I was 14, sheltered in middle-class suburbia, and innocent of what was really going on in the world. But I had a friend with an older brother who was into Bob Dylan, and when I was over at her house, he'd play his records for us and talk about war and racism and how god-awful the world really was. I loved to listen to him talk, and after a while I loved to listen to Bob Dylan too. When I first heard Dylan sing, I thought there must be something wrong with the record player. But then his voice, bad as it was, started to get to me. It was such a contrast to those mellow, smooth ballad singers my mother liked. Dylan's voice was raw and scratchy and just the right voice to sing about the truth — the real truth, not the prettified version served to children. And his scraggly, almost sleazy looks fit his voice perfectly. He looked like he slept in a bar after arguing politics all night and didn't bother to comb his hair because clean neat hair wasn't important. I knew instinctively my mother would not invite him to dinner. So obviously he must be a prophet.