Here’s a conversation from the late eighties that probably never happened but I like to imagine it did:

Executive 1: You know that Batman film we’re doing?
Executive 2: Yeah
Executive 1: I reckon we need a big, famous artist to do the soundtrack.
Executive 2: Good idea. Who?
Executive 1: Well, I’ve been thinking- it’s an adpatation of a comic that’s quite gothic.
Executive 2: Yeah
Executive 1: And Tim Burton’s directing, and he’s got quite a gothic style.
Executive 2: True
Executive 1: And it’s set in Gotham City.
Executive 2: Right
Executive 1: So we’ve got a gothic comic, gothic director, Gotham City- you know who I’m thinking for the soundtrack?
Executive 2: Who?
Executive 1: Prince
Executive 2: Er, that little black fella who did ‘Raspberry Beret’?
Executive 1: Yes!
Executive 2: Oh. I thought you were going to say, maybe, Trent Reznor or Bauhaus or someone like that.
Executive 1: No way, have you heard ‘Little Red Corvette’?

Of course, whoever picked Prince to do the Batman soundtrack is a canny operator indeed- it gave His Royal Purpleness the perfect opportunity to add another string to his small but perfectly formed bow. A while ago, I wrote on here about the spectacular body-swerve that saw Paul Weller leave behind the Jam’s taut, punky attack for the euro-cafe Jazz leanings of The Style Council. Well that’s the sort of change in tack that Prince seems to have spent much of his career going through about three times on an average afternoon.

This isn’t to say that most Prince albums don’t have unifying themes. They do, and they’re wide in scope from ‘Dirty Mind’ (sex), to ‘Around The World In A Day’ (psychedelic whimsy, sex) to ‘The Gold Experience’ (religion, sex) to ‘Sign O’ The Times’ (state of the world, sex). In fact, in the 4 minutes of the latter’s title track he covers more lyrical ground than Bob Dylan, the man who is meant to be pop music’s maestro of reinvention.

That title bestowed on Dylan is, of course, utter bobbins. Dylan has spent 43 albums (at the last count) moving from “Here’s some wry observations about the world” to “I’ve had a bike crash” to “I’m getting divorced” to “I’ve found God” to “No I haven’t” to “Bugger, I might die soon” and Prince pretty much covers all of that in the first 4 minutes of Purple Rain. He doesn’t have a bike crash during that song but the film had a nifty motorcycle in it which is close enough. The reason for Dylan’s canonization is pretty obvious, he’s a pretentious wordsmith and staggeringly sluggish musician and therefore the perfect hero for every rock journalist who thinks they could be the next James Joyce but could never master the riff to ‘Waterfall’. If they make the lyrics more important than the music, they’ll feel a bit better about themselves.

Prince meanwhile can play more instruments than Roy Castle, as well as dancing much better, and he pushed lyrical boundaries to such a level that he single handedly caused Tipper Gore in 1985 to create the ‘Parental Advisory’ sticker in outrage at ‘Darling Nikki’ “masturbating with a magazine”. We can only assume she wasn’t paying attention 3 years earlier when, on ‘Sister’, Prince sang about incest being “not all it seems” as an 16 year old boy got jiggy with his elder sibling. You never got that with ‘Blonde on Blonde’.

Dylan, on the other hand, makes me think of old cars. It seems that Dylan afficionados think that the relationship between musician and fans, whereby the artist puts all the effort into making music and therefore get paid handsomely from the pockets of the audience, should be turned on it’s head and it is, in fact, the duty of the listener to put all the work into consuming Bob’s tunes as they figure out what the hell he’s banging on about as they sit through, for example, eight long minutes of Visions of Johanna. The only other type of person in society who puts such effort into an otherwise easy task is the classic car enthusiast- who considers that getting from A to B in a comfortable hatchback is a waste of time when one can arrive there two hours late, covered in oil and ready to regale all present with tales of broken gaskets.

