Dylan, Bob

views updated May 17 2018

Bob Dylan

Singer, songwriter, guitarist

For the Record

Compositions

Selected discography

Sources

In the early 1960s Bob Dylan was heralded as the spokesman for his generation, writing and singing folk songs that were as deep and moving as those of any artist since his idol, Woody Guthrie. At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival Dylan shocked his following by going electric and venturing into rock and roll. He proved to be equally superior in that field also and by 1968 he was trying his hand at folk-rock, creating an impact that touched even the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. As the 1980s came around Dylan was undergoing a spiritual rebirth and his writing reflected a religious conviction that was truly heartfelt. Throughout a career that has seen the better part of three decades, Dylan has been pop musics master poet and an ever-changing performer.

Born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, Dylan was raised in the northern mining town of Hibbing from the age of six. His earliest musical influences, Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Howlin Wolf and John Lee Hooker, were brought to him via the airwaves of a Shreveport, Louisiana, radio station. He played in a variety of bands during high school, including the Golden Chords, before enrolling at the University of Minnesota in 1959. It was at college that he changed his name to Dylan (probably after the poet Dylan Thomas) and began creating his own mythological background, which made him out to be everything from an Indian to a hobo to Bobby Vee! After hearing the Kingston Trio and Odetta he began to explore folk music, learning older tunes and sitting in at local coffeehouses around campus.

Just one year into college, Dylan dropped out after hearing Woody Guthrie and hitchhiked to New York to meet the legendary singer who was in an East Coast hospital suffering from Huntingtons disease. Guthrie was my last idol, Dylan said in Rock 100. My future idols will be myself. Obviously in little need of self-confidence, by April 1961 he was gigging at Gerdes Folk City in New Yorks Greenwich Village. With the folk scene booming, Columbia executive and talent scout John Hammond had just signed Pete Seeger; Dylan followed soon after.

His debut LP, Bob Dylan, was released in March 1962. Recorded for a mere $402, the album featured acoustic reinterpretations of old folk songs, but also included two Dylan originals, Song for Woody and Talking New York. Within a year his second LP, The Freewheelin Bob Dylan containing self-penned compositions onlywas released. Protest tunes like A Hard Rains a-Gonna Fall, Masters of War, and Dont Think Twice, Its Alright were making listeners more conscious and aware; both politically and personally. The trio of Peter, Paul & Mary recorded a version of Blowin

For the Record

Name originally Robert Allen Zimmerman; born May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minn.; son of Abraham (a hardware store owner) and Betty Zimmerman; married Sara Lowndes, November 22, 1965; children: five. Education: Attended the University of Minnesota for one year.

Played rock and roll in bands in high school; changed name to Bob Dylan and began playing folk music in college c 1960; moved to New York City and began playing the coffeehouse circuit, 1961; recording artist, 1962; backing bands have included the Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and the Grateful Dead; sang on the We Are the World single for Live Aid (African famine relief); recorded with Petty, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison on the Traveling Wilburys LP, 1988.

Awards: Grammy Awards, for album of the year (with others) for Concert for Sangla Desk, 1972, and for best rock vocal performance by a male for single Gotta Serve Somebody, 1979; Rolling Stone Music Award, 1975, for artist of the year (tie with Bruce Springsteen), and for albums of the year for The Basement Tapes and Blood on the Tracks; awarded Commander Dans LOrdre des Arts et Lettres by French Minister of Culture, 1990.

Addresses: Home 7156 Birdview Ave., Malibu, CA 90265. OfficePO Box 870, Cooper Station, New York, NY 10046.

in the Wind from the LP that helped put the spotlight on Dylan. In July of that year at the Newport Folk Festival he was crowned leader of the folk movement with Joan Baez as the reigning queen. The new voice of youth, Dylans albums were listened to as if they were seismic readings from an impending apocalypse, reported Rock 100.

The Times They Are a-Changirì, with its title track and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, broke in the new year of 1964. Imitators of his guitar/harmonica rig and odd singing (talking?) voice were sprouting up everywhere. Its phrasing, Dylan told Rolling Stone, I think Ive phrased everything in a way that its never been phrased before. In addition to his unique voice, lyrics, and meter, Dylans physical image was just as intriguing with his wild conk of hair, stovepipe legs, and facial scowl. As much as the public and critics adored him, they also were frustrated as attempts to gain insight were met with toying word games and sometimes downright humiliation. Dylan began to question his role as guru on his fourth LP, Another Side of Bob Dylan, moving away from political themes and towards personal love songs. My Back Pages and It Aint Me Babe signalled that a different Dylan had now arrived.

Bringing It All Back Home (1965) was a half-acoustic, half-electric outing that featured Dylan classics Subterranean Homesick Blues, Maggies Farm, Mr. Tambourine Man, and Its Alright Ma (Im Only Bleeding). Dylans first step into rock was also his first million-seller. Even so, his die-hard fans were not prepared for Dylans performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when he appeared onstage backed by the electric Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Cries of sellout and gone commercial filled the air as he was booed off the stage only to return for a final acoustic number, Its All Over Now, Baby Blue. Anyone who doubted his commitment only needed to check out the next LP, Highway 61 Revisited, which was able to leap off the turntable courtesy of Michael Bloomf ields stinging guitar lines. The album featured the songs Desolation Row, Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues, Queen Jane Approximately, and perhaps Dylans most popular tune yet, Like a Rolling Stone (which went all the way to number 2).

His masterpiece, Blond on Blonde (1966), is considered by some to be the finest rock album in history. A double LP recorded with Nashville session men, it is filled with an amazing display of Dylans songwriting abilities: Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, Absolutely Sweet Marie, Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35, Memphis Blues Again, I Want You, and others that firmly established Dylan as the most prolific stylist of all time. Just when it seemed he was in full force, Dylan was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident on July 29, 1966. He would spend the next year and a half recupperating from a broken neck in upstate New York. He recorded tracks with his backup group, the Band, but they would not be released until 1975 as The Basement Tapes (an LP that was bootlegged endlessly during the nine-year delay).

After flirting with death, Dylans comeback album, John Wesley Harding, relied more on religious themes and a mellower country flavor. All Along the Watchtower became a hit shortly after for Jimi Hendrix while the entire mood of JWH sent an influential wave out that touched other artists of the time. Dylan carried the country style even further on Nashville Skyline, recording a duet with Johnny Cash, and the easy-going Lay Lady Lay. His next release, however, was a commercial and critical disappointment. Self-Portrait was a double album consisting mainly of non-originals that seemed to be almost intentionally bad. New Morning, also from 1970, did not fare much better; Dylans talent seemed to have peaked.

In 1973 Dylans Columbia contract expired and he signed with Asylum just after releasing his soundtrack to the movie Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which included one of his biggest hits, Knockin on Heavens Door. (Dylan also played the part of Alias in the film. Actor Sam Shepard told Rolling Stone that Dylan knows how to play a part. He and Billy Graham are the two greatest actors in the world.) As if in retaliation for his leaving, Columbia released Dylan, a collection of studio outtakes and cover tunes that accomplished little more than embarrassing Dylan. His two Asylum LPs, Planet Waves and Before the Flood, were both recorded with the Band; the first being a studio album and the second featuring live recordings of the ensuing tour in early 1974.

