His "Blowin' in the Wind" is a huge hit, and his concerts—last week at Town Hall in Philadelphia and at Carnegie Hall—draw sellout crowds, mostly high school and college students to whom Dylan is practically a religion. He has suffered; he has been hung up, man, without bread, without a chick, with twisted wires growing inside him. His audiences share his pain, and seem jealous because they grew up in conventional homes and conventional schools.
The ironic thing is that Bob Dylan, too, grew up in a conventional home, and went to conventional schools. He shrouds his past in contradictions, but he is the elder son of a Hibbing, Minnesota, appliance dealer named Abe Zimmerman, and, as Bobby Zimmerman, he attended Hibbing High School, then briefly the University of Minnesota.
--"'I am my words'," Newsweek, Nov. 4, 1963
而在《時代雜誌》方面,雜誌引以自豪的發掘未來百大功力,這次在 1962 年以民謠樂為主題的封面故事(見上方 TIME Vault 連結)得到彰顯,該篇報導首次提到巴布·狄倫,讀者從下方引文可以看到《時代》經典的行文特色,用簡簡單單的幾句話交代穿著或歌聲,但是描寫對象的形象就從讀者腦海中浮現:
The tradition of Broonzy and Guthrie is being carried on by a large number of disciples, most notably a promising young hobo named Bob Dylan. He is 21 and comes from Duluth. He dresses in sheepskin and a black corduroy Huck Finn cap, which covers only a small part of his long' tumbling hair. He makes visits to Woody Guthrie's hospital bed, and he delivers his songs in a studied nasal that has just the right clothespin-on-the-nose honesty to appeal to those who most deeply care. His most celebrated song is Talkin' New York—about his first visit to the city, during the cold winter of 1961, when he discovered "Green Witch Village."
--“Sibyl with Guitar,” TIME Magazine, Nov. 23, 1962 [比爾·]布朗齊和[伍迪·]蓋瑟瑞的傳統,有眾多門徒承繼,最引人注目的是位很有前景的21歲無業年輕人,叫做巴布·狄倫,來自杜魯斯。他穿著羊皮外套,戴著黑色燈芯絨的哈克芬恩帽,但只蓋住他部分的長捲髮。他去醫院探望伍迪·蓋瑟瑞,用下過工夫的鼻音唱歌,那有恰如其分的「用曬衣夾夾鼻子」的真誠,訴諸那些最深刻關心的人。他最有名的歌曲是〈說唱紐約〉──講述他在1961年的寒冷冬天,第一次造訪這座城市,當他發現「格林女巫村」的時候。
--〈彈吉他的女先知〉,《時代雜誌》,1962 年 11 月 23 日期
Her voice is as clear as air in the autumn, a vibrant, strong, untrained and thrilling soprano. 她的歌聲清澈透明如秋天的空氣,一種激盪、堅強、美妙天成、撼人心弦的女高音。──余光中譯,出自〈論瓊·拜斯〉,收於《聽聽那冷雨》
決裂?「你知道嗎?我不需要《時代雜誌》。」
但狄倫和《時代》間最有名的一段故事,是他在 1965 年的一次訪談中,對著採訪記者、《時代雜誌》乃至整個媒體界長篇大論說教、痛斥,「你知道嗎?我不需要《時代雜誌》。」弄得記者一整個尷尬,想要解釋或反駁也被狄倫打斷,最後可說是不歡而散。整個過程收入了音樂紀錄片《別回頭》(Don't Look Back)中,成了狄倫 VS 媒體的經典片段。(見上方 YouTube 片段。)
不知道是不是因為「我不需要《時代雜誌》」這句話(至少《時代》應該不會承認),巴布·狄倫從 60 年代至今的漫長樂壇生涯中,沒有一次獨立上過封面,也沒有過《新聞周刊》那種照片封面。他唯一一次登上《時代雜誌》封面,是雜誌的「20世紀百大人物」專輯,雜誌說他是「大詩人、嚴厲的社會批評家、反文化世代的無畏領袖」(Master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation)。《時代》影評暨搖滾樂評人傑·考克斯(Jay Cocks)這麼替〈民謠歌手〉開篇:
He was born with a snake above his fist while a hurricane was blowing. You must know that. Know the fact, or the music, or the truth inside the mythology, spun from roots by his rough magic into cloth of gold, into songs that are the shifting, stormy center of American popular music in the second part of the very century when the music was invented. Bob Dylan couldn't wait for the music to change. He couldn't be only part of the change. He was the change itself. The snake and the hurricane.
--Jay Cocks, "The folk musician," TIME, Jun. 8, 1998 他出生時便緊握一條蛇而颶風呼嘯。 你一定知道這個。知道事實、知道音樂,或是知道神話中的真實,從其根源透過他的沙啞魔法化為金帛,化為代表20世紀後半所創發的美國流行音樂的善變風暴中心。 巴布·狄倫無法等待音樂改變,他無法只是改變的一部分,他就是改變。就是蛇與颶風。