Bob Dylan Attempts to Describe Willie Nelson: “How Would You Define the Indefinable?”

By wazup on December 22, 2025 No Comments / 3 views

The expression, “What is there to say about so-and-so?” is something we use when words can’t do justice to a person’s legend. But when asked to describe Willie Nelson for a profile in The New Yorker, Bob Dylan dug deep for some choice words — as poetic and touching as you might expect from The Bard talking about The Red-Headed Stranger.

Dylan did, however, open his response with what writer Alex Abramovich called “a warning”: “It’s hard to talk about Willie without saying something stupid or irrelevant, he is so much of everything.” As Dylan went on, he proved himself right, labeling Nelson everything from an “Ancient Viking Soul” to a “Moonshine Philosopher” to a “Cowboy apparition [who] writes songs with holes that you can crawl through to escape from something.”

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Here’s Dylan’s full description of Nelson:

“How can you make sense of him? How would you define the indefinable or the unfathomable? What is there to say? Ancient Viking Soul? Master Builder of the Impossible? Patron poet of people who never quite fit in and don’t much care to? Moonshine Philosopher? Tumbleweed singer with a PhD? Red Bandana troubadour, braids like twin ropes lassoing eternity? What do you say about a guy who plays an old, battered guitar that he treats like it’s the last loyal dog in the universe? Cowboy apparition, writes songs with holes that you can crawl through to escape from something. Voice like a warm porchlight left on for wanderers who kissed goodbye too soon or stayed too long. I guess you can say all that. But it really doesn’t tell you a lot or explain anything about Willie. Personally speaking I’ve always known him to be kind, generous, tolerant and understanding of human feebleness, a benefactor, a father and a friend. He’s like the invisible air. He’s high and low. He’s in harmony with nature. And that’s what makes him Willie.”