People may be surprised to learn that Bob Dylan’s first number one hit on the Billboard charts came during COVID. “Murder Most Foul” is Dylan’s longest song (nearly 17 minutes!), and he wrote it when he was 78.

Dylan is on the charts again for the movie A Complete Unknown, which covers the period when he went from a complete unknown to a folk music icon, and then a folk music iconoclast. The biopic is based on the book by Elijah Wald: Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night that Split the Sixties. One of the songs that Dylan played that night in Newport was “Like A Rolling Stone.”  In 2010 that song was ranked as the number one rock and roll song of all-time by Rolling Stone magazine. When it was released in 1965 it only made it to number two on the charts!

I loved the film. But I must confess I want to hear the story of the “old Dylan” — the one who had his first number one hit just before he turned 80. I’m a retired preacher now who has gone through my own period of “deconstruction” and I am intrigued by an octogenarian still performing four out of seven nights each week. “The Never Ending Tour” began June 7, 1988, and tour dates for spring 2025 were just announced.

A Complete Unknown covers the period from 1961-65. Dylan, at 20, wrote songs that defined a generation from “Blowin’ in the Wind” to “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” In four short years Dylan goes from a guitar playing folk singer with a harmonica around his neck to a rock and roller playing a Fender Stratocaster with a hard driving band backing him. In England, (not Newport, as the film portrays) a fan yells out “Judas!” implying that the folk savior has betrayed his people for rock and roll. Dylan deconstructs for the first time, but it will not be the last.

On his fourth album,  Another Side of Bob Dylan, just before he goes electric, he writes a powerful song of confession and transformation. “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” he sings in “My Back Pages.” He reflects on all the certainty of the “finger pointing songs” and sings that he is just not sure about anything right now. 

There have been manifold incarnations and deconstructions of Dylan: his born-again period, an album of Sinatra-inspired ballads, a Christmas album (I do not recommend) and many, many more. It’s telling that six separate actors play different Dylan periods and personas in the 2007 biopic, I’m Not There; from a young African-American boy named Woody Guthie and to an ordained gospel singer, Father John. Cate Blanchett even plays one of the personas. 

Eighty albums are listed on his website, an amazing array of musical styles, live albums and bootleg collections that reflect an artist who stays forever young. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016, but did not attend the ceremony. He is a painter, an author, a sculptor, and has sparred in the boxing ring with Boom Boom Mancini. He developed a whiskey called ”Heaven’s Door.”  He appeared in commercials for Victoria’s Secret, Chrysler, Cadillac, and IBM.  He contains multitudes.

I read Dylan devotionally. A tome of 704 pages sits beside my chair. It outlines the background and recording of every song, bootlegs and all. The Book of Common Prayer, Richard Rohr, the Reformed Journal, and Dylan start my day each morning. 

Back when I was filling out my “pastoral profile” for prospective pastoral-search committees, I was asked to name my three favorite theologians. I listed John Calvin, Eugene Peterson, and Bob Dylan. A member of a search committee where my profile landed commented, “Either this guy is joking or he doesn’t need a job.” I was not joking and I did get the job. As the years passed, sermons with Dylan quotes were legion. Calvin and Peterson faded, but the song remains the same with Dylan.

When I saw his concert in Port Chester, New York in 2023 it did not seem to matter to him if the audience was there. There was no interaction with the aging baby boomers standing close to the stage. He played his songs and was done. The concert ended with “Every Grain of Sand” from 1981, the last song on his last “Christian” album. In the liner notes, he wrote “it was an inspired song that came to me. It wasn’t really too difficult.I felt like I was just putting words down that were coming from somewhere else, and I just stuck it out.” It was Johnny Cash’s favorite Dylan song, with Emmylou Harris and Sheryl Crow singing it at Cash’s funeral. My liner notes would say all of Dylan’s albums are Christian.

I am amazed by this “old Dylan,” a man still touring in his 80s, and I wonder what drives him. I don’t know. I simply know that I am inspired by someone who has continually recreated himself and continues to grow, change, and transform. 

As a retired preacher living into a different understanding of my faith, I recognize in so many ways that “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”