BOB DYLAN: ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

You don't have to like Bob Dylan's voice to acknowledge he is one of the most important American songwriters of the 20th century. As Dylan himself famously wrote in "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "You don't need a weather man/to know which way the wind blows."

People have been looking to Dylan for social weather changes ever since the former Robert Zimmerman of Duluth, Minn., broke onto the New York coffeehouse scene 40 years ago at Cafe Wha. He told us the times were changing, said the answer was blowing in the wind and asked a generation on their own for the first time "How does it feel?"

Dylan and his band will perform at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Show Me Center. Tickets are $29.50.

Dylan fans are making pilgrimages to this concert from Wisconsin, New York, California, Chicago and many other locales. People who don't ordinarily go to concerts consider Dylan's appearance here an event. Ed Arnzen, coach of the Southeast Missouri State University women's basketball team, is undecided whether to plunk down the $29.50. He was in college when Dylan started on the road to becoming a folk-rock icon. "Most of my friends listened to Dylan songs," Arnzen says. "I agreed with some of his philosophy at the time. He was as much a philosopher as a singer."

From "A Fool Such as I" to "You're No Good" and the 448 songs in between, Dylan's discography is a road map of the past 40 years.

"Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan" is a 900-page critical study of Dylan's work. In the introduction, author Michael Gray writes: "Here at the beginning of the twenty first century, those who want to understand the generations which grew up in the West in the 1960s to 1980s will find it vital to study Bob Dylan's art closely. There is a sense in which, more fully than F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dylan created a generation. The possibilities of our inner lives were expanded by the impingement of Dylan's art, by the impact of his consciousness on ours, and on so much that has followed."

A popular Scott City, Mo., band, the Chimes of Freedom, took their name from a Dylan song in the 1960s.

Dylan himself has said his contribution was to marry the seriousness of folk music to the energy of rock 'n' roll.

Steve Richardet, a civics teacher at Central Junior High School, estimates he has been to 35 Dylan concerts since discovering him in 1966 at age 10. Even at that age, he knew Dylan was singing about important things Mitch Miller and even the Beatles weren't.

"I wouldn't say he had the answers," Richardet says, "but he was certainly asking the right questions."

Dylan's music is one of his life's passions. He once wangled backstage passes by passing himself off as a freelance reporter for the Indianapolis Star.

Yet he still didn't get close enough to say hello to the man.

Richardet says Dylan will be remembered as the first singer/songwriter to bring a social conscience to rock music, "Poetry to a jukebox."

Dylan's true fans have gone through many tumultuous changes with him, from folkie to electrified rocker to dropout to country and western singer to born-again Christian to the current incarnation, Oscar-winning songwriter (for "Things Have Changed" from the film "Wonder Boys.")

"The biggest Bob Dylan fan in the world is Bob Dylan," Richardet says. "He has created that image, he has created this troubadour.... To keep the image going and alive he has had to change and evolve."

About 2,000 tickets had been sold for the concert as of Thursday afternoon.

Richardet will be in the third row when Dylan starts singing Wednesday. His wife, Donna, and kids, Andrea, 10, and Kristen, 8, will be there, too, though farther back "in the safe seats," Richardet says.

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