Bob Dylan Learned to Be a Musician by ‘Stealing’ From Other Artists, Said a Friend

Bob Dylan moved to New York with the goal of meeting Woody Guthrie and becoming a musician. He succeeded on both counts; Dylan grew close with Guthrie and his family, and became one of the biggest artists in the world. According to those who knew Dylan before fame, he was incredibly difficult to teach. This was because he preferred to lift techniques from the people around him.

Bob Dylan never wanted to seem like he was learning anything from musicians in New York

When Dylan moved to New York, he met Dave Van Ronk, a folk singer. Van Ronk taught Dylan a great deal, but Dylan didn’t make this clear. To Van Ronk, it seemed like the younger musician wasn’t absorbing anything he taught him.

“He was unteachable!” Van Ronk said, per the book Down the Highway by Howard Sounes. “He had to reinvent the wheel all the time. Any number of people tried to show him finger picking of the guitar, but he just seemed to be impervious. He had to work it out for himself, and he did eventually. He became a reasonably good finger picker. But I can’t claim any credit for it.”

Van Ronk said that Dylan pretended to be uninterested in lessons from other people while stealthily stealing their techniques.

“You could almost say he could not acquire anything except by stealing it,” Van Ronk said. “That is to say that he would watch, and if you tried to explain to him, he would [affect a lack of interest].” 

Bob Dylan said he learned about being a musician from Dave Van Ronk

While Van Ronk didn’t think he taught Dylan anything, Dylan said he learned a great deal from him.

“I’d heard Van Ronk back in the Midwest on records and thought he was pretty great, copied some of his recordings phrase for phrase,” Dylan wrote in his book Chronicles: Volume One. “He was passionate and stinging, sang like a soldier of fortune and sounded like he paid the price. Van Ronk could howl and whisper, turn blues into ballads and ballads into blues. I loved his style. He was what the city was all about. In Greenwich Village, Van Ronk was king of the street, he reigned supreme.”

One of Dylan’s early goals in New York was to perform for Van Ronk.

Dave Van Ronk invited the young artist to perform with him

After seeing Van Ronk perform at a club, Dylan asked if he could play a song for him. 

“As he put the guitar down, I stepped over and put my hands on it and asked him at the same time how does someone get to work down at the Gaslight, who do you have to know? It’s not like I was trying to get buddy-buddy with him, I just wanted to know,” he wrote. “Van Ronk looked at me curiously, was snippy and surly, asked if I did janitor work. I told him, no, I didn’t and he could perish the thought, but could I play something for him? He said, ‘Sure.’”

Van Ronk liked Dylan’s performance of “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” He invited him to play a few songs with him, giving his career a boost.

“Dave liked what he heard and asked me who I was and how long I’d been in town, then said I could come down about eight or nine in the evening and play a couple of songs in his set. That was how I met Dave Van Ronk.”