A 'thank you' to Bob Dylan at 80

Thirty years ago, my relationship with Bob Dylan began with an act of theft. Hidden away in the basement of my childhood home, I dug through my father's dusty record collection. My fingers flipped past the standard-issue baby boomer "classics" until they found their way to "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume II." It was the cover art that hooked me. Dylan's iconic silhouette with a harmonica around his neck, shot from behind and bathed in blue light. It felt like an invitation to something clandestine and new. After one listen, I knew I needed this record more than my father ever would.

For a kid trapped with a narrow life in a small town, it felt worldly and thrilling to step into Dylan's colorful and absurd universe. When Bruce Springsteen inducted Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, he said that Elvis freed your body and Dylan freed your mind. The 16-year-old version of myself didn't even know my mind needed freeing until Dylan came along and picked the lock.

The scenes Dylan painted with his songs took up permanent residence in my head. I'd sit distractedly in high school math classes writing out his songs because I wanted to feel what it was like to have lyrics that Bob Dylan wrote come out of my pencil.

On Monday, as the world marks Dylan's 80th birthday, it will be hard not to look back on the songs that have become a 30-year soundtrack for friendships, marriage, fatherhood, joy and grief. Dylan's work has kept me company across the journey of adulthood and has influenced the way I think, speak and write.

Songs like "Visions of Johanna," "Gates of Eden," "Mississippi," "Up to Me," "Shelter from the Storm" and even "Like a Rolling Stone" keep revealing new layers and hidden secrets even after I've listened to them so many times they're grooved into my mind like freshly pressed vinyl. Albums like "The Basement Tapes," "World Gone Wrong" and "Shadows in the Night" have curated the American songbook for me.

Dylan's live shows have become a staple of my years. Each one is like a unique snowflake. I've seen Bob in small Midwestern towns and sold-out, 20,000-seat arenas. Driving rain, freezing cold and boiling heat. All with a roving cast of merry fellow Dylan travelers who have little in common with me except that we all get it.

The most joyful show of my life was on a cool summer night in the late '90s on the shores of Lake Superior when Dylan returned to the place of his birth. He closed the show with a thunderous version of "Not Fade Away" by one of his own heroes, Buddy Holly.

The last 30 years have seen a remarkable work from Dylan. Albums like "Time Out of Mind," "Love and Theft," and "Modern Times" represent an extraordinary creative output. He has the substance to endure in these disposable TikTok times. Last year, at the depth of pandemic-related desolation, Dylan dropped a new album that is graceful and poignant. Not bad for a North Country boy in his eighth decade.

It's an odd thing to have a one-sided relationship with someone through their art. You know them deeply and not at all. They affect you, but you have no effect on them. That's the nature of art. When I was young, I desperately wanted to meet Dylan, but that seems less important now. My relationships are with his songs, not with Bob.

I'm left to try and capture my appreciation in writing, which is a hard thing to attempt. Dylan has been the subject of tribute to the point of exhaustion. What's left to say about someone who has a Nobel Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a bucketful of Grammys and dozens of other recognitions? Dylan is an American original about whom there is little original left to say.

So I'll celebrate his birthday and 30 years of listening this week the best way I know how. I'll drop the needle on "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II," raise a glass of whiskey and say the only thing left to say: "Thank you, Bob."

Mike Buttry, an investment banker, lives with his wife and daughters in Edina. On Twitter: @MikeButtry1.