#259 Bob Dylan

**David Senra** (0:00)
I had just signed a contract with Leeds Music, giving it the right to publish my songs. Not that there was any great deal to hammer out, I hadn't written much yet.
Lou had advanced me $100 against future royalties to sign the paper, and that was fine with me.
John had taken me over to see Lou. John had only heard two of my original compositions, but he had a premonition that there would be more.
John was John Hammond, the great talent scout and discoverer of monumental artists, imposing figures in the history of recorded music, artists who had created music that resonated through American life.
He was legendary. He had followed his own heart's love, music, preferably the ringing rhythm of hot jazz and blues, which he endorsed and defended with his life.
No one could block his way, and he didn't have any time to waste.
I could hardly believe myself awake when sitting in his office. Him signing me to Columbia Records was so unbelievable. It would have sounded like a made up thing. Folk music was considered junky, second rate, and only released on small labels. But John was an extraordinary man. He had vision and foresight, had seen and heard me, felt my thoughts, and had faith in the things to come.
That is an excerpt from the incredible book that I hold my hand in, the one I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is The Autobiography of Bob Dylan. It is called Chronicles Volume One, written by Bob Dylan, in fact, with no help at all. He wrote every single word himself. He didn't even have an editor. And so I'm gonna tell you how this book fits into everything else that you and I have been talking about. But first, I wanna go to the very beginning. The first few pages is just blurb after blurb after blurb of praise for this book. And there is a ton of praise for the book. In fact, Rolling Stone put this as number one on its list of the top 50 musician biographies and autobiographies. But I didn't read the blurbs until after I had finished reading the book. Last night, I was rereading over all my highlights. And I found one that really speaks to why I think this book is so important and important specifically for entrepreneurs to read. And it says, Bob Dylan hasn't really written the story of his life in this fascinating, captivating, intimate, accessible, and widely acclaimed memoir. Instead, he's written mainly the story of his birth when he transformed himself from Bobby Zimmerman to Bob Dylan. I heard Bob Dylan say something when he's a much older man that I think speaks to what takes place in this book and what that review really hits on. And Bob said, life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
And so I found this book because my friend Truman Sacks, who listens to the podcast, actually texts, he ordered it. And I was like, ooh, that's a good idea. I should read it. I had previously told Truman, and I've said this a bunch of times on the podcast, that I think the single best talk on YouTube that's available for entrepreneurs and founders to listen to comes from the billionaire investor Bill Gurley. I'll leave the link down below, but you can just find it on YouTube. It's called Running Down a Dream, How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love. I've watched that talk over and over again. I will continue to watch it over and over again in the future. It has had a huge influence on how I approach my work. If you want to hear more details about that, I talked about that when I read, when I reread the Autobiography of Estee Lauder. So I talk about Bill Gurley's approach and the stuff he talks about in that talk and how I apply it to my work. It's episode 217 of Founders. If you want to go back and listen to that. But Bob Dylan is one of the people that Bill Gurley talks about in that talk. And he heavily, on Twitter, Bill Gurley has recommended this book. He said it is a must read. And so in addition to that, Bob Dylan was also one of Steve Jobs' heroes and one of his main influences on how he approached his work. Steve mentions Bob Dylan probably 15 times in the biography that he worked on as he was dying with Walter Isaacson. So I went back and pulled all of my notes about what Steve said about Dylan. I want to introduce you to that real quick. I'm just going to run through the list real fast before I jump back into the book. And what was remarkable, and maybe something I even forgot, was that Dylan's influence on Steve Jobs lasted Steve Jobs' entire career. In fact, Jobs was obsessed with Dylan before he started Apple. In fact, one of the first things that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak did together was track down underground recordings of Bob Dylan records. Jobs would then collect printed out brochures of Bob Dylan lyrics, and he would spend hours interpreting them. In his biography, Steve says that he managed to collect hundreds of hours of Dylan's recorded concerts and would lay in bed and listening to the concerts in headphones. And he would do this for hours.