You're a fan of Bob Dylan, right? But not really. You're a fan of his music. You prefer covers by Adele, Johnny Cash, The Byrds or Joan Baez, because you don't much care for Dylan's voice. And if you're like most people, you think Bob Dylan is sort of a jerk.

I remember the first time I heard Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blues,” a song about winning and losing in life. I was 10 years old, attempting to explain the lyrics to my father. Sitting across from me in the kitchen of our old apartment, his acoustic guitar across his lap, my father respo

Many of us learned these songs not in school or from the media, but from their use in church around all our national holidays.

At his 80th birthday party last year, celebrated with dozens of friends in the garden of his home in northwestern Connecticut, Isaac Stern asked me to sit next to him at dinner. Rarely have I felt so honored. His luminous personality represented to me the perfect combination of a monumentally succes