Nat Hentoff Quotes

Bob Dylan will be thirty years old this month..." "That's the most depressing thing I've ever heard.

I think Bob Dylan's a good songwriter. I think he's the best songwriter in the world probably.

I'm a [Bob] Dylan freak, like everybody else.

I am a Bob Dylan fan.

I loved working with Bob Dylan.

I love Bob Dylan, I really do. I love his early work, I love the first time he plugged in electrically, I love his Christian albums, I love his other albums.

Bob Dylan seems to me a totally pernicious influence - the nasal whine of death and masochism. Certainly, this would be a more cheerful world if there were no Dylan records in it. But Dylan and his audience mirror each other, and deserve each other; as Marx said, a morbid society creates its own morbid grave-diggers.

A panoramic vision of Bob Dylan, his music, his shifting place in American culture, from multiple angles. In fact, reading Sean Wilentz's Bob Dylan in America is as thrilling and surprising as listening to a great Dylan song.

I thought he was the greatest thing. Bob Dylan.

I guess I haven't talked to Bob Dylan since before then [interview to Rolling Stones]. I follow his career.

Hear this Robert Zimmerman, I wrote a song for you, about a strange young man called Dylan with a voice like sand and glue.

I tried to charm the pants off Bob Dylan, but everyone will be disappointed to learn that I was unsuccessful. I got close - a couple of fast feels in the front seat of a Cadillac.

I was like, "Who the hell is Bob Dylan?" I was going to learn one song to appease my mom and alphabetically the first song in the book was "Absolutely Sweet Marie." When I heard it, it was like "Oh, there is something going on here. It's not like my parents' boring music that I don't care about. This is totally electrifying."

I have no doubt that if I met Bob Dylan, it would be disappointing - and annoying to him. But that's why I like Bob Dylan.

Well, I love Bob Dylan, let's make that clear. He's one of my musical heroes.

Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.

That's who I wanted to be like was Bob Dylan.

When I discovered Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I could explore the records that inspired me on a different level and that led me to Joni Mitchell, who is maybe my favorite of all time, and Warren Zevon. Those artists that wrote the lyrics that you try for.

It's always Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Waits for me - the big three.

Bob Dylan enabled rock & roll to grow up and survive. He injected the power of language and ideas into the music.

I'm a big Bob Dylan fan. I'm also a blues geek.

I've always loved Bob Dylan.

The things that I loved about Bob's [Dylan] music - and I describe him in the book as the father of my country, which he really is - were things that just didn't fit when I went to do my job. You know, I'd come out of a somewhat different circumstance and shoes - the clothes just didn't fit.

I stopped listening to Dylan with both ears after Highway 64 (sic) and Blonde on Blonde, and even then it was because George (Harrison) would sit me down and make me listen.

Like trillions of others, if it wasn't for Bob Dylan, it would have been a different musical landscape. Pop music wouldn't have been my thing at all. I did also grow up listening to The Beatles, but I never thought of being a Beatle.