Why don't artists cover Dylan any more?

A fortuitous browse through the CD rack at the local library brought me to Bryan Ferry’s fantastic album of Bob Dylan covers, 2007′s Dylanesque, and had me thinking this weekend about the phenomenon of Dylan covers.

What I decided, and what I would be happy to be proven wrong about in the comments, is that Dylan has already written his last great song when measured solely by the stick of cover versions. That song, of course, is “Make You Feel My Love,” from Time Out of Mind.Ferry covers it — and 10 other songs drawn from all along the continuum of Dylan’s career — on Dylanesque, putting him in very good company. From Joan Osborne and Billy Joel to Trisha Yearwood and her husband, Garth Brooks, some very big names have cut the song.

The same can be said, to a certain extent, for other Time Out of Mind tracks. The White Stripes and Duke Robillard have performed and/or recorded “Love Sick,” Alabama 3, Steve Forbert and Robyn Hitchcock have tackled “Trying to Get to Heaven,” and Jimmy LaFave has recorded “Not Dark Yet.”

After that, the significant covers are fewer and farther in between. Some of that can be attributed to time. Modern Times came out just three years ago, and the new Together Through Life obviously hasn’t been out long enough to see much cover action. That brings up two points, however. The first is that Love and Theft has been out for eight years, and other artists have sown little interest in covering its songs. Sheryl Crow did “Mississippi,” of course, before Dylan did it himself. Maria Muldaur has recorded “Moonlight,” and Ryan Adams has attempted “Po’ Boy” in concert. But that’s pretty much it.

The other point is that in Dylan’s prime, artists didn’t wait for his versions to come out before cutting their own. His songs were shopped around prior to release, and covers would come out before, during and after the release of his own. Today, that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Why? It’s certainly not because the quality of Dylan’s output has diminished; far from it. I believe it has to do with the kind of songs Dylan is turning out. “Make You Feel My Love,” Dylan’s endearingly creaky delivery on Time Out of Mind aside, is a classic love song, easily interpreted. “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum,” “Thunder on the Mountain” and “If You Ever Go to Houston” would be much more difficult to cover. The right artist could do them justice, but a pleasant voice and a crack studio band wouldn’t turn them into hits the way they could earlier Dylan material.

While this has always somewhat been the case, it seems as if Dylan’s best interpreter these days is again Dylan himself. Ferry’s album seems to offer proof. While the restrained — and unruffled — menace of his cover of “Positively Fourth Street,” for example, brings something new to the song, it can’t compete with Dylan’s seething, spitting rage.

Now, as Dylan seems content (or perhaps “energized” is a better term) to use his albums to recreate the sound he spent 100 shows exploring on his “Theme Time Radio Hour” show, other artists are looking elsehwere for cover material.