As the Boomers’ most revered singer-songwriter turns 80, it’s amusing to look back at how he rejected the Flower Children.
As the children of the Sixties tried to crown Bob Dylan their poet laureate, he refused. “I think of myself more as a song and dance man, y’know,” he said in 1965. Dylan was the rare celebrity who downplayed the worshipful titles offered him — poet, visionary, and especially spokesman for a generation. After his early 20s,…