Twisted Sister guitarist, Jay Jay French recently sat down for an interview on The Metal Voice.
As reported by Ultimate Guitar, during the interview French recalled his memory of going to see a Bob Dylan gig for the first time. While French might classify himself as a Dylan fan, he actually planned on going to the gig just to see if Dylan was apparently as bad live as he had heard that he was.
French began, “Dylan’s indecipherable. I went to see Dylan a couple of years ago with one of his producers because I heard he was so horrible live you couldn’t understand what he was singing. And I wanted to be able to understand what he was singing because I’m a huge Dylan fan. And never saw Dylan, and he was playing down the street from my house.”
“And I actually bought a ticket to that show with my wife and was sitting with one of his producers. He never turned around to the audience, he played with his back to the audience, never talked to the audience, and was indecipherable in his songs.”
French continued, “It was almost comical, almost like he was saying, ‘Fuck you, you’re idiots, you’re just paying to see a god, and I don’t care.’ And half the audience bought into it because he’s Bob Dylan.”
He continued to joke, “‘Hey, man, it’s an artistic statement, he doesn’t turn around, he doesn’t talk to you and you can’t understand what you’re singing, that’s great.'”
“And half the people went, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?! I can’t understand what he’s singing and he sucks.’ But Dylan doesn’t care because he’s 83 years old, and millions of people want to see him.”
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Though French went into it with a certain level of judgement, as the gig progressed Dylan apparently wasn’t changing his mind. “Frankly, I sat there, and I know the Dylan songbook, and he was halfway through one song, and I’m going, ‘What the fuck?’
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