To actually answer the question you're posing there, I think yes, genius will show. As to how influential his lyrics were, that depends on what you mean. Nobody could really imitate his poetic style IMHO, because once he hit his own stride, he was one of a kind. There are no easy formulas to write a Dylan song, you have to be Dylan. (Yes, you can compose couplets of metaphors and string them randomly together, which is almost what he did, but those who used this approach are mostly forgotten, for good reason.)   You could imitate his singing, and I was among many that did, but why the hell would you do such a thing? I forget. Must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Dylan's lyrics in the mid-to-late 60's were certainly influenced by the fact that he was a big old pothead, but he's produced a lot of strong material since then, most of which is not nearly so out there.

There was never anything terribly psychedelic about the musical arrangements on Dylan albums, except maybe "Wheel's On Fire", they tended to be rootsy. Whereas bands like the Dead, the Allman Brothers and certainly Pink Floyd came up with music that was very much designed from a psychedelic perspective (sometimes rambling, but with a great dynamic range, improvisation and of course weird effects) and was perhaps best appreciated through the same prism.

You could pose the same question about Leonard Cohen and get a similarly unsatisfactory answer. (Although I think that to sit back and listen to a Leonard Cohen album pre-First We Take Manhattan, you would pretty much have to be stoned.)

W-O