Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan
Dylan in Barcelona in 1984
Background information
Birth name	Robert Allen Zimmerman
Also known as	Blind Boy Grunt, Lucky Wilbury/Boo Wilbury, Elmer Johnson, Sergei Petrov, Jack Frost, Jack Fate, Willow Scarlet, Robert Milkwood Thomas.
Born	May 24 1941 (1941-05-24) Duluth, Minnesota, U.S.
Genre(s)	Folk, rock, blues, country
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter, author, poet, artist, actor, screenwriter, disc jockey
Instrument(s)	Vocals, guitar, bass guitar, harmonica, keyboards
Years active	1959–present
Label(s)	Columbia, Asylum
Associated acts	The Band, Rolling Thunder Revue, Traveling Wilburys, Joan Baez, others
Website	www.bobdylan.com

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician, poet, and disc jockey who has been a major figure in U.S. culture for five decades. Much of Dylan's most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal chronicler and a reluctant figurehead of American unrest. A number of his songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements, although Dylan himself decline to remain actively involved in political affairs.

While expanding and personalizing musical styles, Dylan has shown steadfast devotion to many traditions of American song, from folk and country/blues to gospel, rock and roll and rockabilly, to English, Scottish and Irish folk music, even jazz and swing.

Dylan performs with the guitar, keyboard and harmonica. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the "Never Ending Tour." He has also performed alongside many other major artists, such as The Band, Tom Petty, Joan Baez, George Harrison, The Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, Emmylou Harris, Bruce Springsteen, U2, The Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Merle Haggard, Neil Young, and Van Morrison. Although his accomplishments as performer and recording artist have been central to his career, his songwriting is generally regarded as his greatest contribution.

Dylan's records have earned Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy Awards, and he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1999, Dylan was included in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century, and 2004, he was ranked #2 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of "Greatest Artists of All Time," second only to The Beatles. In 2008, Dylan was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

Life and career

Origins and musical beginnings

Robert Allen Zimmerman was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised there and in nearby Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range west of Lake Superior. His parents, Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone, were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community. Zimmerman lived in Duluth until age seven. When his father was stricken with polio, the family returned to Hibbing, where Zimmerman spent the rest of his childhood.

Zimmerman spent much of his youth listening to the radio—first to the powerful blues and country stations broadcasting from Shreveport, Louisiana and, later, to early rock and roll. He formed several bands in high school: the first, The Shadow Blasters, was short-lived; but his next band, The Golden Chords, lasted longer, playing covers of popular songs. In his 1959 school year book, Zimmerman listed as his ambition "To join Little Richard."

Zimmerman enrolled at the University of Minnesota in September 1959, moving to Minneapolis. His early focus on rock and roll gave way to an interest in American folk music. He soon began to perform at the 10 O'clock Scholar, a coffee house a few blocks from campus, and became actively involved in the local Dinkytown folk music circuit, fraternizing with local folk enthusiasts. During his Dinkytown days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as "Bob Dylan."

Move to New York and record deal

Bob Dylan performing at St. Lawrence University in New York, 1963.

Dylan dropped out of college at the end of his freshman year. He stayed in Minneapolis, working the folk circuit there with temporary journeys to Denver, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; and Chicago, Illinois. In January 1961, he moved to New York City to perform there and to visit his ailing musical idol Woody Guthrie, who was then dying in a New Jersey hospital. In the hospital room, Dylan met Guthrie's old traveling friend Ramblin' Jack Elliott, who was visiting Guthrie the day after returning from his own trip to Europe. Dylan and Elliott became friends, and much of Guthrie's repertoire was inherited by Dylan through Elliott.

From April to September 1961, Dylan played at various clubs around Greenwich Village, gaining some public recognition after a positive review in the New York Times by critic Robert Shelton of a show he played at Gerde's Folk City in September. Later that year Dylan was invited to play harmonica by folk singer Carolyn Hester on her third album. This brought Dylan's talents to the attention of producer John Hammond, who was working on Hester's album for Columbia Records. Hammond signed Dylan to Columbia that October.

The performances on his first Columbia album Bob Dylan (1962), consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel material combined with two of his own songs. This album made little impact, selling only 5,000 copies in its first year, just enough to break even. While Dylan continued to work for Columbia, he also recorded more than a dozen songs, under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt, for Broadside Magazine, a folk music magazine and record label. In August 1962 Dylan officially changed his name to Robert Dylan. In the same month, he also signed a management contract with Albert Grossman, who remained Dylan's manager until 1970.

By the time Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, was released in May 1963, he had begun making his name as both a singer and a songwriter. Many of the songs on this album were labelled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger's passion for topical songs. "Oxford Town," for example, was a sardonic account of James Meredith's ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi.