In 1975 Dylan re-signed with Columbia and recorded one of his best records yet, Blood on the Tracks, which seemed to harken back to his earlier style. Tangled up in Blue, Idiot Wind, Shelter From the Storm, Meet Me in the Morning, and Buckets of Rain amongst others had critics gushing with joy over yet another Dylan comeback. He then hit the road with a musically varied ensemble called the Rolling Thunder Revue: Mick Ronson, Joan Baez, T-Bone Burnett, Roger McGuinn, Ramblin Jack Elliott, and David Mansfield, all blasting off on Dylan classics and material from his newest LP, Desire. That album topped both the British and U.S. charts riding a crest of popularity created by Hurricane, Dylans thumping plea for the release of the imprisoned boxer Ruben Hurricane Carter. In 1976 the live Hard Rain captured the revue on vinyl. Two years later he would release another fine studio effort, Street Legal, featuring Where Are You Tonight, Baby Stop Crying, and Changing of the Guards.

Dylans next phase can be summed up in three albums, Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love, and one word: Christianity. In 1979 he became born-again, as writers coined it, studying the Bible at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship school in California. Although raised a Jew, Dylan took his new-found belief to the point of righteousness. Dylan hadnt simply found Jesus but seemed to imply that he had His home phone number as well, wrote Kurt Loder in his Rolling Stone review of Slow Train Coming. The LP revolved around Dylans beliefs, but it also rocked with the aid of Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopf 1er. Critics and the public were split over the newest Dylan. Jann Wenner explained his view of this period in Rolling Stone: Dylan created so many images and expectations that he narrowed his room for maneuverability and finally became unsure of his own instincts.

A rejuvinated Dylan appeared in 1983 on Infidels, produced by Knopfler with ex-Rolling Stone Mick Taylor on guitar. Dylan had joined an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, Lubavitcher Hasidim, and the songs reflected the move (although more subtly than during his Christian phase). In the mid-1980s Dylan continued to record and toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the Grateful Dead as his backup bands. In 1988 he appeared as one of the Traveling Wilburys alongside Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, George Harrison, and the late Roy Orbison. More changes can probably be expected from this master of the unexpected; Dylan has stayed on top by keeping ahead of the pack, knowing where his audience wants to be next, and then delivering.

Compositions

Composer of numerous songs, including All Along the Watch-tower, All I Really Want to Do, Blowin in the Wind, Chimes of Freedom, Desolation Row, Dont Think Twice, Its All Right, Highway 61 Revisited, I Shall Be Released, If Not for You, It Aint Me, Babe, Just Like a Woman, Knockin on Heavens Door, Lay, Lady, Lay, Like a Rolling Stone, The Mighty Quinn, Mr. Tambourine Man, My Back Pages, Positively 4th Street, Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Tangled Up in Blue, The Times They Are a-Changin, When I Paint My Masterpiece, When the Ship Comes In, With God on Our Side, and You Aint Goin Nowhere.

Selected discography

All titles on Columbia, unless noted

Bob Dylan, 1962.

The Freewheeliri Bob Dylan, 1963.

The Times They Are a-Changin, 1964.

Another Side of Bob Dylan, 1964.

Bringing It All Back Home, 1965.

Highway 61 Revisited, 1965.

Blonde on Blonde, 1966.

Bob Dylans Greatest Hits, 1967.

John Wesley Harding, 1968.

Nashville Skyline, 1969.

Self-Portrait, 1970.

New Morning, 1970.

Bob Dylans Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, 1971.

Dylan, 1973.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, 1973.

Planet Waves, Asylum, 1974.

Before the Flood, Asylum, 1974.

The Basement Tapes, 1975.

Blood on the Tracks, 1975.

Desire, 1976.

Hard Rain, 1976.

Street Legal, 1978.

Bob Dylan at Budokan, 1979.

Slow Train Coming, 1979.

Saved, 1980.

Shot of Love, 1981.

Infidels, 1983.

Real Live, 1984.

Empire Burlesque, 1985.

Knocked Out Loaded, 1986.

(With Tom Petty, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison) The Traveling Wilburys, Volume One, Warner Bros., 1988.

Down in the Groove, 1988.

Dylan and the Dead, 1989.

Oh, Mercy, 1990.

(Dylan has also appeared on numerous albums by other artists; for a more complete listing check Bob Spitzs Dylan, A Biography, McGraw-Hill, 1989.)

Sources

Books

Christgau, Robert, Christgaus Record Guide, Ticknor & Fields, 1981.

Dalton, David, and Lenny Kaye, Rock 100, Grosset & Dunlap, 1977.

Dylan, Bob, Tarantula, Macmillan, 1970.

Bob Dylan: The Illustrated Record, Harmony, 1978.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, compiled by Nick Logan and Bob Woffinden, Harmony, 1977.

The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, edited by Jim Miller, Random House/Rolling Stone Press, 1976.

The Rolling Stone Record Guide, edited by Dave Marsh with John Swenson, Random House/Rolling Stone Press, 1979.

Shepard, Sam, Rolling Thunder Logbook, Viking Press, 1977.

Spitz, Bob, Dylan, A Biography, McGraw, 1989.

Whats That Sound?, edited by Ben Fong-Torres, Anchor, 1976.

Periodicals

Detroit News, July 9, 1989.

Musician, September, 1986.

Oakland Press, July 2, 1989.

Rolling Stone, March 11, 1976; September 21, 1978; November 16, 1978; July 12, 1979; September 20, 1979; September 18, 1980; June 21, 1984; Summer 1986; College Papers, Number 3.

Calen D. Stone

Dylan, Bob

views updated May 17 2018

Bob Dylan

Singer, songwriter

For the Record

The Tide Changes

Knockin on Deaths Door

Dylan Re-invents Himself

Another Close Call

Selected discography

Selected writings

Sources

Singer and songwriter Bob Dylan is recognized worldwide for the impact he has had on rock music since his career began in the early 1960s, and has managed to maintain his popularity among fans and critics alike over the ensuing decades. Although known primarily for his caustic and candid lyrics that reveal the defiant stance on authority, politics, and social norms prevalent among the 60s generation of Americans, Dylans fans are from a variety of age groups, all of whom identify with the raw human emotion expressed in his lyrics. Dylans own humanity was brought to the publics attention in May, 1997, when the legendary artist canceled a planned European tour and was hospitalized due to a serious health condition called pericarditis. Yet Dylan returned to the stage in August, and released Time Out of Mind to rave reviews in September. As further evidence of Dylans broad appeal and the magnitude of his contributions to music, he performed in Bologna, Italy, in September, 1997, after receiving a special invitation from Pope John Paul II.

Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, to Abraham Zimmerman, a furniture and appliance salesman, and Beatty Stone Zimmerman. In 1947 the family moved to the small town of Hibbing, Minnesota, where Dylan spent an unremarkable childhood. He began writing poems at the age of ten, and as a teenager taught himself to play the piano, harmonica, and guitar. He appreciated a wide variety of musicfrom country to rock n rolland admired the works of Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Dylan played in many bands during his high school years, including the Golden Chords and Elston Gunn and His Rock Boppers, before enrolling at the University of Minnesota in 1959.

While he was a student at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, the artist began performing as a folk singer and musician under the name Bob Dylan at such popular Minneapolis night clubs as Ten OClock Scholar cafe and St. Pauls Purple Onion Pizza Parlor. Dylan soon became more involved with his musical career than with his studies, so he dropped out of school in 1960 and headed straight for New York City. The young performers interest in New York City was based upon his desire to become involved in the folk music scene that was then emerging in the citys Greenwich Village and upon his wish to meet his idol, folk singer Woody Guthrie. Dylan promptly became a popular performer in Greenwich Village coffee houses and night clubs, and also managed to become a regular performer for Guthrie. The young Dylan quickly gained the respect and admiration of his peers in the folk music scene with his ability to compose his own melodies and lyrics at an astonishing pace. He also became well known outside

For the Record

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941, in Duluth, MN; name legally changed August 9, 1962; son of Abraham (a salesman) and Beatty (Stone) Zimmerman; married Sara Lowndes, November 22, 1965 (divorced, 1977); children: Jesse, Maria, Jakob, Samuel, Anna. Education: Attended University of Minnesota, 1959-60.

