[Bob] Dylan is a contemporary Don Quixote, at once besotted by the promise of America and yet also undermining it.
Jay MichaelsonPeople should support equality because of their religion not despite it. These are the values that openness, inclusion, diversity promote. And they're directly opposed to the kind of enforced closet of certain interpretations of religion.
Jay MichaelsonExcept in these latter-day songs, [Bob] Dylan is a grizzled old prophet who's already been to hell and back.
Jay MichaelsonThe best songs of this [modern] period - the apocalyptic "High Water," for example - return [Bob] Dylan to where he was in his first phase, updating and transforming American traditional music.
Jay Michaelson"Masters of War" [of Bob Dylan] wasn't peacenik, anti-war stuff. With its minor key and uncompromising final lines ("And I hope that you die/And your death'll come soon/ I will follow your casket/ In the pale afternoon...") this was a previously unknown hybrid of caustic political commentary and punk rock, which itself wouldn't be invented for another decade or so.
Jay Michaelson