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LORNA BERNSON: It's All Things Considered on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Lorna Benson. It's Bob Dylan's 60th birthday today.

[BOB DYLAN, "I SHALL BE RELEASED"] They say every man must need protection,

They say every man must fall.

Yet I swear I see my reflection

Some place so high above the wall.

I see my light come shining

LORNA BERNSON: The Duluth native has seen his life and music career documented over the airwaves, on television, and film, and on pages and pages of print. But perhaps no single person has written as much as music historian Michael Gray. Gray's latest book, Song & Dance Man III-- The Art of Bob Dylan, is a nearly 1,000 page detailed analysis of Dylan's 40-year career. Gray says it's hard to underestimate the influence Dylan has had.

MICHAEL GRAY: Dylan has investigated and contributed creatively to more or less every form of American popular music. And his contributions have been enormous in many of those areas. But I think there are many ways in which it's hard to see the changes that he wrought because they're all around us.

They're in the air. And anyone you know of your age is just breathing this stuff in which is things that just didn't used to be that way. I mean, just to give a couple of examples. Before Dylan in popular music, nobody put the names of the musicians on the album cover. I mean, it's so obvious now. I mean, how could it not have happened. But it didn't happen before him.

Another thing is that people used to be so dull in media interviews before him. For instance, the New Musical Express, the primary magazine music paper in Britain, every time anyone came in or arrived in the top ten, they would get asked to fill up this questionnaire.

And it said things like favorite color. And people would dutifully write blue. Favorite food-- hamburger or whatever it was. Bob Dylan was the first person who came along and wrote things like ask the dog. It was just a sort of breaking through a level of formality. And I think that in general, that's one of his major achievements.

LORNA BERNSON: This is perhaps not a very fair question because you'd have to look at 40 years of work here. But are there any of his lyrics that rise up as quintessentially Dylan?

MICHAEL GRAY: Well, there's a lot of, there are a lot of phrases that come out of his work, which everybody thinks of as quintessentially Dylan. I mean, to live outside the law, you must be honest. One of his lines from Blonde on Blonde. I mean, everyone who's ever heard that album or that period of his work has picked that out.

And I mean, some of his titles, The Times They Are A-Changin' is a title that's been used. At one point in the '60s, a whole bunch of these things swept through the world of underground newspapers as headlines. And subeditors, he was a dream to subeditors because he had all these phrases. I think most people know the opening of Like A Rolling Stone goes once upon a time you dressed so fine. Once upon a time, of course, is how the classic fairy tale begins.

[BOB DYLAN, "LIKE A ROLLING STONE"] Once upon a time you dressed so fine

Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?

People call say, beware, doll, you're bound to fall

You thought they were all kidding you.

LORNA BERNSON: Now, you couldn't pick a best album. Is it easier to pick a worst?

MICHAEL GRAY: It's easier, yeah. There are fewer contenders really for worst. I would say Dylan & the Dead is a pretty gruesome album and so is Down in the Groove. Both albums from the floundering '80s.

LORNA BERNSON: Do you think Dylan would agree with you?

MICHAEL GRAY: He might actually, especially about Down in the Groove. I don't know. He went through a phase where he was sort of going into the studio thinking, I mean, this is what he said, thinking, well, it's just another album.

But I think that was part of a rather-- in over the decades, I think he's had to find various ways of dealing with the millstone of his own '60s brilliance, if you like. If you did such wonderful stuff when you were very young, and then, it's harder to do it later. You're bound to have periods where it's pretty grim dealing with that.

LORNA BERNSON: Would you go so far as to say that he ever sold out?

MICHAEL GRAY: No, I don't think he sold out. No. I wouldn't say that. I mean, when he did poor work, it was through not having written, not having had a desire to communicate anything in particular at that point, but having gone into the studio anyway. But no, that's not the same thing.

Selling out would involve renouncing some kind of essential spirit in yourself, I think. And I don't think he's ever done that. I mean, he hasn't always-- it hasn't always shown in the way that people would like it to.

I mean, if he'd listened to his audience, though, he would never have stopped singing Blowin' In The Wind. He'd never have gone electric. And indeed, in the mid-'60s when he first went electric, he was booed for it by students on the hall, earnest young people in those days who saw him picking up an electric guitar as some kind of symbol of a sellout.

[BOB DYLAN, "TOMBSTONE BLUES"] The sweet pretty things are in bed now, of course.

The city fathers, they are trying to endorse

The reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse.

But the town has no need to be nervous.

MICHAEL GRAY: It takes an extraordinary something or other to get up on stage and be booed every night and go on knowing that the next night it's going to happen all over again. But to be convinced that what you're doing makes sense, and it did, I mean, that fusion of the power of folk balladry, the poetry of folk music with the power of electricity.

I mean, it made absolute sense. And it changed everything for everyone, which is one of the reasons he's a great artist. A great artist is one who expands the possibilities of the medium for everybody who comes along afterwards.

[BOB DYLAN, "TOMBSTONE BLUES"] The hysterical bride in the penny arcade

Screaming, she moans, I've just been made.

Then sends out for the doctor who pulls down the shade

And says, my advice is to not let the boys in.

LORNA BERNSON: How do you think the popularity of his son Jakob has affected Dylan?

MICHAEL GRAY: I think he's pleased. I mean, of course, it's an irony that Jakob comes along and The Wallflowers sell a triple platinum album, something Bob Dylan has never achieved in 40 years. But then, like Chuck Berry in the '50s in the original bunch of rock and rollers, his influence-- he's always been an artist whose influence was immensely greater than his sales.

I mean, there must be at least 100 heavy metal bands that I've never even heard of who outsell Dylan album by album. So sales, there's no point Dylan being envious of Jakob's sales. He'd have to be envious of so many people's sales.

[BOB DYLAN, "FOREVER YOUNG"] May God bless and keep you always.

May your wishes all come true.

May you always do for others

And let others do for you.

May you build a ladder to the stars

And climb on every rung.

And may you stay foever young.

May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous.

May you grow up to be true,

May you always know the truth

And see the light surrounding you.

May you always be courageous

Stand upright and be strong.

And may you stay forever young.

May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy

May your feet always be swift.

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift.

May your heart always be joyful.

May your song always be sung.

May you stay forever young.

May you stay forever young.