 and its key line 'Hope I die before I get old', Dylan, now 81, rightly detects a deep dread of the fate that awaits us all: today's rebel is tomorrow's crusty curmudgeon.){kind=link}
Tucked away among the 66 songs Bob Dylan analyses in his riveting new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, lie three surprises. Writing for the most part about American music of the recent and distant past, he suddenly turns his gaze to Britain.
His first choice is Elvis Costello’s blistering 1978 single Pump It Up – a telling one in that Costello has long acknowledged the song’s debt to Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. His next stop is a track from the decade that defines him. In the Who’s My Generation (1965) and its key line “Hope I die before I get old”, Dylan, now 81, rightly detects a deep dread of the fate that awaits us all: today’s rebel is tomorrow’s crusty curmudgeon.
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