Bob Dylan on audiences

Bob Dylan has an inter­view on his web­site in which he has some inter­est­ing things to say about audi­ences and styles. About the craft of cre­at­ing music, for instance, he says:

You have to have some­body in mind as an audi­ence oth­er­wise there‚Äôs no point.

Dylan also pokes fun at his own his­tory of styl­is­tic changes. When he became a rocker, the folkies com­plained. When he became a coun­try singer, the rock­ers com­plained. When he became a Chris­t­ian rocker, every­one com­plained. Dylan is ready to do away with all that now, stating:

Some peo­ple pre­ferred my first period songs. Some, the sec­ond. Some, the Chris­t­ian period. Some, the post Colom­bian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some peo­ple pre­fer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audi­ence now doesn‚Äôt par­tic­u­lar care what period the songs are from. They feel style and sub­stance in a more vis­ceral way and let it go at that.

What do you think Dylan is say­ing about the impor­tance of style?