Dylan's Refusal to Stay the Same Gave Jobs His Rule for New Products
From bootleg tapes before Apple to a two-hour meeting after iTunes, Dylan's refusal to stay the same gave Jobs a rule for new products.
Founders · #429 Bob Dylan's AutobiographyIn his 20s, before there was an Apple, Steve Jobs would lie in bed wearing headphones, listening through hundreds of hours of recorded Bob Dylan concerts.
He had not bought those concerts in a store. Jobs and Steve Wozniak had hunted down unofficial recordings of Dylan. Jobs also collected printed lyric sheets and spent hours puzzling over what they meant.
The habit lasted a lifetime, and it shaped how Jobs thought about making new things. Across the biography Jobs did with writer Walter Isaacson, his biographer, Jobs mentioned Dylan about 15 times, from his youth to his final illness.
After Apple opened the iTunes Store, Jobs spoke with Dylan alone for two hours. Dylan told him the songs came to him: "the songs just came through me. It wasn't like I was having to compose them."
Near the end of his life, Jobs was at home with Isaacson listening to Dylan records. Jobs reportedly told Isaacson that Dylan was one of a kind.
In the account given in the Isaacson biography, Jobs connected his drive to keep inventing new technology and creating new products to the Beatles and Dylan. As recounted there, he said he took from them the idea of always trying something new, of changing and improving their work over time and continuing to push forward. Otherwise, as Dylan put it, "if you're not busy being born, you're busy dying."
Questions people ask
What were those underground Dylan recordings?
They were unofficial live tapes and studio outtakes traded among fans. Dylan had one of the largest bootleg markets in rock because he toured constantly and left prized songs unreleased. Collecting them was a way to hear work you could not buy in stores.
What was the iTunes Store?
Apple opened the store in 2003 as a legal way to buy digital music for the iPod. It soon became the largest music retailer in the United States. That success gave Jobs new standing in the music business.
Where does if you're not busy being born, you're busy dying come from?
It comes from Dylan's 1965 song It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding). In context it warns against standing still creatively and morally. Jobs used it as a business rule to keep making new work.