So...

Bob Dylan has had a big influence on society: directly, in terms of the reach that his music (and his promotion of the work of others; in Theme Time Radio Hour, for example) has had in the general public; and indirectly, in terms of the effect his work has had on other artists (affecting a much wider audience with varied musical tastes). Joan Baez described his music as the soundtrack to the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties, and since then he has continued to affect new generations, academically, socially, and - of course - musically.


I think Hardy (2001) best sums it up here:
''I like to stay part of that stuff that don't change,' said Dylan in the notes to his retrospective five-record set Biograph (1985). And the key paradox of the work of Dylan, the most influential of the songwriters and singers of the sixties, is that his supreme originality was firmly rooted in his absorbing of traditions of music, poetry, and biblical myth and allegory. The impact of that originality on the direction taken by later popular music was two-fold. His work encouraged a serious attitude to rock music among pundits and practioners alike. Dylan was the catalyst for the growing complexity in The Beatles' work after 1965, and he enabled critics and academic to claim the status of art for the music, as well as giving rise to a vast amount of scholarship, both professional and amateur, concerned to elucidate his own work and life. Secondly, Dylan was the first of the singer-songwriters. The appeal of his intensely personal and poetic utterances paved the way for the success of Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Neil Young and myriad others'.

Hardy, P. (2001) 3rd Edition. The Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music. London: Faber and Faber Limited.