Many a talented musician has paved the way for John Waters, influencing and inspiring him throughout his long and illustrious performing career.
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But not one of them, he says, can hold a candle to Bob Dylan.
"Dylan sits in an isolated and individual place in my musical history, really, and I think that's the way it is for most people," he tells Weekender.
"Nobody is like Bob Dylan.
"Some people wished he was more mainstream, or wished he sang differently. People often say he's not a good singer when in fact he's a brilliant singer - he has his own meticulous style of singing and a phraseology which is unique to him.
"I've always enjoyed his singing because it has such life to it."
Waters is one of Australia's most recognised television, film and theatrical actors. Born in London, he moved to Australia in the late '60s and scored the role of Claude in the 1969 production of Hair. Lead roles in Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar followed.
Waters was a much-loved presenter on Playschool from 1972 to 1991. His other television credits include All The Rivers Run, Rush, All Saints, Sea Patrol, Offspring, Rake and Mystery Road.
Musically, though, he is perhaps best known for his reflections on the late John Lennon in the wildly popular part concert, part biographical, one-man-shows Lennon: Through A Glass Onion and John Waters: Looking Through A Glass Onion.
His latest show, Dylan Revisited, is entirely different.
Bob Dylan sits in an isolated and individual place in my musical history, really, and I think that's the way it is for most people.
- John Waters
"I created a bubble for myself to inhabit with the John Lennon show and that was a very strict bubble. Every second of the show was tightly scripted and orchestrated, which is what made it work," Waters explains.
"With Dylan Revisited it's simply me and a great band and a selection of Bob Dylan songs, performed by us, sung by me, with our own sounds and arrangements - but nothing that will drag the songs into alien territory for people.
"I think it's important to use the originals as a template and then you inhabit them somehow.
"I won't be impersonating Bob Dylan in any way. I will talk to the audience as myself when I feel like it and there will be the odd anecdote and Dylan quote which will illuminate the work a little bit."
Dylan's songs are lyric-heavy and Waters admits it has been hard work remembering them all. But "once they're learned, they're learned", he says.
"They're such great poetic lines and quite difficult at times because of their non-sequitur nature however that's what makes them so fascinating. I think that when I sing them, people will hear a lot that they didn't realise existed in the songs."
Without warning he starts singing Like A Rolling Stone. Waters was right - there is nothing "alien" about his renditions of Dylan's classics. They're different, but pleasantly so.
Dylan as a songwriter and poet is universally revered but as a performer he has typically divided opinion. Waters acknowledges the inconsistency but is diplomatic.
"I remember someone saying 'Oh he just mumbled the songs and he didn't play Blowin' In The Wind' and I said 'He did, it was three songs ago but it was barely recognisable'," Waters says.
"But, you know, Dylan does change the arrangements.
"There was a particular stage he went through when he would spit each line out very fast without much adherence to the melody. I personally didn't like that way of doing it but then I would just say to myself 'John, it's not up to you to criticise Bob Dylan. You know that you love him and anything he wants to do is fine by you'.
"If people want to see and hear Bob Dylan at his dynamic best as a performer I recommend they watch the Rolling Thunder Revue movie that Martin Scorsese put on Netflix. It has absolutely sensational footage from the mid-'70s of Dylan really inhabiting those songs as a performer."
Dylan's impact on popular culture is undeniable. Since his early releases in the 1960s, his music and songwriting have held a mirror to the changing political, cultural and social world we live in - the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-war movements spring to mind. He also helped popularise "folk music" as a distinct genre.
In 2012, Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in 2016 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. He continues to tour today.
Tickets to Dylan Revisited - at Wests Nelsons Bay on August 16; Belmont 16s on August 17; and Wests New Lambton on September 6 - are on sale now.
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