Composed more than five hundred songs since early 1960s; recorded with rock groups including The Band, The Traveling Wilburys (with Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, George Harrison, and Roy Orbison), The Grateful Dead, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; solo singer and musician in concerts since early 1960s, including appearances at the Newport Folk Festival in 1962 and 1965, the Woodstock Festivals in 1969 and 1994, and the Live Aid benefit concert in 1985; special performance for Pope John Paul II at a Roman Catholic Youth rally in Bologna, Italy, on September 27, 1997

Awards: Tom Paine Award, Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, 1963; honorary Music Degree, Princeton University, 1970; Grammy Awards, Best Rock Vocal Performance, 1979, for Gotta Serve Somebody; Rolling Stone Music Award, Artist of the Year (tied with Bruce Springsteen), 1975, and Album of the Year, 1975, for The Basement Tapes and Blood on the Tracks; inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1988; Commander Dans LOrdre des Arts et Lettres from the French Minister of Culture, 1990; Lifetime Achievement Award, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, 1991; Grammy Award, 1993, for World Gone Wrong; Arts award, Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize Trust, 1997; Lifetime Achievement Award, John F. Kennedy Center honors, 1997; Three Grammy Awards, Album of the Year, Best Male Rock Performance, and Best Contemporary Folk Album, 1998, for Time Out of Mind.

Addresses: Office c/o 264 Cooper Station, New York, NY 10003.

of the folk music scene in New York City in 1961, when New York Times critic Robert Shelton witnessed one of his performances at a club called Gerdes Folk City and declared that Dylan was bursting at the seams with talent.

Dylan was 20 years old when he released his self-titled debut album in 1962. Although most of the songs were cover tunes, Dylan did include two original compositionsSong to Woody, which was a tribute to Guthrie, and Talkin New York. The album achieved limited success, and Dylan followed it in 1963 with The Free-wheelin Bob Dylan, which contained more original songs that shared a common theme of protest. Two of the songs from Dylans second album, Blowin in the Wind and A Hard Rains Gonna Fall, became enduring anthems of the 1960s, largely because they definitively illustrate the thoughts and feelings of the countercultures young members. As confirmation of Dylans success, the renowned folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary recorded a cover version of Blowin in the Wind that rose to the number two spot on the pop music charts.

The Tide Changes

By the time Dylan released 1964s The Times They Are A-Changin, he had been thrust into the role of media spokesperson for the counterculture protest movement which sought to abolish social and political norms. This third album contained the protest song The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. But at the same time the album was released, Dylan began to express his growing pessimism about the countercultures ability to affect change, and declared that he was uncomfortable with his role as the movements mouthpiece. His next album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, further evidenced his disillusionment with the counterculture movement, as it contained extremely personal folk ballads and love songs, rather than his trademark protest songs. In 1965 Dylan enraged his folk music following by performing on an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival (fans there booed Dylan and his band off the stage) and by releasing Bringing It All Back Home, an album on which Dylan returned to his earlier musical influences of rock n roll and rhythm and blues. While the songs on this album remained critical of society, none contained any of the direct references to racism, war, or political activism that had marked his earlier works. The acoustic song Mr. Tambourine Man from Bringing It All Back Hornerías soon recorded in an electrified form by the popular 1960s band the Byrds and reached the top of the pop music charts; by that time a new brand of music known as folk rock had become widely favored among young Americans.

Dylan continued to record songs that fused his folk and rock influences, using mystical, ominous lyrics filled with imagery and allusions, and in 1965 he released Highway 61 Revisited. This album featured songs with themes of alienation, including the well-known Like a Rolling Stone, which quickly rose to the number two spot on the Billboard singles chart. That same year Dylan married Sara Lowndes, a friend of his managers wife. In 1966 Dylan released Blonde on Blonde, which most critics consider among his best albums because it polished the edgy, harsh rock sounds of Highway 61 Revisited and introduced music unlike any of its predecessors. Although he was wildly successful, Dylan was suffering from the strains of fame. In the 1971 biography Bob Dylan, the artist commented to Anthony Scaduto about his feelings during that period of his life: The pressures were unbelievable. They were just something you cant imagine unless you go through them yourself. Man, they hurt so much. Similarly, in a 1997 interview with Newsweeks David Gates, Dylan asserted Im not the songs. Its like somebody expecting [William] Shakespeare to be Hamlet, or [Wolfgang von] Goethe to be Faust. If youre not prepared for fame, theres really no way you can imagine what a crippling thing it can be.

Knockin on Deaths Door

On July 29, 1966, at the peak of his popularity, Dylans neck was broken in a near-fatal motorcycle crash. The accident left Dylan with time to recuperate and rest at his Woodstock, New York, home with Sara and their newborn son Jesse. He began reflecting upon his religious beliefs and personal priorities, and wrote songs that reflected his new-found sense of inner peace. Many of these songs were recorded in 1967 with The Band and later released on the 1975 album The Basement Tapes, while others were released on Dylans first album following the motorcycle accident, 1968s John Wesley Harding. A primarily slow-paced, acoustical album, John Wesley Harding was followed in 1969 by Nashville Skyline and in 1970 by Self Portrait and New Morning. These three albums were greeted with derision by the public and Dylan was criticized severely by his fans for what they perceived as his failure to comment on the harsh realities of the time, namely the Vietnam War and the struggle for racial equality and civil rights for African Americans.

Dylans first album to reach the number one spot on music charts was his 1974 effort, Planet Waves, which he recorded with The Band. Although it was not a critical success, the album led to a flood of interest in Dylans 1974 tour of the United States, where audience demand for tickets far exceeded available seating for his concerts. Following his 1994 tour, Dylan released Before the Flood, a two-album set of music recorded live during the tour; the album rose to number three on music charts.

While Dylans musical career was on an upswing, his personal life was in a shambles as he became involved in a bitter separation with Sara that included a fierce custody battle over their children. Dylans 1975 album Blood on the Tracks features songs reflecting the sorrow and passion of his personal life at the time; If You See Her, Say Hello directly refers to the breakup of his marriage. Most critics hailed Blood on the Tracks as Dylans best album since the 1960s, praising the artists use of visual imagery to blur distinctions between reality and illusion to challenge everyday ideas about the world. The albums searing songs about love and loss, including Tangled up in Blue, Shelter from the Storm, and Idiot Wind, were well-received by Dylans fans and the album soon reached number one on the charts. Dylans 1976 album, Desire, which contained a mournful tune entitled Sara, also reached number one on the charts, and along with Blood on the Tracks, achieved widespread success in both the United States and Europe.

Although Dylans 1978 album Street Legal was unpopular with his fans, who feared that the performers personal crises had interfered with his musical abilities, it did not prepare the fans for what was soon to follow. In 1978, while touring to support Street Legal, Dylan experienced a religious vision that he later asserted made him question his moral values and saved him from self-destructive behavior. Pronouncing his belief in fundamentalist Christianity, Dylan began to communicate in his music a concern with religious salvation and the end of the world; many fans expressed displeasure with Dylans blatant attempts to persuade his listeners to adopt his religious philosophy, but others viewed the lyrics as similar to Dylans earlier songs about social change and prophecy. Among Dylans albums during his Christian period, only the 1979 album Slow Train Coming was a commercial success, largely due to the popularity of the Grammy Award-winning single Gotta Serve Somebody.

