R.I.P. Steve Jobs: The Next Dylan

The "Next Dylan" was a moniker that was thrown around often beginning in the late 60s, used to describe the heir to the Bob Dylan visionary troubador throne, when it became clear that it was a throne Dylan was never really interested in in the first place.

The "Next Dylan" title was almost exclusively applied to singer songwriters with acoustic guitars, gravely voices and harmonicas around their neck, including Leonard Cohen, Loudon Wainwritght III, Bruce Springsteen, Tim Buckley, Jeff Buckley, Beck and Conor Oberst. Yet the label never stuck, chiefly because anyone with a Dylan-sized ambition would never follow directly in Zimmernan's footsteps. They would blaze their own trail and find a different way to change the world.

That is exactly what Steve Jobs did. But rather than a guitar and a harp, technology for the masses was the medium for his message.

Jobs was a well-known music lover, not surprising for the inventor of iTunes. Among living artists, Jobs held Dylan in the highest regard, even to the point of dating Joan Baez in the 1980s. Jobs used Dylan and The Beatles as inspiration in his own work. He featured Dylan and John Lennon in Apple's famous "Think Different" campaign, and would name-check them in public any chance he got, as this montage demonstrates:

Like Dylan, Jobs had a blazing intelligence, vision and drive that enabled him to do things in his chosen field that no one had ever dreamed of and make it look effortless.

Both men would surely say that it was simply the result of hard work, and while this is true, they both posess that spark of genius that comes along a few times in a century.

As a Jobs quote from his obituary in the New York Times noted,  Apple's amazing products were, above all, a triumph of taste, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing.”

Rock Turtleneck tries to do the same, and has found immeasurable inspiration from all of these men over the years, and herewith  with two of Steve Jobs' favorites from Bob Dylan and The Beatles.





R.I.P. and TCB, Mr. Jobs. You are missed.