TODAY BOB DYLAN turns 50, which makes it as good a time as any to assess his place in popular culture. Because his studied impenetrability and musical nonconformity have made him less important than he once was, it is sometimes easy to forget that Dylan, as much as anyone else, is responsible for enabling rock music to influence our culture to the degree it has.
Today, the media are regularly filled with discussions about the artistic influence of Madonna, or the import of lyrics by 2 Live Crew or Prince. In a sense, we owe that to Dylan. While others, like Elvis or the Beatles, changed the music of rock, Dylan changed its subject matter. Before he arrived on the rock scene 26 years ago, rock and roll dealt mostly with the trivial concerns of youth -- their cars, drive-ins and dances. Dylan helped make rock music serious, and thus made it possible for youth and their music to be taken seriously.
Before Dylan turned to rock music, the "love" portrayed in the music was usually love as seen through the eyes of a 14-year-old -- going steady, attending the ho, or cruising Main Street in a GTO. Girls were urged not to "be cruel to a heart that's true," while boys were told to be "true to your school like you would to your girl." By the mid-'60s, Dylan would be setting his songs on Desolation Row, but before he arrived, Palisades Park was where the youth of rock spent their time.
Dylan, of course, did not begin his career in the early '60s as a rock star. He was, instead, a pure product of the more serious and enduring folk tradition, singing protest songs on an acoustic guitar to small, appreciative audiences. In songs like "The Times They Are a-Changin'," he became among the first to articulate the rebellion of the young as a political movement. In other early-'60s folk-like songs such as "It Ain't Me Babe" or "Mr. Tambourine Man," he began to sing about more existential subjects and evoke more powerful poetic imagery.
It was because rock had so little intellectual or political awareness that many beatniks and intellectuals of the early '60s rejected rock for the folk and jazz scenes. Dylan helped change all that in 1965 when he "went electric" and merged the folk and rock traditions, bringing his serious music to the masses. Within months, a Top Ten formerly composed almost entirely of songs like "This Diamond Ring" or "The Name Game" now included titles like Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone," as well as serious songs by other folk-rock groups like "The Sound of Silence" and "Turn, Turn, Turn."
