Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French said in an interview with The Metal Voice that Bob Dylan is horrible playing live. The musician recalled when he went to see Dylan and anyone couldn’t understand what he was singing.
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“Dylan’s indecipherable. I went to see Dylan a couple of years ago with one of his producers because I heard he was so horrible live you couldn’t understand what he was singing. And I wanted to be able to understand what he was singing because I’m a huge Dylan fan. And never saw Dylan, and he was playing down the street from my house.”
“I actually bought a ticket to that show with my wife and was sitting with one of his producers. He [Bob] never turned around to the audience, he played with his back to the audience, never talked to the audience, and was indecipherable in his songs.”
“It was almost comical, almost like he was saying, ‘Fuck you, you’re idiots, you’re just paying to see a god, and I don’t care.’ And half the audience bought into it because he’s Bob Dylan. Hey, man, it’s an artistic statement, he doesn’t turn around, he doesn’t talk to you and you can’t understand what you’re singing, that’s great.'”
“And half the people went, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?! I can’t understand what he’s singing and he sucks.’ But Dylan doesn’t care because he’s 83 years old, and millions of people want to see him. Frankly, I sat there, and I know the Dylan songbook, and he was halfway through one song, and I’m going, ‘What the fuck?'”
“And I hear, ‘Oh, that’s ‘Highway 61,’ OK.’ Or he sang another song *mumbles* but that was about it. Listen, Dylan didn’t always do this, although there are people who say he’s been terrible live for years. He didn’t always suck live. Watch [1978’s] ‘The Last Waltz,’ which is one of my favorite movies – I’m sure have seen that – one of the greatest concert movies ever made.”
Bob Dylan sold in 2021 his entire songwriting catalog to Universal Music. It was more than 600 songs for an estimated price of around $300 million. The list includes more than 60 years of his compositions. Such as “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
Bob Dylan has 79 years old and was born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24, 1941. He grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range west of Lake Superior. And he was the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants. At the age of ten Dylan wrote his first poems and, as a teenager, taught himself piano and guitar.
He started singing in rock groups, imitating Little Richard and Buddy Holly. But when he went to the University of Minnesota in 1959, he turned to folk music, impressed by the musical work of the legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie, whom he visited in New York in 1961.
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