He wasn't a starting point for me. By the time I saw him stand up at the Newport gig in (I think) '62 I knew most of the older songs he was drawing on, and could stand in amazement at the deftness of his weaving of old Thiemes (I mean themes) into new fabric.

But I think what he did that really caught the wave was to voice the anger and protest of a very large generation of young people; he articulated the threads that were running through ou r minds as we tried to come to to some kind of terms with the world and discovered the endless layers of hypocrisy and fraud and stupidity and overwhelm and pain which made it up. "Masters of War", for example, is the "J'accuse" that every youth wants to hurl at the source of war machinery, in an impulse to make the world more safe. Dylan wrote what millions were thinking but could not say as well. For which he has been quite justly rewarded.

It's had to think of that sassy kid walking in the snow in Greewisch Village with a pretty young girl on his arm, probably not more than seventeen, as a rich man! How jealous can I get???

A