His most famous song of the time, "Blowin' in the Wind," was widely recorded and became an international hit for Peter, Paul and Mary, setting a precedent for many other artists who would have hits with Dylan's songs. While Dylan's topical songs solidified his early reputation, Freewheelin' also included a mixture of love ballads, blues, and humorous, self-reflective tunes. The Freewheelin album presented Dylan as a singer accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. However, other tracks recorded at these sessions included a backing band.

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Dylan in his civil rights days

The Freewheelin' song "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," built melodically from a loose adaptation of the English folk ballad "Lord Randall," with its veiled references to nuclear apocalypse, struck a resonant chord with audiences in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis and marked an important new direction in modern songwriting, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical expression with traditional folk melody and chord progressions.

Soon after the release of Freewheelin, Dylan emerged as a dominant figure of the so-called "new folk movement" centered in Greenwich Village. Dylan's singing voice was untrained and had an unusual edge to it, yet it was suited to the interpretation of traditional songs. Critic Robert Shelton described Dylan's vocal style as "a rusty voice suggesting Guthrie's old performances, etched in gravel like Dave Van Ronk's." Many of his most famous early songs first reached the public through other performers' versions that were more immediately palatable. Joan Baez became Dylan's advocate, as well as his lover, inviting him onstage during her own concerts, and recording several of his early songs.

Others who recorded and had hits with Dylan's songs in the early and mid-1960s included The Byrds, Sonny and Cher, The Hollies, Peter, Paul and Mary, Manfred Mann, and The Turtles.

Protest and Another Side

Dylan with Joan Baez during the Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963

By 1963, Dylan and Baez were both prominent in the civil rights movement, singing together at rallies including the March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech. Dylan performed "Only a Pawn in Their Game" and "When the Ship Comes In" On May 12, 1963, Dylan walked off the Ed Sullivan Show when executives refused to allow him to perform "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" on grounds that the song was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society.

His next album, The Times They Are a-Changin', addressed such subjects as the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers and the despair engendered by the breakdown of farming and mining communities ("Ballad of Hollis Brown" and "North Country Blues"). The Brechtian "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" described the true story of a young socialite's (William Zantzinger) killing of a hotel maid (Hattie Carroll). The album also included was two more love songs ("Boots of Spanish Leather" and "One Too Many Mornings") and the renunciation of "Restless Farewell."

By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements. His next album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded on a single June evening in 1964, had a lighter mood than its predecessor. The surreal Dylan reemerged on "I Shall Be Free #10" and "Motorpsycho Nightmare," accompanied by a sense of humor that has often reappeared over the years. "Spanish Harlem Incident" and "To Ramona" are romantic and passionate love songs, while "Black Crow Blues" and "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" suggest the rock and roll soon to dominate Dylan's music. "It Ain't Me Babe," on the surface a song about spurned love, has been described as a thinly disguised rejection of the role his reputation had thrust at him. His newest direction was signaled by two lengthy songs: the impressionistic "Chimes of Freedom," which sets elements of social commentary against a denser metaphorical landscape, and "My Back Pages," which attacks the simplistic and arch seriousness of his own earlier topical songs.

During 1964 and 1965, Dylan’s appearance changed rapidly, as he made his move from leading contemporary song-writer of the folk scene to rock’n’roll star. His scruffy jeans and work shirts were replaced by a Carnaby Street wardrobe. A London reporter wrote: “Hair that would set the teeth of a comb on edge. A loud shirt that would dim the neon lights of Leicester Square. He looks like an undernourished cockatoo.” Dylan also began to play with frequently hapless interviewers in increasingly cruel and surreal ways. Appearing on the Les Crane TV show and asked about a movie he was planning to make, he told Crane it would be a cowboy horror movie. Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied. “No, I play my mother.”

Going electric

His March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home was yet another stylistic leap. The album featured his first recordings made with electric instruments. The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," owed much to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" and was provided with an early music video courtesy of D. A. Pennebaker's cinéma vérité presentation of Dylan's 1965 tour of England, Dont Look Back. In 1969, the militant Weatherman group took their name from a line from the song: "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

The album included four lengthy acoustic songs whose undogmatic concerns are illuminated with the semi-mystical imagery that became another Dylan trademark. One of these tracks, "Mr. Tambourine Man," would become one of his best known songs. It had already been a hit for The Byrds. Meanwhile, "Gates of Eden," "It's All Over Now Baby Blue," and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" became fixtures in Dylan's live performances for most of his career.

