"Bob Dylan impresses me about as much as... well, I was gonna say a slug but I like slugs"

Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart, was celebrated for both his musical innovation and his unpredictable, often surreal wit. His remark on Bob Dylan, "Bob Dylan impresses me about as much as... well, I was gonna say a slug but I like slugs", is characteristically wry, laced with both humor and a pointed message. It's a layered dismissal that sidesteps straightforward insult, wrapping genuine criticism in playful language.

The comparison to a slug is striking for a couple of reasons. First, slugs are almost universally regarded as unremarkable or even undesirable creatures; to say someone impresses you as much as a slug instantly frames them in an unflattering light. However, Van Vliet doesn't finish the comparison there. He catches himself, claiming a liking for slugs, and essentially discards even this minimal praise as too generous for Dylan. The twist is double-edged: both a joke and a stinging assessment. It lampoons the tendency to reach for easy metaphors, then undercuts the metaphor itself, suggesting that Dylan fails to meet even the "low bar" set by a humble slug.

Captain Beefheart's music and career were, in part, defined by a conscious opposition to prevailing trends and icons in rock, many of whom adored Dylan. By subverting and ultimately refusing the comparison, Van Vliet asserts both his own contrarian stance and a sense of artistic independence. He doesn't just reject Dylan's significance in a straightforward manner; he does so with comic absurdity, aligning himself intuitively with the undervalued or overlooked, like slugs, whom he claims to prefer.

In essence, the quote is less about a deep-seated animosity towards Dylan than about Van Vliet’s trickster personality and his desire to puncture the mythos around an artist so frequently lauded. It’s a mock put-down, colored with the surrealism and idiosyncrasy that defined his own art.