Dylan Re-invents Himself

In 1983 Dylan released Infidels, an album on which he departed from his overtly religious themes and returned to his more complex, emotionally subtle lyrics in songs such as Jokerman and Dont Fall Apart on Me Tonight. Dylan produced his 1985 album, Empire Burlesque, which displayed a wide range of musical sounds, from gospel to acoustic ballad. In the mid-1980s, Dylan remained prominent in the public eye by performing with various other music stars, including superstar Michael Jackson, on the 1985 single We Are the World and at the Live Aid benefit concert, both which were designed to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Also in 1985, Dylan released Biograph, a five-album set that contained previously released material and bootleg (unreleased) recordings and which also included Dylans brief commentaries; the set was highly popular and proved a top seller.

The year 1988 marked the beginning of Dylans collaboration with the Traveling Wilburys, which was a group made up of Dylan and veteran music stars George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty. The group produced two albums, 1988s Traveling Wilburys and Traveling Wilburys Volume 3 no second volume was ever recordedwhich was released in 1990. In 1988 Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was honored by noted rock star Bruce Springsteen, who commented during the induction ceremony that Bob [Dylan] freed the mind the way Elvis [Presley] freed the body. He showed us that just because the music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual. He invented a new way a pop singer could sound, broke through the limitations of what a recording artist could achieve, and changed the face of rock and roll forever.

Another Close Call

In May 1997, Dylan was stricken with a sometimes fatal fungal infection called histoplasmosis, which caused the sac surrounding his heart to swell, resulting in a condition known as pericarditis. The news of his subsequent hospitalization concerned numerous music fans, but Dylan was too ill to reflect on the significance of his own mortality. He told Newsweek s David Gates, Mostly I was in a lot of pain. Pain that was intolerable. Thats the only way I can put it. Nevertheless, Dylan recovered, and although he needed to take a variety of medications, he began performing again in August 1997 of that same year. In September Dylan performed for Pope John Paul IIreportedly at the Popes requestat a eucharistic conference in Bologna, Italy. And in December, 1997, Dylan became the first rock star ever to receive Kennedy Center honors.

In addition to the struggle with illness and the professional accolades that marked Dylans experience during 1997, the artists album Time Out of Mind was released in September and was greeted with rave reviews. The album also garnered Dylan three Grammy AwardsAlbum of the Year, Male Rock Performance (for Cold Irons Bound), and Contemporary Folk Album. Critics declared that Dylan had again managed to reinvent himself and provide his fans with a fresh sound. Times Christopher John Farley applauded the album, pronouncing: Dylan has found purpose in his inner battle to reignite his imagination. Turning the quest for inspiration itself into relevant rockthat is alchemic magic. And Newsweek contributor Karen Schoemer maintained:Time Out of Mind is rewarding precisely because its so outside the present. In an era defined by novelty hits and slick video edits, its a reminder that music can mean something more: it can be personal, uncompromised and deeply felt.

Selected discography

Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1962.

The Freewheelin Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1963.

The Times They Are A-Changin, Columbia, 1964.

Another Side of Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1964.

Bringing It All Back Home, Columbia, 1965.

Highway 61 Revisited, Columbia, 1965.

Blonde on Blonde, Columbia, 1966.

Bob Dylans Greatest Hits I, Columbia, 1967.

John Wesley Harding, Columbia, 1968.

Nashville Skyline, Columbia, 1969.

New Morning, Columbia, 1970.

Self Portrait, Columbia, 1970.

Bob Dylans Greatest Hits, Volume II, Columbia, 1971.

Dylan, Columbia, 1973.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Columbia, 1973.

(With The Band) Planet Waves, Asylum, 1974.

Before the Flood, Asylum, 1974.

(With The Band) The Basement Tapes, Columbia, 1975.

Blood on the Tracks, Columbia, 1975.

Desire, Columbia, 1976.

Hard Rain, Columbia, 1976.

Street Legal, Columbia, 1978.

Bob Dylan at Budokan, Columbia, 1978.

Bob Dylan: Masterpieces, Columbia, 1978.

Slow Train Coming, Columbia, 1979.

Saved, Columbia, 1980.

Shot of Love, Columbia, 1981.

Infidels, Columbia, 1983.

Real Live, Columbia, 1984.

Empire Burlesque, Columbia, 1985.

Biograph, 3 vols., Columbia, 1985.

Knocked Out Loaded, Columbia, 1986.

(With the Traveling Wilburys) Traveling Wilburys, Warner Bros., 1988.

Down in the Groove, Columbia, 1988.

(With the Grateful Dead) Dylan and the Dead, Columbia, 1989.

Oh, Mercy, Columbia, 1989.

(With the Traveling Wilburys) Traveling Wilburys, Volume 3, Warner Bros., 1990.

Under the Red Sky, Columbia, 1990.

Bootleg Series I-III, Columbia, 1991.

Good As I Been to You, Columbia, 1992.

World Gone Wrong, Columbia, 1993.

Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert, Columbia, 1993.

MTV Unplugged, Columbia, 1995.

Bob Dylans Greatest Hits, Volume III, Columbia, 1995.

Time Out of Mind, Columbia, 1997.

Selected writings

Tarantula (prose), Macmillan, 1971.

Poem to Joanie, Aloes Press, 1972.

Words (poem), J. Cape, 1973.

Writings and Drawings (songs, poems, drawings, and writings), Knopf, 1973; expanded edition published as Lyrics: 1962-1985, 1985.

Renaldo and Clara (screenplay), Circuit Films, 1978.

Sources

Books

Scaduto, Anthony, Bob Dylan, Grosset & Dunlap, 1971.

Shelton, Robert, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan, Beech Tree Books/William Morrow, 1986.

Spitz, Bob, Dylan: A Biography, McGraw-Hill, 1989.

Periodicals

Newsweek, October 6, 1997, pp. 62-71.

New York Times, September 29, 1961.

Time, September 29, 1997, p. 87.

Online

http://www.celebsite.com

http://www.usatoday.com/life/dcovmon.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/lmds040.htm

Lynn M. Spampinato

Dylan, Bob

views updated May 11 2018

Bob Dylan

Singer, songwriter

Singer and songwriter Bob Dylan is recognized worldwide for the impact he has had on rock music since his career began in the early 1960s, and he has maintained his popularity among fans and critics alike over the ensuing decades. Although known primarily for his caustic and candid lyrics that reveal a defiant stance on authority, politics, and social norms that was prevalent in America in the 1960s, Dylan's fans come from a variety of age groups, all of whom identify with the raw human emotion expressed in his lyrics. Dylan's own humanity was brought to the public's attention in May of 1997, when the legendary artist canceled a planned European tour and was hospitalized due to a serious health condition called pericarditis. Yet Dylan returned to the stage in August, and released Time Out of Mind to rave reviews. As further evidence of Dylan's broad appeal and the magnitude of his contributions to music, he performed in Bologna, Italy, in September of 1997, after receiving a special invitation from Pope John Paul II. The notoriously private artist revealed more of his personal life with a documentary film and autobiography published in 2005.

Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, to Abraham Zimmerman, a furniture and appliance salesman, and Beatty Stone Zimmerman. In 1947 the family moved to the small town of Hibbing, Minnesota, where Dylan spent an unremarkable childhood. He began writing poems at the age of ten, and as a teenager taught himself to play the piano, harmonica, and guitar. He appreciated a wide variety of music ranging from country to rock 'n' roll, and admired the works of Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Dylan played in many bands during his high school years, including the Golden Chords and Elston Gunn and His Rock Boppers, before enrolling at the University of Minnesota in 1959.

While he was a student at the University of Minnesota, the artist began performing as a folk singer and musician under the name Bob Dylan at such popular Minneapolis night clubs as the Ten O'Clock Scholar cafe and St. Paul's Purple Onion Pizza Parlor. Dylan soon became more involved with his musical career than with his studies, so he dropped out of school in 1960 and headed straight for New York City. The young performer's interest in New York City was based on his desire to become involved in the emerging folk music scene in the city's Greenwich Village neighborhood, as well as his wish to meet his idol, folk singer Woody Guthrie. Dylan soon became a popular performer in Greenwich Village coffee houses and night clubs, and also managed to become a regular performer for Guthrie. The young Dylan quickly gained the respect and admiration of his peers in the folk music scene with his ability to compose his own melodies and lyrics at an astonishing pace. In 1961 he attracted notice outside of New York City's folk music scene when New York Times critic Robert Shelton witnessed one of his performances at a club called Gerde's Folk City and declared that Dylan was "bursting at the seams with talent."

Dylan was 20 years old when he released his self-titled debut album in 1962. Although most of the songs were cover tunes, Dylan did include two original compositions—"Song to Woody," a tribute to Guthrie, and "Talkin' New York." The album achieved limited success, and Dylan followed it in 1963 with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which contained more original songs that shared a common theme of protest. Two of the songs from Dylan's second album, "Blowin' In the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," became enduring anthems of the 1960s, helping to define the thoughts and feelings of the counterculture. As confirmation of Dylan's success, the renowned folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary recorded a cover version of "Blowin' In the Wind" that rose to the number two spot on the pop music charts.

The Tide Changed

By the time Dylan released 1964's The Times They Are A-Changin', he had been thrust into the role of media spokesperson for a counterculture protest movement that sought to radically alter current social and political norms. This third album also contained the protest song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." At the time the album was released, however, Dylan began to express his growing pessimism about the counterculture's ability to affect change, and declared that he was uncomfortable with his role as the movement's mouthpiece. His next album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, further evidenced his disillusionment with the counterculture movement, containing extremely personal folk ballads and love songs rather than his trademark protest songs. In 1965 Dylan enraged his folk music following by performing on an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival (fans booed Dylan and his band off the stage), and by releasing Bringing It All Back Home, an album on which Dylan returned to his earlier musical influences of rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues. While the songs on this album remained critical of society, none contained any of the direct references to racism, war, or political activism that had marked his earlier works. The acoustic song "Mr. Tambourine Man" from Bringing It All Back Home was recorded in an electrified form by the popular 1960s band the Byrds, and reached the top of the pop music charts; by that time a new brand of music known as "folk rock" had become widely favored among young Americans.

For the Record …

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, MN; name legally changed August 9, 1962; son of Abraham (a furniture and appliance salesman) and Beatty (Stone) Zimmerman; married Sara Lowndes, 1965 (divorced, 1977); children: Jesse, Maria, Jakob, Samuel, Anna. Education: Attended University of Minnesota, 1959–60.

Composed more than 500 songs since early 1960s; recorded with rock groups including The Band (1975), The Traveling Wilburys (with Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, George Harrison, and Roy Orbison, 1988 and 1990), and The Grateful Dead (1989); solo singer and musician in concerts since early 1960s, including appearances at Newport Folk Festival in 1962 and 1965, Woodstock Festivals in 1969 and 1994, and Live Aid benefit concert in 1985; issued new material on Time Out of Mind, 1997, and "Love and Theft," 2001; issued movie soundtrack, Masked and Anonymous, 2003; issued multiple entries in the "bootleg" series, from The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert in 1998 to The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7: No Direction Home—The Soundtrack, 2005.

Awards: Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, Tom Paine Award, 1963; Grammy Award, Best Rock Vocal Performance, for "Gotta Serve Somebody," 1979; Rolling Stone Music Award, Artist of the Year (tied with Bruce Springsteen) for The Basement Tapes, 1975; and Album of the Year for Blood on the Tracks, 1975; inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1988; Commander Dans L'Ordre des Arts et Lettres from French Minister of Culture, 1990; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 1991; Grammy Award for World Gone Wrong, 1993; Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize Trust, Arts Award, 1997; Lifetime Achievement Award, John F. Kennedy Center honors, 1997; Grammy Awards, for Album of the Year, Best Male Rock Performance, and Best Contemporary Folk Album, 1998, all for Time Out of Mind.

Addresses: Record company—Columbia Records, 550 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022-3211, website: http://www.columbiarecords.com, phone: (212) 833-8000. Website—Bob Dylan Official Website: http://www.bobdylan.com.

Dylan continued to record songs that fused his folk and rock influences, using mystical, ominous lyrics filled with imagery and allusion, and in 1965 he released Highway 61 Revisited. The album featured songs with themes of alienation, including the well-known "Like a Rolling Stone," which quickly rose to the number two spot on the Billboard singles chart. That same year Dylan married Sara Lowndes, a friend of his manager's wife. In 1966 Dylan released Blonde on Blonde, which polished the edgy, harsh rock sounds of Highway 61 Revisited and introduced music unlike any of its predecessors. Although he was wildly successful, Dylan was suffering from the strains of fame. In the 1971 biography Bob Dylan the artist described his feelings during that period of his life to author Anthony Scaduto: "The pressures were unbelievable. They were just something you can't imagine unless you go through them yourself. Man, they hurt so much." Similarly, in a 1997 interview with Newsweek's David Gates, Dylan asserted "I'm not the songs. It's like somebody expecting [William] Shakespeare to be Hamlet, or [Wolfgang von] Goethe to be Faust. If you're not prepared for fame, there's really no way you can imagine what a crippling thing it can be."

Knockin' on Death's Door

On July 29, 1966, at the peak of his popularity, Dylan's neck was broken in a near-fatal motorcycle crash. The accident left Dylan with time to recuperate and rest at his Woodstock, New York, home with his wife and their newborn son, Jesse. He began reflecting upon his religious beliefs and personal priorities, and wrote songs that reflected his newfound sense of inner peace and satisfaction. Many of these songs were recorded in 1967 with The Band and later released on the 1975 album The Basement Tapes, while others were released on Dylan's first album following the motorcycle accident, 1968's John Wesley Harding. This slowerpaced acoustical album was followed in 1969 by Nashville Skyline and in 1970 by Self Portrait and New Morning. These three albums were generally panned by the public, and Dylan was criticized harshly by his fans for what they perceived as his failure to comment on the harsh realities of the time, namely the Vietnam War and the struggle for racial equality and civil rights for African Americans.

Dylan's first album to reach the number one spot on music charts was his 1974 effort Planet Waves, which he recorded with The Band. Although it was not a critical success, the album led to a flood of interest in Dylan's 1974 tour of the United States, where audience demand for tickets far exceeded available seating. In 1974, following the tour, Dylan released Before the Flood, a two-album set of music recorded live during the tour; the album rose to number three on music charts.

