You have all these different types of people all waving their own flags, and there's no unity between all these people. In the '60s, there wasn't any separation.

That's the difference that I can see. Everybody now is out for their own people and their own selves...[Bob Dylan, 1985]

It must be tiring being Bob Dylan for the past 60 years. People act like he's not even human, which must be hard work. Every room he walks into just goes quiet...[Winston Marshall]

All my songs say things. I sing them for people who know what I'm saying...[Bob Dylan, 1963]

I was comparatively late in understanding Bob Dylan's overwhelming importance as a songwriter. Everybody who does my job exists in the shadow of Bob Dylan...[Steve Earle]

I always go out and get the latest Bob Dylan album. He continuously knocks me out. I have that same reaction to some of my own stuff. And the only other person I can think of who does that for me is Dylan...[Lou Reed, who passed away on this day in 2013]

Bob Dylan influenced my songwriting, of course. He influenced everybody’s songwriting. There’s no way around it. No one had ever really left the love song before, lyrically. So in that respect, I think he influenced everybody, because you suddenly realized you could write about other things...[Tom Petty, he would have been 73 today]

It’s a great day for Literature and for Bob Dylan when a Master of its original form is celebrated. Before epic tales and poems were ever written down, they migrated on the winds of the human voice and no voice is greater than Dylan’s....[Tom Waits]

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On this day in 2016, Bob Dylan became the first songwriter to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The words are just as important as the music. There would be no music without the words. I do the words first. I know what music I want when I hear the words...[Bob Dylan]

During my formative years, I had to avoid all his records, because I am such a sponge, if I listen to it too much, I would start being that.

I admired what Bob Dylan did so much, the lyrics, and the way he sang, and the melodies, but I knew that that would disturb what I was doing...[Neil Young]

Bob Dylan has and Einstein had their own way of perceiving the universe and translating it for us...[Johnny Flynn]