"Song for Bob Dylan" is a song written by David Bowie for his 1971 album Hunky Dory. The song parodies Bob Dylan's 1962 homage to Woody Guthrie, "Song to Woody". Yet while Dylan opens with "Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song," Bowie addresses Dylan by his real name saying, "Hear this, Robert Zimmerman, I wrote a song for you."
In the song, Bowie also describes Bob Dylan's voice "like sand and glue" which is similar to how Joyce Carol Oates described it upon first hearing Dylan: "When we first heard this raw, very young, and seemingly untrained voice, frankly nasal, as if sandpaper could sing, the effect was dramatic and electrifying."
Read more about Song For Bob Dylan: History and Recording, Composition and Analysis, Other Releases
Famous quotes containing the words bob dylan, song, bob and/or dylan:
“Don’t matter how much money you got, there’s only two kinds of people: there’s saved people and there’s lost people.”
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)
“You praised and knew
the song they made was worthless
and the note,
they sung
was dross.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“English Bob: What I heard was that you fell off your horse, drunk, of course, and that you broke your bloody neck.
Little Bill Daggett: I heard that one myself, Bob. Hell, I even thought I was dead. ‘Til I found out it was just that I was in Nebraska.”
—David Webb Peoples, screenwriter. English Bob (Richard Harris)
“You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning.”
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)