counterculture icon Quotes

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.

Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead did as much for mankind as any president.

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.

I've always been amused by [Bob] Dylan; I don't think he's been amused by me.

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.

We like to pile language on language. Hunter [ S. Thompson] was an influence on me, no doubt about it.

I wasn't an expert or even the biggest Dennis Hopper fan in the world. All I knew about him were through his associations with James Dean and Andy Warhol, the fact that he made 'Easy Rider.' I thought his story would have a really great outlaw literary quality to it.

When I was 12 years old, or however old I was when Bringing It All Back Home came out, I'd just skip back and forth endlessly between 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' and 'It's Alright, Ma' and 'Mr. Tambourine Man,' and now my Bob Dylan roots are showing big time.

I think it may have been Tom Wolfe (if it wasn't, my apologies, Tom, and my apologies to whoever it was) who said in print once, 'David Carradine lives the life that Hunter Thompson only writes about.'

Jimi Hendrix once said, 'You will never hear surf music again.' Well, tonight, you will hear 'serf' music again - S-E-R-F music.

I have long admired Ron Whitehead. He is crazy as nine loons, and his poetry is a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics

I got to be Jim Morrison a lot longer than he did.

Bob Dylan emerged from nowhere, like an alien. And that was just the start.

Jim Morrison was a well-built boy, larger than average, and young enough to maintain the engorged silent connection right through the residue of chemicals.

Timothy Leary and I kept the same hours. He believed, as I do, that “After midnight, all things are possible.

18th September, 1970; Jimi Hendrix dies. I'm still on the football team when I get the news. So I take my helmet off and confront the coach to tell him I'm quitting the team. In a moment of brilliance he gives me one look and says "OK".

On June 22, 2008, at the age of 71, an American revolutionary died. He was a bona fide genius, an outspoken critich, a literary giant and an unprecedented visionary. For 50 years he entertained, challenged and amazed not only my generation, but also ones before mine and well after. He was sensational, brilliant, iconic and unique - the quintessential individual. He was my lifelong hero. His name was George Carlin.