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Quote by Bob Dylan

“I want to use songs that everybody knows or thinks they know. I want to show them a different side of it and open up that world in a more unique way. You have to believe what the words are saying and the words are as important as the melody. Unless you believe the song and have lived it, there's little sense in performing it. I never wanted to be a singer that”

Quote by Bob Dylan

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Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, is an American musician, singer, and songwriter. Renowned for his distinctive voice and influential lyrics, Dylan's music spans genres from folk to rock, country, and gospel, profoundly impacting music in the second half of the 20th century. more

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“People talk about Frank Sinatra all the time - and they should talk about Frank - but he had the greatest arrangers. They worked for him in a different kind of way than they worked for other people. They gave him arrangements that are just sublime on every level. And he, of course, could match that because he had this ability to get inside of the song in a sort of a conversational way. Frank sang to you, not at you, like so many pop singers today. Even singers of standards.”

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“Early on, before rock 'n' roll, I listened to big band music - anything that came over the radio - and music played by bands in hotels that our parents could dance to. We had a big radio that looked like a jukebox, with a record player on the top. The radio/record player played 78rpm records. When we moved to that house, there was a record on there, with a red label. It was Bill Monroe, or maybe it was the Stanley Brothers. I'd never heard anything like that before. Ever. And it moved me away from all the conventional music that I was hearing.”

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“I come from way north. We'd listen to radio shows all the time. I think I was the last generation, or pretty close to the last one, that grew up without TV.”

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“In my childhood everything you heard, you could imagine what it looked like. Even singers that I would hear on the radio, I couldn't see what they looked like, so I imagined what they looked like. What they were wearing. What their movements were. Gene Vincent? When I first pictured him, he was a tall, lanky blond-haired guy.”

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“Up north, you could find these radio stations with no name on the dials that played pre-rock 'n' roll things - country blues. We would hear Slim Harpo or Lightnin' Slim and gospel groups, the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. I was so far north, I didn't even know where Alabama was.”

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“I like spiritual songs. They struck me as truthful and serious. They brought me down to earth and they lifted me up all in the same moment.”

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“People think that singing and playing is easy. It's not. It's easy to strum along, but if you actually want to really play, where it's important, that's a hard thing and not too many people are good at it.”

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“I never did use earphones until into the Eighties or Nineties. I don't like to use earphones. I've never heard anybody sing with earphones effectively. They just give you a false sense of security. A lot of us don't need earphones. I don't think Springsteen or Mick do. But other people more or less have given in. But they ought not to. They don't need to. Especially if they have a good band.”

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“Recording studios are filled with technology. They are set in their ways. And to update them means you'd have to change them back. That would be my idea of upgrading. And this will never happen. As far as I know, recording studios are booked all the time. So obviously people like all the improvements. The more technically advanced they are, the more in demand they become.”

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“The corporations have taken over. Even in the recording studio. Actually, the corporate companies have taken over American life most everywhere. Go coast to coast and you will see people wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts, eating the same food. Everything is processed.”

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Author:Bob Dylan