Why do 'transgressive' acts want to be Dylan?

Buick6

too punk to drunk
I've noticed in recent years how some of the most 'transgressive' or 'intense' post-punk artists of the l;ast 20 years have 'mellowed' with age sonically, and how many of them are obsessed with becoming...Bob Dylan (or Leonard Cohen)..

The artists in question are:

Nick Cave
Michael Gira
Place Music
Smog
Mark Lanegan
Talia Zedek

..and others...

First point of reference that I think all the artists have in common is they all are/were heroin addicts or 'addicts' of some sort. Maybe Dylan is part of their therapy?

OK, I think Dylan's music IS fantastic, and he is one of the pioneers of that 'transcendent' rock sound - that sublime fusing of rock, blues, country, psych, rockabilly and a tinge of 'soul' that whiteboys blurted out ad finitum from around 1967-1974 peaking in Martin Scorsese's 'the Last Waltz' and has been repackaged and vomited back as 'No Depression' or worse 'americanabannana'..

But I must give props to the above acts, becuase they seem to be sticking to that Dylanesque/theBand type thing rather than fuck up via the REM-with-an-edge that is Americana or No-Depression...

But still, I can't understand the obsession with these artists with Dylan as they get older. Maybe it's some sort of Jewish-guilt-survivor-persecution thing that defies the whole Christian-gospel-Elvis-spiritual thing and that help's them maintain their outsider persona, and not become Bono or Elton john or something horribly righteous like that...

Hmm.....
 
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