The Dylan partisans always amuse me. They denigrate the old songs Dylan stole from in exactly the same way they claim the "poor misguided traditionalists" denigrate Dylan.

I like "Hard Rain," but I don't see why it's so brilliant, or so "relevant." It is a set of surrealist images, some of which have possible applicability to current events (the white man walking a black dog, the pollution metaphors, etc). Sure it's "relevant," if you want it to be.

And Lord Randall? That's about a guy killed by his girlfriend. That also has possible applicability to current events. It's also relevant if you want it to be.

LH's claim that Hard Rain was "more relevant in every way to life as it exists now" would only be true if we had eliminated murder.

And sure Hard Rain has more scope, but then many dreadfully boring novels have more scope than a Jane Austen novel.

Relevance and scope are, in any case, dubious criteria when applied to art. Is Rembrandt's The Night Watch relevant? How much scope does one of his self-portraits have? As to LH's claim that in the future Hard Rain would be seen as brilliant because of its relevance and scope, that rarely happens. It may be regarded as brilliant, but not for that reason.

And, more to the point, I like The Leaving of Liverpool better than the Dylan rewrite.