Classic Pop Icons

Happy Birthday to the legendary American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan who reaches 70 years old today. Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota.

To mark the occasion, we’ve compiled 25 quotes about Dylan from his friends and admirers:

John Lennon – “Well, we all like Joan Baez, but we love Bob Dylan.”

Tom Petty – “I saw Dylan getting criticized in Australia by this guy who was saying, ‘Your new songs aren’t as relevant as your old songs.’ And Dylan said, ‘Well, I’m out here writing songs. What are you doing?’ You know, like a whole generation is out there driving BMWs and trying to be lawyers, and at least I’m trying to do something. I thought that was pretty relevant.”

Robbie Robertson – “I remember somebody playing “Oxford Town,” from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, for me. I thought, “There’s something going on here.” His voice seemed interesting to me. But it wasn’t until we started playing together that I really understood it. He is a powerful singer and a great musical actor, with many characters in his voice.”

Paul Simon – “In the beginning, when we were first signed to Columbia, I really admired Dylan’s work. The Sound of Silence wouldn’t have been written if it weren’t for Dylan.”

Joan Baez – “[Dylan] and I were not just two people – we were thousands of people, everybody else’s images of whatever we were, none of them true. But why it was so huge I don’t really know.”

Greil Marcus – “If the genius of this man seems occasional now, when it comes it is staggering, and nothing can touch it. Ah, Bob Dylan!”

Dave Matthews – “It almost makes me furious sometimes, how good his lyrics are. You know, you aspire to things. I’m trying and trying (to write a song), and I’ll get something and I’ll say, ‘That’s pretty good,’ and then I’ll listen to ‘Blood On the Tracks’ and think, ‘Who the hell am I kidding? What the hell am I talking about?’ ”

Jimi Hendrix – “People have always got to put him down. I really dig him, though. I like that Highway 61 Revisited album and especially “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”!”

Tom Waits – “Suffice it to say Dylan is a planet to be explored. For a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and a saw are to a carpenter. I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in — so the bootlegs I obtained in the ’60s and ’70s, where the noise and grit of the tapes became inseparable from the music, are essential to me. His journey as a songwriter is the stuff of myth, because he lives within the ether of the songs.”

Ringo Starr – “Bob was our hero. I heard of Bob through John. He played the records to me and it was just great.”

Neil Young – “I love Bob Dylan. I think he’s great. From the very beginning I knew he was great.”

Johnny Cash – “I became aware of Bob Dylan when the ‘Freewheelin” album came out in 1963. I thought he was one of the best country singers I had ever heard. I always felt a lot in common with him. I knew a lot about him before we had ever met.”

Bono – “I think he is a very tenacious character. I think underneath all the so-called eccentricity, which I think is just a mask, there’s a very true person. He’s a good father — I’ve seen him with his children — with a moral compass, and who can get lost at sea like everybody. But I think he’s very strong.”

Martin Scorsese – “Bob is ageless because he keeps turning new corners, beating down new paths, redefining himself and his art as he goes. ‘Someone had to reach for the rising star, I guess it was up to me,’ he once sang. That sums it up pretty well. He’s still reaching — and encouraging us to do the same.”

George Harrison – “I love him, I really do, and I think he’s funny.”

Bruce Springsteen – “He’s the father of the country that I recognise in the sense that he was the first place I went where I heard an America that I felt and believed to be true. That felt unvarnished and real. It felt like what I was experiencing…It opened up your vision in a way that, for me at the time, school didn’t do and other things didn’t do. It allowed you to dream and have possibilities about what you could do with your life…Those records were so intense.”

Elvis Costello – “I didn’t even own a Bob Dylan record until 1971. To me, he was a great singles artist. You heard him on the radio. What a shocking thing to live in a world where there was Manfred Mann and the Supremes and Engelbert Humperdinck and here comes “Like a Rolling Stone.” That was a great world, a very exciting time.”

Nancy Griffith – “I owe my entire thought process of what it is to be a songwriter and a musician to listening to Bob Dylan when I was a little kid. His grace is my fortune.”

Bill Clinton – “Thank you for a lifetime of stirring the conscience of a nation.”

Billy Bragg – “I got my first Dylan record by swapping the Jackson 5 greatest hits..a hightly produced record for something so shocking and raw..I could probably bang out all the songs out now..then I spent a lot of time listening to singer-songwriters..up to punk I was listening to not much else.”

Gordon Lightfoot – “My main influence is Bob Dylan who taught me how to write lyrics.”

Cerys Matthews – “Bob Dylan’s [music] is a bit like a map to me. One of the best maps you can get, because no matter where it leads you it’s going to be a magical place.”

James Taylor – “Dylan was a real revelation. I guess he would say he was listening to Cisco Houston and Eric Von Schmidt and Woody Guthrie. But he really turned the world on its ear and opened the door for a lot of us. He and the Beatles were the biggest influences on my lyrics.”

Lucinda Williams – “‘Masters of War’ is the best anti-war song ever written.”

Merle Haggard – “I don’t know if songwriting can get any better than “Blowin’ in the Wind” ­ an anthem for the civil rights movement that was both clever and had an impeccable melody.”