November 26, 2004
As a writer most of my life, I love words as much as musicians love notes. But when you let readers (and I love them, too) throw words around like they were rewriting the Bible and the Gettysburg Address, I sometimes wonder if all the editors at 34 Blvd. of the Allies are on strike or on drugs.
Matt Oberleitner ("Only one Dylan," Feedback, Nov. 19), who claims to be a musician, elevates Bob Dylan to the musical acropolis of "the greatest songwriter in history" (pardon me while I retch). Doesn’t he realize that the accolade consigns hacks such as Stephen Foster, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Bach, Handel and Beethoven to the musical dustbin of history? (Give me a break, Matt!)
Then, adding insult to injury, Maestro Matt canonizes Dylan as "single-handedly the greatest musician to ever live" (pause for another trip to the bathroom).
Realizing, finally, that not everyone shares his enthusiasm for modern noise, he says, "I’ll give you one thing, his songs are unrecognizable" (amen!).
Beethoven wrote his Fifth Symphony almost 200 years ago, and I’ll bet that almost 90 percent of the civilized world recognize not only the first three notes of that classic, but every note that follows it. Two hundred years from now, no one will remember how to spell Dylan‘s name.
Dylan could spend the rest of his life writing his "great songs," and they wouldn’t last as long as Hitler’s Third Reich.
Jack O’Neil
Sewickley