Some Direction Home for Bob Dylan
The following article appeared in The Age 26.08.09
Personally I think it would be cool to have the mans voice give me some direction. In this case it would be all about the journey as you might never ever get to the destination. MB
Bob Dylan is considering lending his voice to a SatNav system, raising the prospect of having the music legend growlingly tell you: “You have reached your destination,” spiritually or otherwise.
Bob Dylan may be the voice of the new SatNav devices.
The veteran singer, whose hits include Highway 61 Revisited and On the Road Again, would become the latest celebrity to licence their voice to give motorists directions on their vehicle’s satellite navigation systems.
“I’m talking to a couple of car companies about being the voice of their GPS system,” he said in the latest edition of his late-night radio show, Theme Time Radio Hour, broadcast on BBC Radio.
Dylan, the subject of a Martin Scorsese biopic entitled No Direction Home – a line from his counter-culture anthem Like a Rolling Stone – joked about what he might tell unwitting drivers.
“Left at the next street. No, right. You know what? Just go straight,” he quipped.
“I probably shouldn’t do it because whichever way I go, I always end up at one place – on Lonely Avenue,” he said, adding: “Luckily I’m not totally alone. Ray Charles beat me there.”
If Dylan’s GPS plans work out, it would not be the first time the reclusive 68-year-old has sold his artistic skills to commercial ends.
Courting criticism that the 1960s icon has sold out, he famously made a commercial for Cadillac, and more recently allowed Britain’s Co-Operative Group to use his famed protest song Blowin’ in The Wind in a TV advert.
Other stars whose voices have been licensed to GPS systems include Monty Python legend John Cleese, Easy Rider star Dennis Hopper, veteran actor Burt Reynolds and Mr T from The A-Team.
