Sale has said that he does not "care much for popular music outside some of the Tin Pan Alley era tunes of the early 20th century." For example, "he once heard a 'racket' in a nightclub during ... the 1960s from some 'young man' everyone told him was a 'big deal.' That 'young man' turned out to be Bob Dylan." Kirk recalls that "he’d never heard anything so awful in his life."