Greil Marcus Quotes

Bob Dylan was uncomfortable being known as just a protest singer. He wanted to go back into himself and do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.

If Woody Guthrie set the bar for American songwriters, Bob Dylan jumped right over it. No one I know will ever come close to possessing the beauty of melody and the use of language that Dylan shares with us, with ease.

My secret heroes were Joe Morello, Ray Charles - who is, in my opinion, the most dominant figure in musical history in the 21st century - and Frank Sinatra. Those are my heroes. And as a writer, when Bob Dylan came along, it was a miracle because he gave us all permission to say anything!

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

I always try to find a story in the margins of history, but I don't like to do too much that's improbable.

I guess I feel very strongly that I disagree with the notion of personalizing history and movements and big events.

I loved working with Bob Dylan.

Music was so important to the culture when I was growing up in the Sixties and Seventies. We just expected that Bob Dylan was going to make a great record, and it was normal. It was like, 'Okay, here's another great record by Bob Dylan; here's another great record by Led Zeppelin.'

Most people think that I heard Bob Dylan first and got a cap and harmonica. Really, it was Woody Guthrie. He was so influential.

I've grown up on Bob Dylan and all that, but there was a certain standard set up by people before 1955.

The Seventies was a golden era. Back then we had some incredible talent with bands like the Undertones, the Rolling Stones and artists like Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney.

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

The voice of history is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.

I'm not someone who can sing anything... And my favorite singers aren't people whose voice you would say is amazing. I'm a big Bob Dylan fan, a huge David Bowie fan... none of those people have orthodox, cabaret voices. These are people where what they're singing about is just as important as how they're singing it.

Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost what subject he may.

When I first knew Bob Dylan, he lived in the Village. And for a man who, years after, would disdain publicity or any attempts at interviews, whenever I'd write something about him, he'd be on the street corner saying, 'When's it going to run? When's it going to run?' But I must say that album that was - it was the second album he did, and though I've never been a fan of his guitar-playing, he did - I have to admit, he did catch the Zeitgeist of the time.

It is essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals

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

Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan I heard when I was 13. It was one of those things where it was like, "Hey, the world is much bigger than you imagined as a little kid."

Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.

History is, in its essence, exciting; to present it as dull is, to my mind, stark and unforgivable misrepresentation.

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.

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.

I am a Bob Dylan fan.

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