While Dylan's musical career was on an upswing, his personal life was in a downslide, as he became involved in a bitter separation with Sara and a fierce custody battle over their children. Dylan's 1975 album Blood On the Tracks featured songs reflecting the sorrow and passion of his personal life at the time; "If You See Her, Say Hello" referred directly to the breakup of his marriage. Many critics hailed Blood On the Tracks as Dylan's best album since the 1960s, praising the artist's use of visual imagery to blur distinctions between reality and illusion. The album's searing songs about love and loss, including "Tangled up in Blue," "Shelter from the Storm," and "Idiot Wind," were well received by fans, and the album soon reached number one on the charts. Dylan's 1976 album Desire, which contained a mournful tune titled "Sara," also reached number one on the charts and achieved widespread success in both the United States and Europe.

Although Dylan's 1978 album Street Legal was unpopular with his fans, who feared that the performer's personal crises had interfered with his musical abilities, it did not prepare the fans for what was soon to follow. In 1978, while touring to support Street Legal, Dylan experienced a religious vision that he later asserted made him question his moral values and saved him from self-destructive behavior. Pronouncing his belief in fundamentalist Christianity, Dylan began to include in his music a concern with religious salvation and the end of the world. Many fans were unhappy with the artist's apparent attempts to persuade his listeners to adopt his religious philosophy, while others viewed the lyrics as similar to Dylan's earlier songs about social change and prophecy. Of the albums during his Christian period, only the 1979 album Slow Train Coming was a commercial success, largely due to the popularity of the Grammy Award-winning single "Gotta Serve Somebody."

Dylan Reinvented Himself

In 1983 Dylan released Infidels, an album in which he departed from his overtly religious themes and returned to more complex, emotionally subtle lyrics in songs such as "Jokerman" and "Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight." The 1985 album Empire Burlesque displayed a wide range of musical sounds, from gospel to acoustic ballad. In the mid-1980s Dylan remained prominent in the public eye by performing with various other music stars, including superstar Michael Jackson, on the 1985 single "We Are the World," and at the Live Aid benefit concert, both of which were designed to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Also in 1985, Dylan released Biograph, a five-album set that contained previously released material and "bootleg" (unreleased) recordings, and which also included Dylan's brief commentaries; the set was highly popular and proved a top seller.

The year 1988 marked the beginning of Dylan's collaboration with the Traveling Wilburys, a group that included veteran music stars George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty. The group released two albums, 1988's Traveling Wilburys and Traveling Wilburys Volume 3—no second volume was ever recorded—in 1990. In 1988 Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was honored by noted rock star Bruce Springsteen, who commented during the induction ceremony that "Bob [Dylan] freed the mind the way Elvis [Presley] freed the body. He showed us that just because the music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual…. He invented a new way a pop singer could sound, broke through the limitations of what a recording artist could achieve, and changed the face of rock and roll forever."

Another Close Call

In May of 1997 Dylan was stricken with a sometimes fatal fungal infection called histoplasmosis, which caused the sac surrounding his heart to swell, resulting in a condition known as pericarditis. He told Newsweek's David Gates, "Mostly I was in a lot of pain. Pain that was intolerable. That's the only way I can put it." Nevertheless, he began to recover, and performed again in August of that same year. In September he performed for Pope John Paul II—reportedly at the Pope's request—at a eucharistic conference in Bologna, Italy. And in December of 1997 he became the first rock star ever to receive Kennedy Center honors.

Dylan's album Time Out of Mind was released in September of 1997 and was greeted by rave reviews. The album brought Dylan three Grammy Awards—for Album of the Year, Male Rock Performance (for "Cold Irons Bound"), and Contemporary Folk Album. Critics declared that the artist had again managed to reinvent himself and provide his fans with a fresh sound. Time's Christopher John Farley praised the album, declaring that "Dylan has found purpose in his inner battle to reignite his imagination. Turning the quest for inspiration itself into relevant rock—that is alchemic magic." Newsweek contributor Karen Schoemer maintained that Time Out of Mind "is rewarding precisely because it's so outside the present. In an era defined by novelty hits and slick video edits, it's a reminder that music can mean something more: it can be personal, uncompromised and deeply felt."

Following Time Out of Mind, Dylan entered a new, expansive phase of his career, one that focused attention on his current musical output and broadened the understanding of his past achievements. In 1998 Columbia Records released The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert. The two-disc recording, featuring an acoustic and electric set, was recorded at Manchester Free Trade Hall on May 17, 1966, and became one of the most renowned bootlegs in rock 'n' roll history. "By the mid-'70s," noted Bill Holland in Billboard, "the 'Albert Hall' bootlegs became a cultural touchstone for music fans of the hippie-era baby boomer generation."

Dylan waited until 2001 to release Love and Theft, his first album of new material since Time Out of Mind. The album received a warm reception from critics, and following on the heels of the Grammy-winning Time Out of Mind, represented a renaissance for Dylan. "With Love and Theft," wrote David Browne in Entertainment Weekly, "Bob Dylan's return to the land of the living is complete." Columbia also continued to release vault material, including The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975—The Rolling Thunder Review in 2002 and The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964—Concert at Philharmonic Hall in 2004.

In 2003 Dylan appeared in Masked and Anonymous, a film widely panned by critics. "Unfortunately," wrote Ethan Alter in Film Journal International, "I have to concede that the movie is largely a mess—a rambling, disjointed, semi-coherent hodgepodge that plays like a parody of a bad Dylan song."

Published Autobiography

In 2004 and 2005 Dylan, always protective of his personal privacy, wrote the first installment of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One. He also agreed to participate in extensive interviews for Martin Scorsese's two-hour biographical Dylan documentary for PBS, No Direction Home. Since he first become popular in the mid-1960s, Dylan had allowed biographers and journalists to tell his story: now, with a book and a documentary, he would have his turn. Columbia seized the opportunity to release two discs worth of scattered demos, out-takes, and live recordings to accompany the documentary project. In 2006 Twyla Tharp's play "The Times They Are A-Changin," drawn from Dylan's songs, was slated to open at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego, California.

While Dylan has always drawn concert audiences and maintained a loyal fan base, new recordings and vault releases following Time Out of Mind have energized longtime fans and introduced him to a new generation. "Forty-plus years into his never-ending career," wrote Browne, "Bob Dylan keeps throwing us curveballs."

Selected discography

Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1962.
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1963.
The Times They Are A-Changin', Columbia, 1964.
Another Side of Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1964.
Bringing It All Back Home, Columbia, 1965.
Highway 61 Revisited, Columbia, 1965.
Blonde on Blonde, Columbia, 1966.
Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits I, Columbia, 1967.
John Wesley Harding, Columbia, 1968.
Nashville Skyline, Columbia, 1969.
New Morning, Columbia, 1970.
Self Portrait, Columbia, 1970.
Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Volume II, Columbia, 1971.
Dylan, Columbia, 1973.
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Columbia, 1973.
Planet Waves, Asylum, 1974.
Before the Flood, Asylum, 1974.
(With The Band) The Basement Tapes, Columbia, 1975.
Blood on the Tracks, Columbia, 1975.
Desire, Columbia, 1976.
Hard Rain, Columbia, 1976.
Street Legal, Columbia, 1978.
Bob Dylan at Budokan, Columbia, 1978.
Bob Dylan: Masterpieces, Columbia, 1978.
Slow Train Coming, Columbia, 1979.
Saved, Columbia, 1980.
Shot of Love, Columbia, 1981.
Infidels, Columbia, 1983.
Real Live, Columbia, 1984.
Empire Burlesque, Columbia, 1985.
Biograph, 3 vols., Columbia, 1985.
Knocked Out Loaded, Columbia, 1986.
(With the Traveling Wilburys: Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, George Harrison, and Jeff Lynne) Traveling Wilburys, Warner Bros., 1988.
Down in the Groove, Columbia, 1988.
(With the Grateful Dead) Dylan and the Dead, Columbia, 1989.
Oh, Mercy, Columbia, 1989.
Traveling Wilburys, Volume 3, Warner Bros., 1990.
Under the Red Sky, Columbia, 1990.
Bootleg Series I-III, Columbia, 1991.
Good As I Been to You, Columbia, 1992.
World Gone Wrong, Columbia, 1993.
Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert, Columbia, 1993.
MTV Unplugged, Columbia, 1995.
Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Volume III, Columbia, 1995.
Time Out of Mind, Columbia, 1997.
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert, Columbia, 1998.
Love and Theft, Columbia, 2001.
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975—The Rolling Thunder Review, Columbia, 2002.
(With multiple guests) Masked and Anonymous, Sony, 2003.
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964—Concert at Philharmonic Hall, Columbia, 2004.
Live at the Gaslight 1962, Columbia, 2005.
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7: No Direction Home—The Soundtrack, Columbia, 2005.
Modern Times, Columbia, 2006.