During April and May of 1965, Dylan made a very successful tour in England. However, that summer Dylan created a major controversy with his first electric set with a pickup group drawn mostly from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, featuring Mike Bloomfield (guitar), Sam Lay (drums), Jerome Arnold (bass), plus Al Kooper (organ) and Barry Goldberg (piano), while headlining at the Newport Folk Festival (see The electric Dylan controversy). Dylan, met with a mix of cheering and booing and left the stage after only three songs. The boos reportedly came from outraged folk fans who felt Dylan had betrayed the idiom and sold out to commericalism. Dylan soon reemerged and sang two much better received solo acoustic numbers, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Mr. Tambourine Man."

Dylan's 1965 Newport performance provoked an outraged response from the folk music establishment. However, on July 29, Dylan was back into the studio in New York and recorded "Positively 4th Street." The song teemed with images of paranoia and revenge ("I know the reason/That you talk behind my back/I used to be among the crowd/You're in with.") and was widely interpreted as Dylan's put-down of former friends from the folk community.

Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde

Fan displays a tattoo image of Dylan from the Blonde on Blonde period

In July 1965, Dylan released the single "Like a Rolling Stone," which peaked at number two in the U.S. and at number four in the UK charts. At over six minutes in length, this song has been widely credited with altering attitudes about what a pop single could convey. The song began an anthem of the hippie generation, and in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine listed it at number one on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

Its signature sound also characterized his next album, Highway 61 Revisited, titled after the road that led from Dylan's native Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans. The songs passed stylistically through the birthplace of blues, the Mississippi Delta but featured surreal litanies of the grotesque flavored by Mike Bloomfield's blues guitar and Dylan's obvious enjoyment of the sessions. The closing song, "Desolation Row," is an apocalyptic vision with references to many figures of Western culture.

In support of the record, Dylan was booked for two U.S. concerts and set about assembling a band. Mike Bloomfield was unwilling to leave the Butterfield Band, so Dylan mixed Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks from his studio crew with bar-band stalwarts Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm. Neither Kooper nor Brooks wanted to tour with Dylan, and he eventually hired Robertson and Helm's full band, The Hawks,as his tour group. He also began a string of studio sessions with them in an effort to record the follow-up to Highway 61 Revisited.

While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences on tour, their studio efforts floundered. Producer Bob Johnston had been trying to persuade Dylan to record in Nashville for some time. Thus, in February 1966 Dylan, together with Robertson and Kooper, recorded the Nashville sessions produced the album Blonde on Blonde (1966).

For many critics, Dylan's mid-'60s trilogy of albums—Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde—represents one of the great cultural achievements of the twentieth century. Music writer Mike Marqusee's declared: "Between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, Dylan created a body of work that remains unique. Drawing on folk, blues, country, R&B, rock'n'roll, gospel, British beat, symbolist, modernist and Beat poetry, surrealism and Dada, advertising jargon and social commentary, Fellini and Mad magazine, he forged a coherent and original artistic voice and vision. The beauty of these albums retains the power to shock and console."

On November 22, 1965, Dylan married Sara Lownds. He undertook a "world tour" of Australia and Europe in the spring of 1966. Each show was split into two parts. Dylan performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second half, backed by the Hawks, he played high voltage electric music, sometimes to boos and jeers from some sections of the crowd.

The tour culminated in a famously raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England (officially released on CD in 1998 as The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert). At the climax of the concert, one fan, angry with Dylan's electric sound, shouted: "Judas!" and Dylan responded, "I don't believe you... You're a liar!" He turned to the band and, just within earshot of the microphone, said "Play it f...king loud!" They then launched into the last song of the night with gusto—"Like a Rolling Stone."

Motorcycle crash and the Woodstock years

After his European tour, Dylan returned to New York, but the pressures on him continued to increase. ABC Television had paid an advance for a TV show, and his publisher, Macmillan, was demanding a finished manuscript of the poem/novel Tarantula. Manager Albert Grossman had already scheduled an extensive concert tour for that summer and fall.

Normally noted for his harmonica playing, Nashville sideman Charlie McCoy played bass on Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding albums.

On July 29, 1966, while Dylan rode his Triumph 500 motorcycle in Woodstock, New York, its brakes locked, throwing him to the ground. Though the extent of his injuries was never fully disclosed, Dylan said that he broke several vertebrae in his neck. Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began editing film footage of his 1966 tour for Eat the Document, a rarely exhibited follow-up to Dont Look Back. A rough-cut was shown to ABC Television and was promptly rejected as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience.

In 1967 he began recording music with the Hawks at his home and in the basement of the Hawks' nearby house, called "Big Pink." The relaxed atmosphere yielded renditions of many of Dylan's favored old and new songs and some newly written pieces. These songs, initially compiled as demos for other artists to record, provided hit singles for Julie Driscoll ("This Wheel's on Fire"), The Byrds ("You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," "Nothing Was Delivered"), and Manfred Mann ("Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)"). Columbia belatedly released selections from these recordings in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Over the years, more and more of the songs recorded by Dylan and his band in 1967 appeared on various bootleg recordings, culminating in a five-CD bootleg set titled The Genuine Basement Tapes, containing 107 songs and alternate takes. Later in 1967, the Hawks re-named themselves The Band, and independently recorded the album Music from Big Pink, thus beginning a long and successful recording and performing career of their own.

In October and November 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville. Back in the recording studio after a 19 months break, he was accompanied only by Nashville musicians Charlie McCoy on bass, Kenny Buttrey on drums, and Pete Drake on steel guitar. At the end of the year, Dylan released John Wesley Harding, his first album since the motorcycle crash. It was a quiet, contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape that drew on both the American West and the Bible. The sparse structure and instrumentation, coupled with lyrics that took the Judeo-Christian tradition seriously, marked a departure not only from Dylan's own work but from the escalating psychedelic fervor of the 1960s musical culture. It included "All Along the Watchtower," with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9). The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose celebrated version Dylan himself acknowledged as definitive.

When Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, Dylan made his first live appearance in 20 months at a Guthrie memorial concert held at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968.

Dylan's next release, Nashville Skyline (1969), featured more instrumental backing by Nashville musicians and a new, a mellow-voiced Dylan. The album also included a duet with Johnny Cash, and the hit single "Lay Lady Lay." It was during these sessions that Dylan met rockabilly star Carl Perkins and co-wrote the song "Champaign, Illinois" with him. In May 1969, Dylan appeared on the first episode of Johnny Cash's new television show, duetting with Cash on "Girl from the North Country," "It Ain't Me Babe," and "Living the Blues." Dylan next traveled to England to top the bill at the Isle of Wight rock festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at the famous Woodstock Festival far closer to his home.

In the early 1970s, critics charged Dylan's output was of varied and unpredictable quality. Self Portrait, a double LP including few original songs, was poorly received. Later that year, Dylan released New Morning, which some considered a return to form. In the same year Dylan co-wrote "I'd Have You Anytime" with George Harrison, which appeared as the opening track on the ex-Beatle's album All Things Must Pass. His unannounced appearance at Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh was widely praised, particularly a snarling version of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." However, reports of a new album, a television special, and a return to touring came to nothing.

In March 1971, went to the small Blue Rock Studios in New York's Greenwich Village and recorded "Watching The River Flow" and a new recording of "When I Paint My Masterpiece." The only LP released by Dylan in either '71 or '72 was Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II, which included a number of re-workings of as-then unreleased Basement Tapes tracks, such as "I Shall Be Released" and "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere."

In 1972 Dylan signed onto Sam Peckinpah's film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providing the songs and taking a role as "Alias," a minor member of Billy's gang. Despite the film's failure at the box office, the song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" has proven its durability, having been covered by over 150 recording artists.

"On the Road Again"

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Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan in 1975.

In 1973 Dylan signed with David Geffen's new Asylum label after his contract with Columbia Records expired. He recorded Planet Waves with The Band while rehearsing for a major tour. The album included two versions of "Forever Young." Dylan has recalled writing the song for one of his own children. It has remained one of the most frequently performed of his songs. In January 1974 Dylan and The Band embarked on a high-profile, coast-to-coast tour of North America. Promoter Bill Graham claimed he received more ticket purchase requests than for any prior tour by any artist. A live double album of the tour, Before the Flood, was released on Asylum.

After the tour, Dylan and his wife became publicly estranged. He filled a small red notebook with songs about his marital problems, and quickly recorded a new album entitled Blood on the Tracks in September 1974 for Asylum. However, Dylan delayed its release and soon returned to Columbia Records. Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. However, over the years critics have come to see it as one of Dylan's better achievements, perhaps the only serious rival to his great mid 60s trilogy of albums.

That summer Dylan wrote his first successful "protest" song in 12 years, championing the cause of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter whom he believed had been wrongfully imprisoned for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey. Despite its 8:32 minute length, the song was released as a single, peaking at number 33 on the U.S. Billboard Chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. The tour was a varied evening of entertainment featuring many performers drawn mostly from the resurgent Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone Burnett; Allen Ginsberg; Ramblin' Jack Elliott; Steven Soles; David Mansfield; former Byrds frontman Roger McGuinn; British guitarist Mick Ronson; Scarlet Rivera, a violin player Dylan discovered while she was walking down the street to a rehearsal, her violin case hanging on her back; and Joan Baez (the tour marked Baez and Dylan's first joint performance in more than a decade). Joni Mitchell added herself to the Revue in November, and poet Allen Ginsberg accompanied the troupe, staging scenes for the film Dylan was simultaneously shooting. Sam Shepard was initially hired as the writer for this film, but ended up accompanying the tour as informal chronicler.

Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour encompassed the release of the album Desire (1976), with many of Dylan's new songs featuring an almost travelogue-like narrative style, showing the influence of his new collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy. The spring 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special, Hard Rain, and the LP Hard Rain; no concert album from the better-received and better-known opening half of the tour was released until 2002, when Live 1975 appeared as the fifth volume in Dylan's official Bootleg Series. The single "Rita May," an outtake from the Desire sessions, backed with the Hard Rain version of "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again" was also released in promotion of both releases .

The fall 1975 tour with the Revue also provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara, a sprawling and improvised narrative mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received generally poor, sometimes scathing, reviews and had a very brief theatrical run. Later in that year, Dylan allowed a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, to be more widely released.

In November 1976 Dylan appeared at The Band's "farewell" concert, along with other guests including Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison and Neil Young. Martin Scorsese's acclaimed cinematic chronicle of this show, The Last Waltz, was released in 1978 and included about half of Dylan's set. In this year Dylan also wrote and duetted on the song "Sign Language" for Eric Clapton's "No Reason To Cry" album - no other versions of the song apart from the one which appears on this album have ever been released. In 1977 he also contributed backing vocals to Leonard Cohen's Phil Spector-produced album "Death of a Ladies' Man".

Dylan's 1978 album Street Legal was lyrically one of his more complex and cohesive; it suffered, however, from a poor sound mix until its remastered CD release nearly a quarter century later.

Born Again

In the late 1970s, Dylan became a born-again Christian. He soon released two albums, many with Christian themes music. Slow Train Coming (1979) is generally regarded as the more accomplished of these albums, winning him the Grammy Award as "Best Male Vocalist" for the song "Gotta Serve Somebody." Saved (1980), received mixed reviews, although some critics consider it the better of the two Christian albums. When touring from the fall of 1979 through the spring of 1980, Dylan refrained from playing any of his older works, and he delivered declarations of his faith from the stage.

Dylan's embrace of Christianity was unpopular with many of his fans and fellow musicians. John Lennon even recorded "Serve Yourself" in response to Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody".

Since the early 1980s Dylan's personal religious beliefs have been the subject of debate among fans and critics. He has seemingly supported the Chabad Lubavitch movement and participated in many Jewish rituals. More recently, it has been reported that Dylan has "shown up" a few times at various High Holiday services at various Chabad synagogues. He attended a Woodbury, New York synagogue in 2005.

In 1997 he told David Gates of Newsweek: {{blockquote|Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like "Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain" or "I Saw the Light" – that's my religion. I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I've learned more from the songs than I've learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs."

1980s: Broadening out

In the fall of 1980 Dylan briefly resumed touring, restoring several of his most popular 1960s songs to his repertoire, for a series of concerts billed as "A Musical Retrospective." The album Shot of Love, recorded the next spring, continued in a Christian vein, but also featured Dylan's first secular compositions in more than two years.

In the 1980s the quality of Dylan's recorded work varied, from the highly-regarded Infidels in 1983 to the crtically-panned Down in the Groove in 1988. Infidels is notable for its return to a less dogmatic spirituality and excellent production values.

In 1985, Dylan contributed vocals to USA for Africa's famine relief fundraising single "We Are the World." On July 13, 1985, he appeared at the climax of the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. In 1986 Dylan made a foray into the world of rap music, appearing on Kurtis Blow's Kingdom Blow album.

In July 1986 Dylan released Knocked Out Loaded, featuring several cover versions of Dylan songs by other artists, several collaborations, and two solo compositions by Dylan. The album received mainly negative reviews. However, "Brownsville Girl," which Dylan co-wrote with Sam Shepard has since won wide acclaim.

In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured extensively with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. Dylan initiated what came to be called The Never Ending Tour on June 7, 1988, performing with a tight back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. Dylan would keep on touring with this small but constantly evolving band for the next 20 years.

In 1987 Dylan starred in Richard Marquand's movie Hearts of Fire, in which he played a washed-up-rock-star called "Billy Parker." Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack. However, the film was a critical and commercial flop.

Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1988, his induction speech being given by Bruce Springsteen. Later that spring, Dylan joined Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and George Harrison to create a lighthearted album as the Traveling Wilburys, which sold well. Despite Orbison's death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990, which they released with the unexpected title Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.

Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with the Daniel Lanois-produced Oh Mercy (1989). The track "Most of the Time," a song about lost love, was later prominently featured in the film High Fidelity, while "What Was It You Wanted?" has been interpreted both as a catechism and a wry comment on the expectations of critics and fans. The religious imagery of "Ring Them Bells" struck some critics as a re-affirmation of faith, although it is not overtly Christian. Dylan also made a number of music videos during this period, but only "Political World" found any regular airtime on MTV.

1990s: Not Dark Yet

Dylan performs at a 1996 concert in Stockholm.

Dylan's 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990), an apparent about-face from the serious Oh Mercy. The album was dedicated to "Gabby Goo Goo," a nick-name for Dylan's four-year-old daughter, and contained several apparently simple songs, including "Under the Red Sky" and "Wiggle Wiggle." However, some interpret "Under the Red Sky" as an allegory betraying a deep sense of disillusionment as Dylan croaks in conclusion to his fairy-tale that "the Man in the Moon went home home and the river ran dry." Sidemen on the album included George Harrison, Slash from Guns N' Roses, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Elton John. Despite the stellar line-up, the record received bad reviews and sold poorly. Dylan would not make another studio album of new songs for seven years.

The next few years saw Dylan returning to his roots with two albums covering old folk and blues numbers: Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), featuring interpretations and acoustic guitar work. In November of 1994 Dylan recorded two live shows for MTV Unplugged.

Dylan returned to the studio in 1997 to record a new album but before its release he was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart infection. Although his scheduled European tour was cancelled, Dylan made a speedy recovery. He was back on the road by midsummer, and in early fall performed before Pope John Paul II at the World Eucharistic Conference in Bologna, Italy. The Pope's sermon to the audience of 200,000 people was based on Dylan's lyric "Blowin' in the Wind."

September saw the release of the new Lanois-produced album, Time Out of Mind, featuring the song "Not Dark Yet," expressing feelings of utter resignation: "I was born here and I'll die here against my will... Don't even hear a murmur of a prayer. It's not dark yet, but it's getting there." With its bitter assessment of love and morbid ruminations, Dylan's first collection of original songs in seven years became highly acclaimed. The album also achieved an unforeseen popularity among young listeners, particularly the opening song, "Love Sick." This collection of complex songs won him his first solo "Album of the Year" Grammy Award. The love song "Make You Feel My Love" has been covered by Garth Brooks, Billy Joel and British singer Adele.

In December 1997 U.S. President Bill Clinton presented Dylan with a Kennedy Center Honor in the East Room of the White House, saying, "He probably had more impact on people of my generation than any other creative artist."

In 1998 Dylan appeared on Ralph Stanley's album Clinch Mountain Country, duetting with the bluegrass legend on "The Lonesome River." Between June and September, 1999, Dylan toured with Paul Simon. Dylan ended the 90s by returning to the big screen after a break of ten years in the role of Alfred the Chaffeur alongside Ben Gazzara and Karen Black in Robert Clapsaddle's Paradise Cove.

2000 and beyond: Things Have Changed

Bob Dylan in 2008

In 2000 his song "Things Have Changed," penned for the film Wonder Boys, won a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and an Academy Award for Best Song. For reasons unknown, the Oscar (by some reports a facsimile) tours with him, presiding over shows perched atop an amplifier.

Love and Theft was released on the infamous date of September 11, 2001. It has been described as one of Dylan's greatest recent albums. Dylan produced the album himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost. Critics noted that at this late stage in his career, Dylan was deliberately widening his musical palette. The styles referenced in this album included rockabilly, Western swing, jazz, and even lounge ballads.

2003 also saw the release of the film Masked & Anonymous, a creative collaboration with television producer Larry Charles, featuring many well-known actors. Dylan and Charles cowrote the film under the pseudonyms Rene Fontaine and Sergei Petrov. Between "Love and Theft" and Dylan's next studio album (to be released five years later) he recorded songs—both originals and covers—for a number of different projects.

On June 23, 2004, Dylan was awarded an honorary degree by the University of St. Andrews and made a "Doctor of Music." October 2004 saw the publishing of Dylan's autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, with which he once again confounded expectations. Dylan wrote three chapters about the year between his arrival in New York City in 1961 and recording his first album. Dylan focused on the brief period before he was a household name, while virtually ignoring the mid-1960s when his fame was at its height. He also devoted chapters to two lesser-known albums, New Morning (1970) and Oh Mercy (1989), which contained insights into his collaborations with poet Archibald MacLeish and producer Daniel Lanois. In the New Morning chapter, Dylan expresses distaste for the "spokesman of a generation" label bestowed upon him, and evinces disgust with his more fanatical followers. At the end of the book, Dylan describes with great passion the moment when he listened to the Brecht/Weill song "Pirate Jenny," and the moment when he first heard Robert Johnson’s recordings. In these passages, Dylan suggested the process which ignited his own song writing.

