Definitely Dylan

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.

In this episode, Laura talks to history professor Court Carney about Bob Dylan and Nostalgia – Dylan’s relationship to the past and the future, The Odyssey, and Don Draper.
Here are a few things we reference that you might want to check out:
Eric Lott’s book, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, from which Dylan took the title of his 2001 album.
Mad Men - Carousel pitch
Mad Men - Don’t Think Twice scene
You can buy The Politics and Power of Bob Dylan’s Live Performances: “Play a Song for Me”, edited by Court and Erin C Callahan here.
You can read my essay in this collection, “Today and Tomorrow and Yesterday Too”, about Bob Dylan and Time in the 2020s –which I think is highly relevant in the context of this conversation– for free over on Patreon.
And you can watch the talk I gave in Miami about film, painting, and making time stand still over here:
Court’s Substack and website: https://www.courtcarney.com/
You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.
Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.