Selected writings

Tarantula (prose), Macmillan, 1971.
Poem to Joanie, Aloes Press, 1972.
Words (poem), J. Cape, 1973.
Writings and Drawings (songs, poems, drawings, and writings), Knopf, 1973; expanded edition published as Lyrics: 1962–1985, 1985.
Renaldo and Clara (screenplay), Circuit Films, 1978.
Chronicles: Volume One, Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Sources

Books

Scaduto, Anthony, Bob Dylan, Grosset & Dunlap, 1971.

Shelton, Robert, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan, Beech Tree Books/William Morrow, 1986.

Spitz, Marc, Bob Dylan: A Biography, McGraw-Hill, 1989.

Periodicals

Billboard, October 24, 1998, p. 52.

Entertainment Weekly, September 14, 2001; September 2, 2005.

Film Journal International, September 2003, p. 46.

New York Times, September 29, 1961.

Sing Out!, Summer 2004, p. 128.

Time, September 29, 1997, p. 87; April 12, 2004, p. 83.

Dylan, Bob

views updated May 09 2018

Bob Dylan

Born May 24, 1941
Duluth, Minnesota

Singer, songwriter

One of the most influential songwriters of the twentieth century, Bob Dylan is a unique blend of musician, poet, rebel, and social critic. He rose to fame during the 1960s, when his music was favored by college students and those involved in the anti-war movement. With his scruffy looks, his raspy nasal voice, and the stinging political edge of his lyrics, he became an important figurehead for these social movements. He came to represent their attitude of rebellion. However, Dylan resisted the role of star and remained a very private and independent artist. He frustrated his fans over and over by refusing to stick with any one musical style or personal philosophy. However, he continued to win respect and praise again and again. In the early twenty-first century, Dylan continued to create and perform his sharp, perceptive songs to audiences that included several generations.

"It's not me. It's the songs. I'm just the postman. I deliver the songs."

—Bob Dylan.

Growing up in the north country

On May 24, 1941, Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman. His middle-class Jewish family lived in the Lake Superior port city of Duluth, Minnesota. His grandparents, Jews from Russia and Lithuania, had left their homes to escape anti-Jewish violence. They settled in Minnesota, where Dylan's parents, Abe Zimmerman and Beatrice (Stone) Zimmerman, were born, grew up, and married. In 1946, Abe contracted polio, a disabling disease. The family decided to move closer to relatives in the small town of Hibbing, in the northern Iron Mountain region of Minnesota. Abe worked with other family members there, running an electrical supply store.

The Zimmermans both came from musical families. Abe played violin and Beatrice played piano; family entertainments were common. Young Bobby was only four or five when he first sang at a family gathering. By the age of ten, he began to teach himself to play piano and, soon after, the guitar, autoharp, and harmonica. He was impatient with traditional ways of learning music, such as private lessons or music classes. As a result, he developed his own ways of playing without learning to read music.

Bobby Zimmerman also began to listen to the radio and heard the music that would influence him for the rest of his life. He loved simple, emotional country music best, like the sad songs of Hank Williams Sr. (1923–1953). As Bobby grew older, he began to listen to a new kind of music called rock and roll. He began to imitate early rockers such as Little Richard (1932–) and Elvis Presley (1935–1977). Rock and roll was a rebellious music with roots in African American jazz and blues. Northern Minnesota, a conservative area, had few Jews or blacks. As Bobby Zimmerman grew to be a teenager there, he found much to rebel against. In imitation of his rock heroes, he grew his hair long and combed it back in a high wave called a pompadour. He rode a motorcycle and played in several bands. Once, during a high school talent show, the principal was so angered by the loud performance of Bobby's band that he pulled the plug on their instruments.

A little college and a lot of education

While playing music with bands in high school, Bobby Zimmerman began to use the name Bob Dylan. He preferred not to say exactly why he chose the name. However, he seemed to have first picked Dillon as his stage name, at least partly because he admired Matt Dillon, the tough but sympathetic sheriff on the popular 1950s television western Gunsmoke. Always a lover of poetry, Bob Dylan may have changed the spelling as a tribute to the twentieth-century Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

In 1959, Dylan left Hibbing to attend college at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He did not really like school and thus did not stay in college long. Yet he did continue his musical education in Minneapolis. He became part of a community of young poets, artists, and musicians called "Beatniks." They rejected the views, values, and behaviors of the majority. In addition, they were interested in the revival of folk music.

Folk music had been around for a long time. In fact, folk music was the name given to the traditional songs that had been sung for decades or even centuries in rural North America and Britain. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, some rebellious intellectuals had become interested in folk music. They considered it to be more authentic and honest than the popular music of the 1950s, which they thought was bland and artificial. To Dylan and his circle, folk music seemed fresh and meaningful. Dylan was especially drawn to the simple arrangements and heart-felt sentiments of singer/songwriters such as Woody Guthrie (1912–1967). An American folksinger, Guthrie had traveled around the country as a hobo during the Great Depression (1929–41). Guthrie's uncomplicated musical style reminded Dylan of the down-to-earth qualities he had loved in the music of Hank Williams Sr. and the young Elvis Presley. Moreover, Guthrie was a poet of the people because he told the stories of hard lives and pointed out the unfair treatment that poor people often received. Dylan started to see himself as a social rebel like Hank Williams, a rambling poet who would sing the truth.

Dylan began to perform in Minneapolis coffeehouses, singing his own variations of traditional folk songs as well as songs he wrote. He had transformed himself from the pompadoured rocker to the vagabond poet. Soon he left on travels of his own, heading for the center of Beatnik culture, New York City. He might have seen himself as a poet of the people, but Bob Dylan also wanted to be famous. New York was the place for an artist who wanted to be discovered.

Greenwich Village: A Community of Rebels

When Bob Dylan left the Midwest to seek other musicians in New York City, he went to a section of the city famous for its community of artists and free thinkers. Located at the southern end of Manhattan Island, the neighborhood of Greenwich (pronounced Gren'ich) Village has been associated with creative and offbeat intellectuals for most of the twentieth century.