Chronicles: Volume One reached number two on The New York Times' Hardcover Non-Fiction best seller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award. Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble also reported the book as their number two best-seller among all categories.

File:Bob Dylan Bologna Nov 05 concert.jpg

Dylan performing in Bologna in November 2005.

Martin Scorsese's film biography No Direction Home was shown on September 26 and September 27 2005 on BBC Two in the United Kingdom and PBS in the United States. The documentary concentrates on the years between Dylan's arrival in New York in 1961 and the 1966 motorbike crash. It features interviews with many who knew him in those years. The film received a Peabody Award in April 2006, and a Columbia-duPont Award in January 2007. An accompanying soundtrack was released in August 2005, which contained much previously unavailable early Dylan material.

In February 2006, Dylan recorded tracks in New York City that were to result in the album Modern Times, released on August 29 2006. Despite some coarsening of Dylan’s voice, most reviewers gave the album high marks and many described it as the final installment of a successful trilogy, embracing Time Out of Mind and "Love and Theft". Among the tracks most frequently singled out for praise were "Workingman's Blues #2," the John Lee Hooker-influenced "Someday Baby," and “Ain’t Talkin’,” a nine minute chanted recitation. Modern Times made news by entering the U.S. charts at number 1, making it Dylan's first album to reach that position since 1976's Desire, 30 years prior. At 65, Dylan became the oldest living musician to top the Billboard albums chart. The record also reached number one in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.

Modern Times won Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album, and Bob Dylan also won Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for "Someday Baby." Modern Times was ranked as the Album of the Year, 2006, by Rolling Stone magazine.

On the same day that Modern Times. was released the iTunes Music Store released Bob Dylan: The Collection, a digital box set containing all of Dylan's studio and live albums (773 tracks in total), along with 42 rare & unreleased tracks and a 100 page booklet. To promote the digital box set and the new album (on iTunes), Apple released a 30 second TV spot featuring Dylan, in full country & western regalia, lip-synching to "Someday Baby" against a striking white background.

May 3, 2006, was the premiere of Dylan's disc jockey career, hosting a weekly radio program, Theme Time Radio Hour, for XM Satellite Radio. Each one hour show revolved around a theme such as 'Flowers' 'Tears', 'The Bible', 'Rich man/Poor man'; the'Baseball'-themed show was even selected for inclusion in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in June 2006. BBC Radio 2 commenced transmission of Dylan's radio show in the UK on December 23, 2006, and BBC 6 Music started carrying it in January 2007. The show won praise from fans and critics for the way that Dylan conveyed his eclectic musical taste with panache and eccentric humor.

Bob Dylan performs at Air Canada Centre, Toronto, November 7, 2006

2007 saw the release of a new original Dylan song, "Huck's Tune," written and recorded for the soundtrack to the film Lucky You on April 24.

August 2007 saw the unveiling of the film I'm Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes, bearing the tagline "inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan". The movie uses six distinct characters to represent different aspects of Dylan's life, played by six different actors: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw.

On October 1, Columbia Records released a triple CD retrospective album entitled Dylan, anthologising his entire career. Also released in October, the DVD The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965 featured previously unseen footage, chronicling the changes in Dylan’s style when he appeared at Newport in three successive years.

In April 2008, it was confirmed by Simon & Schuster that Dylan is working on the next volume of his planned three part autobiography, the follow up to Chronicles: Volume One. It may be released by the end of 2008.

The Never Ending Tour

Dylan has played roughly 100 dates a year for the entirety of the 1990s and the 2000s, a heavier schedule than most performers who started out in the 1960s. The "Never Ending Tour" continues, at this writing anchored by longtime bassist Tony Garnier and filled out with talented musicians better known to their peers than to their audiences. To the dismay of some fans, Dylan refuses to be a nostalgia act. His reworked arrangements, evolving bands, and experimental vocal approaches keep the music unpredictable night after night. However, fans also report that the sound quality and musical arrangements of Dylan's act are usually superb, and audiences have tended to by forgiving of his his vocal idiosyncrasies.

