May 2011 sees the 70th birthday of Bob Dylan. To celebrate, we're taking you on a journey through the lesser celebrated avenues of his back catalogue. A journey down Highway 61 that won't stop off at 'Blowin' In The Wind', 'All Along The Watchtower' or 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' but will call by...To Make You Feel My Love (1997)
Bob Dylan is classed as a great songwriter because he has written timeless music; songs of major depth that sparked decades of debate; songs that resonate with moments of history; songs that have broken down barriers but, perhaps most important of all, Bob Dylan has written hit singles. Why should that be so significant? Well I believe it just is; if your trade is putting out art in any form then it’s fair to argue that the hardest achievement of all is reaching a large mainstream audience without diluting the content of your work. Or to put it bluntly, if you write songs then why wouldn’t you want as many people as possible to know and sing along to those songs? I feel sorry for a writer like Elvis Costello who is indisputably a fine and prolific composer, is widely lauded as being one and yet most of his hit singles (I’m thinking of ‘I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down’, ‘Good Year For The Roses’, ‘She’) have been cover versions.
I’m sure that level of recognition has been a much stronger desire for Dylan than he’s ever really let show. Mainly through the interpretations of other performers in the sixties he did achieve a lot of pop chart success. Acts ranging from Bryan Ferry to Guns ‘N’ Roses carried Dylan into the popular arena in subsequent decades but over the past ten years, as Dylan’s newly recorded song output has slowed, any signs of a genuine new hit from the great mans pen had faded. That was until a couple of years ago when new pop diva Adele made ‘To Make You Feel My Love’ her own. Indelibly it would seem as you’ll be hard pushed to find too many people referring to it as a Bob Dylan song these days. Now Adele is a cut above the current pop pack and did an incredible job on the song, here however we’re turning the spotlight on the first singer to spot the tunes hit potential. Back in 1997, before it had even appeared on a Dylan album, Billy Joel was stopped in his tracks when his record label showed it to him. Joel’s version, with shades of Ray Charles and Elton John, paved the way for the Adele reading but is well worth a listen too.
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