I have a friend afflicted by this particular condition and he once arrived somewhat tardily to a party and explained, quite cooly, that he had been held up when his car developed “a small fire”. For me, a man used to such modern motoring comforts as electric windscreen wipers and a CD player that’s audible over the engine, I believe size is no issue when it comes to a fire accompanying you in what is essentially a metal box powered by highly flammable liquid. The only scale it can be measured on begins at ‘no fire’ and only goes up one notch to ‘Oh fucking shit!’. For every classic car enthusiast up to his elbows in engine parts on the side of the A40, there’s a Dylan fan listening to something from his infamous eighties output.

The crossover between classic car enthusiasts and Bob Dylan’s fans continues when nationality is brought into play. The motorists are forever in thrall to Triumph Dolomites and Lotus Europas because British cars never sold abroad very much whilst foreign makers continued to make inroads into our markets year after year and this gets them very upset and defensive. Similarly, Americans have always been rather upset that the Beatles (and The Stones and Led Zep) were British and therefore they went looking for an American to place firmly at the centre of popular music whilst Elvis was busy making dreadful movies. This happened in the mid-60s, right around the time John Lennon started saying Dylan was influencing him strongly and bingo! the Yanks had their man. It’s worth pointing out that in the same period as eulogising His Bobness, Lennon was also so mashed on LSD he convened a meeting to let the rest of The Beatles know he was Jesus, so it’s fair to say his judgement at this time can’t be entirely trusted but that didn’t stop Americans deciding that Bob was lord of all he surveyed and from them on everything he did was a monument to his towering genius.

Well, lets have a close look at a few of Bob’s career landmarks. Modern rock was truly invented, so Rollign Stone magazine would have you believe, when Dylan decided to go electric in 1965, dumping his acoustic guitar for a Fender Stratocaster and angering the entire folk movement. This, apparently, was a very brave thing to do. However, it is worth reconsidering this supposed bravery when you remember that the people he upset spent much of the 1960s ripping up their Vietnam draft papers and being pacifists. It’s highly likely they wouldn’t be much cop if it came down to a fight- especially one over an instrument that had already been toted by such noted hard-nuts as Hank Marvin and Buddy Holly.

Later that year, DA Pennebaker followed Dylan around the UK for the documentary ‘Don’t Look Back’. In this, Bob is said to set the archetype for the modern rock star by being surly with journalists and looking blankly at everyone and everything. Far from pioneering the artists of the future as he blazes a trail through these isles, what the documentary actually turns out to be is an hour and a half in the company of a man so stoned he probably only swtiched to an electric guitar cause he liked the colours. Much is made of how much Bob looks bored and desperate in this film whilst travelling through such places as Nottingham and Devon, but this is much more to do with Nottingham and Devon than it is Bob.

In 1969, as I’ve alluded to, Bob Dylan, artist, musician, genius, fell off his motorbike and nearly died. He followed this by a prolonged period of isolation in which he stitched himself together again and created the real mystique of Dylan that has continued to this day by becoming a recluse and being a bit odd on the rare times he gave interviews. To be frank, his behaviour since the accident appears to be less a sign of a maverick at work and more a sign of moderate brain damage. And what kind of rock star falls off a motorbike anyway? At least Simon Le Bon made a twat out of himself by pranging a big, expensive yacht.

Fast forward to 1975 and Dylan unleashes his true ‘masterpiece’, ‘Blood on the Tracks’ as he splits from his wife Sara. Three points need to be made clear about this album:

1. I defy anyone who doesn’t actually know the story behind it to figure out it’s actually all about the end of a marriage on the first listening
2. Once you penetrate the lyrics, it turns out Bob’s a bit of a bastard
3. Dolly Parton did much better work on the subject with ‘D.I.V.O.R.C.E.’

If you’re reading all this and thinking I hate all Bob Dylan’s music, you’d be wrong. He’s done some good stuff- Like A Rolling Stone, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Rainy Day Women #19 & #35- but his hit rate’s appaling and he sings like he’s had a cold for 40 years. And, there is never, EVER, any need for that much harmonica. But, to crank up the automotive theme again, there’s one reason alone why I’ll always worship at the purple altar of Prince while Mr Zimmerman leaves me cold. They’re both massively influential artists, they’ve both shown great longevity and they’re both genuine auteurs in the world of popular music.

But only one of them has ever sung about the Batmobile.