For a two and a half year period, between 2003 and 2006, Dylan ceased playing guitar, and stuck to the keyboard during concerts. Dylan's touring band has two guitarists along with a multi-instrumentalist who plays steel guitar, mandolin, banjo and fiddle. From 2002 to 2005, Dylan's keyboard had a piano sound. In 2006, this was changed to an organ sound. At the start of his Spring 2007 tour in Europe, Dylan played the first half of the set on electric guitar and switched to keyboard for the second half. The 2008 installment of Dylan's "Never Ending Tour" commenced with performances in Texas, Mexico, and South America in February and March, to be followed by Maine and Eastern Canada in May, and dates in Iceland, Russia and Europe in May, June and July.

Personal life

Dylan married Sara Lownds on November 22, 1965; their first child, Jesse Byron Dylan, was born on January 6 1966. Dylan and Lownds had four children: Jesse Byron, Anna Lea, Samuel Isaac Abraham, and Jakob Luke (born December 9, 1969). Dylan also adopted Sara Lownds' daughter from a prior marriage, Maria Lownds (later Dylan), (born October 21 1961 now married to musician Peter Himmelman). In the 1990s the youngest of his children, Jakob Dylan, became well known as the lead singer of the band The Wallflowers. Jesse Dylan is a film director and a successful businessman. Bob and Sara Dylan were divorced on June 29 1977.

In June 1986, Dylan married his longtime backup singer Carolyn Dennis (often professionally known as Carol Dennis). Their daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, was born on January 31, 1986. The couple divorced in October 1992. Their marriage and child remained a closely guarded secret until the publication of Howard Sounes' Dylan biography, Down the Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan in 2001.

Discography, film, books

Further information: Bob Dylan discography

See also

• Lithuanian Jews
• Suze Rotolo
• Joan Baez
• The Band
• Best selling music artists
• Traveling Wilburys
• Sara Dylan
• Jesse Dylan
• Jakob Dylan (and his band The Wallflowers)
• Carolyn Dennis
• Woodstock '94
• Protest song

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bjorner, Olof (2002). Olof's Files: A Bob Dylan Performance Guide (Bob Dylan all alone on a shelf). Hardinge Simpole. ISBN 184382020X. 
• Bauldie (ed.), John (1992). Wanted Man: In Search of Bob Dylan. Penguin Books. ISBN 0140153616. 
• Cott (ed.), Jonathan (2006). Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0340923121. 
• Dylan, Bob (2004). Chronicles: Volume One. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-2815-4. 
• Fishkoff, Sue (2003). The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch. Schocken Books. ISBN 0805211381. 
• Gill, Andy (1999). Classic Bob Dylan: My Back Pages. Carlton. ISBN 1-85868-599-0. 
• Gray, Michael (2000). Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan. Continuum International. ISBN 0-8264-5150-0. 
• Gray, Michael (2006). The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. Continuum International. ISBN 0-8264-6933-7. 
• Harvey, Todd (2001). The Formative Dylan: Transmission & Stylistic Influences, 1961–1963. The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-4115-0. 
• Heylin, Clinton (2003). Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited. Perennial Currents. ISBN 0-06-052569-X. 
• Marcus, Greil (2001). The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes. Picador. ISBN 0-312-42043-9. 
• Marqusee, Mike (2005). Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan and the 1960s. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 1-58322-686-9. 
• Marshall, Scott (2002). Restless Pilgrim: The Spiritual Journey of Bob Dylan. Relevant Books. ISBN 0-9714576-2-X. 
• Muir, Andrew (2001). Razor's Edge: Bob Dylan & the Never Ending Tour. Helter Skelter. ISBN 1-900924-13-7. 
• Ricks, Christopher (2003). Dylan's Visions of Sin. Penguin/Viking. ISBN 0-670-80133-X. 
• Scaduto, Anthony. Bob Dylan. Helter Skelter, 2001 reprint of 1972 original. ISBN 1-900924-23-4. 
• Robert Shelton, No Direction Home, Da Capo Press, 2003 reprint of 1986 original, 576 pages. ISBN 0-306-81287-8
• Sam Shepard, Rolling Thunder Logbook, Da Capo, 2004 reissue, 176 pages. ISBN 0-306-81371-8
• Sounes, Howard (2001). Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan. Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-1686-8. 
• Bob Dylan. Robbie Robertson. Rolling Stone Issue 946. Rolling Stone.
• The Immortals: The First Fifty. Rolling Stone Issue 946. Rolling Stone.

External links

• Official web site with lyrics. bobdylan.com
• Hibbing Public Library's Bob Dylan Collection. hibbing.mn.us
• Political and moral themes in Dylan's work. rightwingbob.com

Songs that Inspired Bob Dylan. downhomeradioshow.com

• "Bob Dylan’s American Journey, 1956-1966". empsfm.org

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