Dylan was - no, not was - he's only the same age as me. I'm hoping he's got some great stuff still to come, as he moves into different stages of his life.

But what has been most remarkable about him is the way he finds phrases that catch in your mind, and put them together in a way that is somehow mean more than they say.

That's why I think in a way it's truer to call him a kind of poet than a songmaker. The songs work when he sings them - but I've never heard anyone else sing Dylan and really make the songs work as well.And that includes lots of technically far better singers.

I used to work on a movement paper called Peace News back in the late Sixties, and we used to use Dylan phrases all the time for headlines, and a lot of other people did too. All kinds of stories, you'd always find there was a Dylan phrase that would feel just right.

Rick's right - the man may well have been or still be all kinds of a shit. People like Pete Seeger or Martin Carthy are worth a hundred of him, as people, or as musicians. But if the word genius has to be nailed to anyone around in his time, it has to be nailed on him.