Happy Birthday Bob

Thank you for the inspiration to sing songs and learn the guitar towards that end when I was younger. Thanks for sucking the air out of the room of singer-songwriters. Thanks for having such a large body of work, that covers of covers of your originals still ring true and loud. Thanks for showing us how a troubadour follows his life and lives his lies till they become some kind of truth. Thanks for your influence on the Beatles. Thanks for showing what it meant to try and love and thanks for showing that you are human in your many personal idiosyncrasies - pulling at your hair, lying about who you worked with, stealing melodies and picking patterns (in fact the song that made me fall in love with, what you are in your work - you stole!). You brought me a long way Bob, I am sure to love your work till time ticks away entirely for my corporal being. Thank you for reminding me always that it isn't dark yet, but that it's getting there. Or that she'll take just like a woman and make love just like a woman, but break like a little girl; that I should bow down to her on Sunday and salute her when her birthday comes; that they'll go there way and I'll go mine; that always, the times are a' changin'; for telling me about the lonesome death of Hattie Carol, or what it feels like on Maggies Farm; for teaching me about the Hurricane, or keeping me aware that a hard rain's a' gonna fall. Thank you for giving me a peek into how wonderful it is when they lay across a big brass bed, and what happened along the watchtower, and for putting so well what it feels like on Desolation Row. Thanks Bob for telling me there's an answer blowing in the wind and what it's like to live life like a rolling stone. I don't know you, Bob, but who your work is - him I love with my deepest heart, for he - in part - exposed and taught me something about my deepest heart

I hope it's all worked out well for you. Thanks again,

Sincerely,

Another person you impacted.