Hugues Aufray, Francis Cabrel, Alain Souchon… How did he inspire these artists?

John Lennon, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix…. A legend of American music since the 1960s, Bob Dylan has left his mark on several generations of artists. But its influence was not limited to Anglo-Saxon countries alone. The songwriter has fans all over the world.

France does not escape “Dylanmania”. In 1965, the singer Hugues Aufray translated several of his titles in his album Aufray sings Dylan. He transmitted to the French public of the time the beauty of Dylan's texts with The Daughter of the North (proofreading of The Girl from the North Country) or Don't think about it anymore, everything is fine (resumption of Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right).

The two singers know each other. They crossed paths in 1961 in New York, when Bob Dylan, still unknown, was performing at Gerde's Folk City, a small club in Greenwich Village. “I am fascinated first by the silhouette”Hugues Aufray will remember in 2011 on RTL. The friendly “love at first sight” will take place the following year. “I came back in 1962, and there I stayed six months. And that’s where I met Dylan,” he continued. “I am convinced that I am facing a sort of Rimbaud”.

He's inspired everything I've written since day one

Francis Cabrel

Huges Aufray is not the only Frenchman to have fallen under the spell of Bob Dylan. Alain Souchon has confided several times that the cover of the album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan made him want to become a singer. It also summarizes the imprint that the artist leaves in his song Regrets or he mentions “The songs of my youth and of Robert Zimmerman, the altitude”.

Francis Cabrel will also recount having had a teenager, an almost mystical revelation while listening to the folk legend. “My life changed, my musical life”assured the singer on RTL in 2012. “I was so dazzled that I knew that it was in this direction that I was going to look, to dig and modestly, to follow the furrow. (…) He’s inspired everything I’ve written since day one.”

As early as 1984, he sang of his passion for the American songwriter in the song Not too much trouble: “When I was 14, Dylan's chords filled my insomnia. And I fell asleep in the morning, guitar in hand, without unplugging the amp”. A fascination that even pushed Francis Cabrel to produce a tribute album to Bob Dylan, Aim for the Sky, including a French adaptation of All Along the Watchtower.

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