12 August, 2016. 11:01
ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
FACING THE UNTHINKABLE PROSPECT that the people making pop music today aren’t making it for people like him, Campbell Gollan says he can finally enjoy Bob Dylan’s without feeling like he’s got something to prove.
The 28-year-old used to entertain the idea that he actually enjoyed listening to the Minnesota-native’s when he was back in high school, but would typically pad out each Dylan binge with a little bit of Top 40.
While most young people who get stuck into the singing poet’s music would start with his most popular albums from the mid-1960’s, Gollan agrees that Dylan’s later works from the 90’s and 2000’s which address the issues of ageing, death and spirituality have really begun to ring true for him.
“I really honestly tried to enjoy albums like Time out of Mind and Oh Mercy when I was a teenager, but what he was singing about just didn’t stick with me,” he said.
“But now, it’s harder to get out of bed on a cold morning and life hasn’t really panned out the way I thought it would when I was a teenager. What he sings about in those albums – things like death and growing older. Sometimes he sang about Jesus. Now that I’m getting over the hill, those themes are beginning to grow on me,”
“When you’re a teenager, you get into Bob Dylan’s early work because he was pretty much the Taylor Swift of the 60’s. He was strumming that guitar for young people, not so much the older folk who still liked to fuck to the Glenn Miller Orchestra or something like that. But when you get a bit older like me at 28, you can really start to identify with his later work. I don’t feel like I’m weird anymore for enjoying his music.”
However, Gollan says he has no plans to update his Facebook cover photo to publically display that he’s no longer encumbered by social norms of enjoying Bob Dylan ironically.
