Joan Baez may have written the most personal song about Bob Dylan, but Joni Mitchell wrote the most scabrous. No one else has ever sized up Mr. Zimmerman and found him wanting: ““Are you really exclusive or just miserly?, You spend every sentence as if it was marked currency.” Think of the moment in Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue in which Mitchell plays “Coyote” for an impassive Dylan; the first song on Hejira matches anything on Blood on the Tracks for acuity, and it’s not sung by a voice like sand and glue.
These songs deal with what Harold Bloom called the anxiety of influence; these artists had, as the saying goes, an agon with Dylan. His songs helped British ravers Jesus Jones and the world, apparently, wake up from history, as if history didn’t exist before fuzz boxes and samplers; found Chumbawamba and The Minutemen worthwhile pickup opportunities; and pushed “Weird Al” into realizing the palidromic possibilities of Dylan.
1. Jesus Jones – Right Here, Right Now
2. David Bowie – Song for Bob Dylan
3. “Weird Al” Yankovic – Bob
4. Joan Baez – Diamonds and Rust
5. Loudon Wainright III – Talking New Bob Dylan
6. Belle and Sebastian – Like Dylan in the Movies
7. Chumbawamba – Give The Anarchist A Cigarette
8. Simon & Garfunkel – A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission)
9. The Beatles – Yer Blues
10. The Minutemen – Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs
11. John Lennon – Serve Yourself
12. The Who – The Seeker
13. Beastie Boys – 3 Minute Rule
14. Jesus & Mary Chain – Fizzy
15. Will Rigby – Leanin’ on Bob
16. Joni Mitchell – Talk to Me
17. Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins – The Charging Sky
18. Syd Barrett – BOb Dylan Blues
19. John Lennon – God
20. Stephen Malkmus – Jo Jo’s Jacket
Humanizing The Vacuum 
“Because something is happening here but you don’t know what it is/
“Do you, Mr. Jones?”
I know it is cheap mockery or trolling. But in the end, Bob is Bob, and just spell the name right,
….don’t criticize what you can’t understand……
what do you mean?
f.i. ……Mitchell fiercely refuted this comparison and stated: “We are like night and day, [Dylan] and I,” she said. “Bob is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception.”
I’m not sure how these remarks refute what I wrote about two of my favorite artists, but okay
Who is the photograph of on the cover for this article? Hope you don’t think it’s Dylan… Makes sense if you do, since you seem to have missed the point
If you haven’t watched I’m Not There and you’re literalist enough to take things seriously, well, then you missed the point of Dylan.