AVQ&A: What's your favorite Bob Dylan impression?

As far as I know, Hozier has never attempted a vocal impression of Bob Dylan (although he has covered his music before). That’s for the best, but he’s still found other ways to pay homage to the folk singer he’s looked up to his whole career. Hozier released this fun little clip, a direct pastiche of Dylan’s classic “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video, in support of Wasteland, Baby! on what looks to be a very cold day in New York in 2022. Whether he meant to occasionally fumble the cards and get just as off track as Dylan or this is simply a harder-than-it-looks task is unclear, but the effect remains the same. The best part is this isn’t even the song’s official music video; that came a month later. He just did this for the love of the game. [Emma Keates]

In the mid-’60s, so many songs aped Dylan and his immediately recognizable vocal inflections—the most mean-spirited has to be Paul Simon’s “A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission),” particularly the full-band version on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme—but this is probably the one on steadiest rotation for me. This A-side of a 1967 seven-inch by Jim Ford, who Sly Stone apparently dubbed “the baddest white man on the planet,” goes full cartoony Dylan at points, particularly when the singer-songwriter delivers lines like “If I hurt you, I apologize.” (Even the song’s title doesn’t hide all of the Dylan nodding going on here.) But unlike that Simon song, this isn’t a joke or a jab but rather a clear rip-off that still manages to sound very cool. [Tim Lowery]

It’s hard to imagine someone doing a Bob Dylan impression before Joan Baez, and someone with more ammo against the man. Yet, the lovely thing about Baez’s impersonation, which she’s been caught on camera doing since at least the mid-’60s (and as recently as the early 2000s), is how loving it feels—as if she knows she’s the only one who can mock the voice of a generation and get away with it. A totemic singer-songwriter in her own right, her raspy impression feels knowing but not mean-spirited. It also reveals a glimpse of a Dylan, whom only she knows. Baez and Dylan’s doomed romance is well-worn territory, the stuff of Oscar hopefuls at this point. Yet that much-discussed history falls away to the utter delight of her audience, herself, and, we must assume, Dylan. Whether he approves or not, we won’t think twice about it. It’s alright. Baez loves it. [Matt Schimkowitz]

Someday it’ll be a neat trivia fact that a Grammy Award-winning performer and Emmy Award-winning writer-actor tossed off a Bob Dylan impression in the holiday episode of an NBC broadcast comedy in 2011. Donald Glover’s singing impression of Dylan is as passable as any other comedian’s take. But “Baby Boomer Santa” is so fun, and the Dylan-esque bit so delightfully silly. You can imagine the man himself might not appreciate his epoch being reduced to the stereotypes (Woodstock, Vietnam, acid, etc.) but it makes for a great jingle and a perfect appeal to Pierce’s (Chevy Chase) vanity, which makes it my favorite Dylan impression out there. [Mary Kate Carr]

It might seem reductive to describe Ben Pike’s brief but memorable performance as Bob Dylan in Inside Llewyn Davis as an “impression” when Pike acquits himself so well, taking the stage immediately after Llewyn (Oscar Isaac) and putting the lie to that struggling artist’s claim that “If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song.” But Pike’s Dylan is just that—a fleeting impression, a hint of what’s to come in folk music. We never get a close look at this heretofore complete unknown (or even hear Dylan’s name), the smoke and dim lighting at the Gaslight Café smudging out his face, leaving only an outline of curls, harmonica, and a guitar. But that’s all that’s needed to make Llewyn realize that he’s never escaping his purgatory; he’s long since missed the boat. [Danette Chavez]