Definitely Dylan

When Bob Dylan began his career, murder ballads were having a bit of a moment. In this episode, we’ll look into the influence these songs had on the young artist, and how they inspired a particular subset of his own early songs.
You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.
Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

This week on the Bob Dylan Hotline Laura and Rebecca are talking about Bob Dylan's pronouns!
In 1978, Bob Dylan told Craig McGregor,
"Tangled Up In Blue [was] the first [song] I ever wrote that I felt free enough to change all the... what is it, the tenses around, is that what it is? [...] The he and the she and the I and the you, and the we and the us–I figured it was all the same anyway – I could throw them all in where they floated right – and it works on that level."
How does this changing around of pronouns affect how we hear the song? And why does Dylan favour writing in the second person rather than the first? Joni Mitchell has something to say about that.
You can listen to Rebecca talk about "Like a Rolling Stone" on the Pod Dylan podcast here.
Find the Substack version of Graley Herren's essay on "Sweetheart Like You" here.
In case anyone's interested in what I did end up talking about at the conference about Bob Dylan and Masculinity conference, you can watch my talk here.
The line from "I Contain Multitudes" about "four pistols and two large knives" is from Shelby Foote's history of the Civil War, as James Adams (bob_notes on Twitter/X) noted here.
If you have a question for us, send us a voice memo to bobdylanhotline[at]gmail.com.
For anything else get in touch at itsdefinitelydylan[at]gmail.com
You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.
Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.
Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.
Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.

This week Laura talks to writer, editor, and musician Sam Sodomsky about the trilogy of Great American Songbook albums, Shadows in the Night (2015), Fallen Angels (2016), and Triplicate (2017) – a move that for some legacy artists might be predictable, but that for Bob Dylan was a real curveball.
You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.
Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

In this week’s Bob Dylan Hotline Laura and Rebecca about the way we listen to music – how do shifts in technology affect the way artists present their work and does that change the way we relate to it? Is the album still relevant or on its way out? And how does all this affect what we consider to be part of the Bob Dylan canon?
I barely ended up quoting from it, but do yourself a favour and read Graley Herren's excellent essay on Bob Dylan's 1980 San Francisco Residency.
If you have a question for us, send us a voice memo to bobdylanhotline@gmail.com.
For anything else get in touch at itsdefinitelydylan@gmail.com
You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.
Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.
Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

This week on the Bob Dylan Hotline we're talking about Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney – two extraordinary artists whose paths have crossed several times over the decade, and whose influence on the other has been significant. They're similar in some ways, very different in others – let's talk about it!
Watch the video of this conversation on YouTube.
Check out Dean's radio show the TEN AM here:
If you have a question for us, send us a voice memo to bobdylanhotline@gmail.com.
For anything else get in touch at itsdefinitelydylan@gmail.com
You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.
Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.
Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.