“I was always fishing for something on the radio. Just like trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life. I moved the dial up and down and Roy Orbison's voice came blasting out of the small speakers. His new song, "Running Scared," exploded into the room.Orbison, though, transcended all the genres - folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn't even been invented yet. He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, "Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him.”

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About Bob Dylan

American singer-songwriter, 69-year career

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter whose career has spanned 69 years. He is known as a major figure in popular culture and as one of the greatest songwriters of all time. In the early 1960s, he brought more intricate lyrical methods to folk music, drawing on the language and concerns of classic literature and poetry. His songs often take in political, social, and philosophical themes, and they pushed against pop conventions while speaking to the growing counterculture.

More from Bob Dylan (154 quotes) →

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Books by Bob Dylan

The Nobel lecture

2017

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100 songs

2017

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Lyrics

2004

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Dylan on Dylan

2007

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