Studs Terkel had the world’s best job: talking to interesting people, people who were do-ers, people who were changing the world at a pace, people at the peak of their professions who were making a difference.

And he did this for many years on the WFMT radio station in Chicago.

I liked his interviewing style. He was graciously conversational, always probing, with brutally frank questions, yet always polite and respectful, deferential. And that accent…where’d he get that accent?...or was that just the way he talked?

Being just a kid, I didn’t really get a lot of what Studs and his guests were talking about, but so what. I liked listening anyway because, for me, it was like sitting in on a private conversation between two smart adults, and they didn’t know I had crept into the room, lying on the floor, holding my head in my cupped hands, eavesdropping on them, pretending that I understood the ideas being fired back and forth.

One of Studs’ shows in 1963 was different. It was pivotal, at least to me. His guest was a very young Bob Dylan.

Bob who? And this guy is going to play a guitar and sing on the show? Oh well, why not. Could be fun.

And then…wow! I had never heard anything, anybody, like this new kid on the block, Bob Dylan.

I liked all the contemporary music of those years, and my radio was always playing. I had made a crystal radio when I was 10 from a kit my dad bought, and it actually worked but received only AM. We had an FM radio too, with conventional tubes (aka valves). I listened to everything I could: the jazz of Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker et al; the rock ‘n roll of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, Fats Domino et al; the classical greats of Bach, Handel (where I first heard John Wakefield singing in The Messiah oratorio), Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven et al; and most of all, I loved the folk revival artists, with their acoustic guitars, who included The Kingston Trio, The New Christy Minstrels, The Brothers Four, Harry Belafonte (what a voice), Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, et al.

All of those musicians and singers were spectacular in their talents and musical vision, but exactly who, I asked, is this new guy Bob Dylan?

I had to hear more of him.

So the next time I was anywhere near a record store, I bought my first Bob Dylan album, which, in fact, was the first album I had purchased for myself.

It was called The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

I discovered promptly that it was actually his second album, his first being eponymous (simply titled Bob Dylan), released the year before.

I played those albums until the needles wore out and the vinyl wore out. And then came his next albums, The Times They Are A-changin’ and Another Side of Bob Dylan, and then more and more. And they were all spellbinding, and so totally different from each other.

Of course, at some point I was bound to get a guitar, like millions of others. Soon, on a summer day, passing a music store, I saw a nice looking guitar with a sign across it: Discount $60.

Hmmm, I thought, a good price.

So, on impulse, I reversed my steps to take a better look through the window. I knew absolutely nothing about guitars, except that other people played them.

The salesman pretended that he knew all about guitars.

“Great guitar for a great price. End of the line, that’s why it’s on sale. Gotta get rid of it. It’ll be gone in 10 minutes.”

“Nope,” I said. “It’s gone now.”

So I cleaned out my wallet and headed home with my first guitar.

Now I had to learn how to play it. And how to tune it, which was even harder.

I got a tuning fork (440Hz, A, of course) some instruction books and slowly paid my dues, with sore fingers on both hands.

About all I ever accomplished was some strumming and pattern picking. That went on for some years. And that gets pretty boring, unless you’re a great singer (which I certainly am not) and the strumming just sets a beat for your soaring vocals.

This situation changed after I moved to Australia. After settling in, I decided I’d either learn how to play the guitar or put it down forever.

Fortune smiled on me, and I finally learned how to play fairly ok, being taught by one of Australia’s masters in fingerstyle country blues, Dutch Tilders.

Even though I was an ordinary student, Dutch was a tremendous teacher, so I came out ahead.

See Matthew “Dutch” Tilders under Photos, for more about Dutch and some nice photos.

Years after Dylan’s first albums and then with his “Christian Trilogy” albums of Slow Train Coming (1979), Saved (1980), and Shot Of Love (1981), his public fan base and professional music critics seemed to resent his distinct and overt yet often metaphorical Christian lyrics, with expressions of surprise and even shock that Dylan, the recently born-again Christian, had “abandoned” them with such “religious” songs. “Confounding” was a common comment.

Really? Why would they be surprised, confused and expecting something different? Had they not been listening?

Let’s look at some of his songs starting from his first album “Bob Dylan”:

• In My Time of Dyin’ (Jesus gonna make up my dyin' bed)

• Man of Constant Sorrow (Jesus is the man of constant sorrow, Isaiah 53)

• Fixin’ to Die (Feelin' funny in my mind Lord, I believe I'm fixin' to die)

• Gospel Plow (Oh Lord, oh Lord, keep your hand on that plow, hold on)

• See That My Grave is Kept Clean (Did you ever hear them church bells toll?).

These are upfront songs of faith and hardly secular songs by any stretch…no subtle messages in any of them.

And then his second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”:

• Blowin’ in the Wind, which was based on the traditional Black spiritual No More Auction Block

• A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall, with its apocalyptic and confronting images, and warnings to a self-centred and self-destructive world.

He was a remarkably prolific song writer in those years, and while most lyrics were secular, many relied on biblical themes, introspections and interpretations that revealed his contemplations about godly matters without being overtly “religious” or gospel songs, per se. For example:

• God On Our Side

• House of the Risin’ Sun

• My Back Pages

• Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream

• Gates of Eden

• It’s Alright Ma (I’m only bleeding)

• Highway 61 Revisited

• Desolation Row, and perhaps others, depending on people’s interpretations of Dylan’s various apocalyptic metaphors.

That takes us up to his sixth album.

Other songs from later albums also have Christian metaphors and imagery, for example, Shelter From The Storm from the “Blood On The Tracks”.

So, it is hardly surprising that songs of faith appeared on his later albums.

These songs did not signal a sudden, unexpected, baffling, confounding 180-degree turn in Dylan’s perspectives and outlooks.

Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love were major milestones on a journey that started with his first album.

Reportedly, many fans were alienated and astonished by the evangelical messages in “Slow Train Coming”, which caught them off-guard. The first track Gotta Serve Somebody is a dynamo because it lays out the brutal truism that we have a choice about whom we are going to serve. Are we going to be slaves of the worldly or disciples of Jesus? It is our choice.

“You're gonna have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord. But you're gonna have to serve somebody,” he sang.

True words indeed. No metaphors there. Just the plain truth.