Do gods get old? Can gods get old? They probably cannot, it’s just us. They remain forever young (yes, this is a song title!) and when we count the passing of their years actually we count the passing of ours.
source last.fm
Today Bob Bylan turned 70. Bob Dylan the human, Bob Dylan the young boy from Minnesota who was dreaming to become a second Little Richard, who came to New York and sang in the Greenwich Village clubs, engaged in the protest movement of the 60s and became the icon of his generation, who almost never stopped during the last five decades to be a great poet, a great musician, a great conscience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zY_cM0_6vA
The impact that Bob Dylan’s music had on me and on many other young people who spent their best years on the bad side of the Iron Courtain was in many ways the same and in many ways different than the one it had on our colleagues of generation in the US or Western Europe. While the crowds were gathering at festivals in Newport or at the Isle of Wight (Dylan did not do Woodstock) and young people were protesting in the streets against the Vietnam war with his songs in mind, we were listening near the radio sets to the legendary DJ Cornel Chiriac’s broadcasts from Radio Free Europe where Cornel was telling us about the festivals or about the meeting of Dylan with Woodie Guthrie – his mentor in the young days. The most important thing is that from the ‘Metronom’ broadcasts we could hear his music and songs like ‘Blowing in the Wind’, ‘The Times they are a-Changin’ or ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ had a very different meaning and message that I am not sure that Dylan himself was ever aware.
Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan!