Just to keep the argument going, I think Dylan is a great guitarist, a
musical harmonica player with more technique than we credit him for, one of
the greatest singers that ever lived and one of the greatest songwriters
that ever lived.
I fully agree. I saw him perform twice. First time was at the Woody
Guthrie Memorial Concert at Carnegie Hall in early 1968. He was backed by
the Band, though at the time one didn't know who they were or what they
were about to become.
As great as all the acts were that day, Dylan's singing and playing almost
made my head explode. So powerful. Same with the 1974 tour. I loathe
stadium shows, but I wasn't going to miss that one, and his singing and
playing was so powerful that it changed my entire approach to playing.
One of the great Dylan revelations was listening to his earliest records
anew when they were remasted in mono a while back. Like many people I had
absorbed those records so completely back in the day that I never 'heard'
them again after about 1970. Went right by me.
But listening to the new mono's last year it was as though for the first
time, an entirely earthshaking experience. Even when he was a kid his
playing was on a much higher plane than most of the bigshot folkies of the
early 60's. Not technically, but emotionally. Many young people try to
impart an emotional feeling to their music by making it overwrought, which
doesn't work at all. Dylan, even at 20, had irony and wit and bitterness
and tenderness in his guitar playing. And in his harp playing.
As has been said of Miles Davis, Dylan made virtuosity irrelevant.
By the way, Blowing In The Wind was so inescapable in the Sixties that I
think I stopped 'hearing' it by 1964. It was wallpaper. It became
corny. I never once played it with my teenage musician pals in the late
60's.