I guess I'm still not being clear. Dave thought, and I think, that Dylan was without doubt the finest songwriter on the folk scene of the early 1960s. What Dave considered laziness was a feeling endemic to that scene, which was that great songs "came to you" and you didn't have to rewrite and rewrite, and study, and expand your musical knowledge.

That Dylan did incredible things within the basic limits of three-chord folk and rock musical forms is unquestionably true. However, Dylan himself writes in Chronicles that he created those songs when he had a spark of genius that he lost long ago, and that he can't write masterpieces like that anymore. People like Bach, Ellington, and Cole Porter did not have this problem. They not only had a spark of genius, they also had a thorough grounding in their craft, and thus never were stuck with the feeling that they had done their greatest work in their twenties.

And yes, I know there are probably people who think that the writing on "Time Out of Mind" is as great as the writing on "Freewheelin'" or "Highway 61." But I'm not one of them, nor was Dave, nor is Dylan himself.