Greenwich Village became known as an artistic and unconventional neighborhood during the early 1900s. As New York City grew outward from its beginnings at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, the wealthy citizens who had populated the Village of Greenwich moved farther north. This left many apartments and houses empty. Rents dropped and these low rents attracted both poor immigrants and poor artists. Painters, writers, musicians, opera singers, and dancers all moved into the inexpensive apartments of Greenwich Village. These artists were usually independent, creative people who did not live by the traditional rules of society. Soon the Village got the reputation of being a tolerant and creative community.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, many young people began to rebel against a society that they found artificial and repressive. Many of these young rebels embraced the "Beat" lifestyle. It was an untraditional way of living that valued art, poetry, and the hip rhythms of jazz music more than the traditions of marriage, family, and the conventional work career. Greenwich Village became home to many of the "Beatniks."

Many Beats were also drawn to the true stories and deep emotions they found in traditional folk music. During the early 1960s, the Village became a gathering place for such influential folksingers as Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, and the group Peter, Paul, and Mary. Many young "folkies," such as Bob Dylan, arrived in New York looking for kindred spirits. The newcomers could go to clubs such as the Gaslight, the Blue Angel, and Folk City, where they could hear folk music and jam with some of the best folk musicians in the world.

Dylan was nineteen years old when he arrived in New York at the end of 1960. He headed for the artistic center of the city, Greenwich Village, where he met many other folk musicians. He began to perform in local coffeehouses such as Gerde's Folk City and the Gaslight. Greenwich Village was home to many young folk musicians during the early 1960s. The folk music scene was exploding with excitement. Bob Dylan's songs, with their driving guitar and harshly poetic words, fit right in.

The rise and fall of the folksinger

It did not take long for record company executives to recognize Dylan's talent. During the first year he was in New York, he was offered a five-year record contract with Columbia Records. His first album, Bob Dylan (1962), contained traditional folk songs. By the second, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), all of the songs were original. He wrote about love ("Girl of the North Country"), and he wrote about his heroes ("Song for Woody"). But his most famous and powerful songs were his protest songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind." An anti-war, anti-racism song, "Blowin' in the Wind" became an anthem for the American 1960s civil rights movement. Other songs, such as "The Times They Are a'Changing," captured the rebellious spirit of the decade. As a result, Dylan seemed to be the spokesperson for those who felt that they were living in a time of great cultural change.

Dylan was a productive songwriter. Many popular singers, such as singer/songwriter Joan Baez (1941–) as well as the folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary sang his songs. Many people preferred to hear others sing Dylan songs because they considered his voice grating, whiny, and unpleasant. However, Dylan fans found his singing both emotional and authentic, especially in his long storytelling songs such as "The Death of Emmett Till" and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." Both songs are about African Americans killed by racist whites.

The popular folksinger Joan Baez helped push Dylan into the public eye. She and Dylan were just beginning a two-year romantic relationship when she invited him on stage to sing with her at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island. Although the crowd showed little interest in the skinny, unkempt newcomer, Baez's introduction convinced them to listen. Dylan's popularity began to rise.

By the mid-1960s, Bob Dylan had become a star. His songs were popular and his albums were successful. He was performing at festivals and in famous concert halls around the world. Never one to get too comfortable with his success, Dylan began to change his music. In the summer of 1965, he played at the Newport Folk Festival again, this time as a major performer. At a time when most folk musicians believed in keeping the music pure by using only traditional instruments, Dylan put together an all-electric band for the concert. He played the electric guitar. Although some of the audience was thrilled by the new sound, most fans and other folk musicians were horrified as Dylan and his amplified band pounded out several songs. Some were upset because of the loud, electric sound, which they did not consider as folk. Others were angered because the songs Dylan played were personal, and they wanted to hear political protest songs.

Newport was the first of a series of concerts in which Dylan seemed to be almost mocking the fans who had loved his early music. He continued to use electric instruments and acted strangely on stage. He treated many of his old folksinger friends unkindly, including snubbing his old friend Joan Baez. Audiences began to boo him at his concerts.

Retreats, comebacks, and rebirths

In 1966, Dylan had a motorcycle accident and retired from public life for several years. There were stories that he had broken his neck and nearly died. However, much evidence suggests that his injuries were slight and that the accident merely became his excuse for getting away from criticism of his music in order to rethink his career. Dylan had married Sara Lownds in 1965, and he spent the next several years living a quiet domestic life.

Joan Baez

For many, singer Joan Baez was the perfect symbol of 1960s folk music. With her long dark hair, bare feet, and clear soprano voice, Baez seemed as simple and authentic as the traditional folk ballads she sang. Some of her fans were delighted and others felt betrayed when Baez later mixed political protest songs with her folk music. Yet she always delivered her music with a direct and heartfelt sincerity that earned the respect of both audiences and critics.

Baez began her career singing in the coffeehouses of Boston, Massachusetts, and Greenwich Village. She was only eighteen when she drew national attention at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island. A year later, she released her first album, a collection of enduring folk classics, including "House of the Rising Sun," "John Riley," and "Silver Dagger."

In 1963, Baez began a relationship with Bob Dylan, who was just starting his musical career. Already a respected folksinger, Baez shared her fame with Dylan by inviting him to share the stage with her. They performed together first at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, then on her concert tour. Though their relationship was over by 1965, it was an important one for both of them. Baez immortalized it in one of her best-known songs, "Diamonds and Rust" (1975). She continued to sing and record Dylan's music into the 2000s.

Joan Baez was never content with being simply a singer who sang pretty songs. Early in her career, she began to use the stage as a place from which to speak out about social issues. She frequently sang at political events to support particular causes of the 1960s and 1970s, including the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and immigration and prison reform. She promoted boycotts in support of farmworkers, did not pay taxes that would go to support war, and often donated money from her concerts to activist organizations. In 1965, she founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence to explore alternatives to war.

In 1969 Dylan released an album which, while it contained a major hit, also marked another big change in musical style. Nashville Skyline left behind the hard-driving music of Dylan's rock period and headed in the direction of country music. The best-known track from the album, "Lay, Lady, Lay," was a Top 40 hit for eleven weeks. However, Dylan did not revive his former popularity. His next album, Self Portrait (1970), was so unpopular and so musically strange that many thought it had been made as a joke. During this period, Dylan expanded his writing and published two books, an autobiography, Bob Dylan, Self-Portrait (1970), and a novel, Tarantula (1971).

In 1975, Dylan made still another comeback. He separated from his wife and turned the pain of that troubled relationship into a new album. Blood on the Tracks was well received by critics and fans alike. Many thought the songs were among the best Dylan had ever written. Songs such as "Shelter from the Storm," "Idiot Wind," and "Tangled Up in Blue" clearly expressed the deep loss and anger at the end of a marriage.

In 1979, Dylan renounced his Judaism and became a born-again Christian. By this time, fans had become used to his extreme changes of direction. Few took much notice of his Christian album Saved (1980). By 1983, Dylan had returned to Judaism. He continued to write, perform, and record. In 1989 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His 1998 album Time Out of Mind won the Grammy award for Album of the Year. In 1986 Dylan married again, though he kept his marriage to Carol Dennis a secret for many years. They divorced in 1992. He had five children from his first marriage and one from his second. One of his sons, Jakob, followed his father into a successful career in popular music with the band, The Wallflowers.

For More Information

Books

Horn, Geoffrey M. Bob Dylan. Milwaukee, WI: World Almanac Library, 2002.

Richardson, Susan. Bob Dylan. New York: Chelsea House, 1995.

Scaduto, Anthony. Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography. New York: Signet, 1979.

Schuman, Michael. Bob Dylan: The Life and Times of an American Icon. Berkley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2003.

Shelton, Robert. No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan. New York: William Morrow, 1986.

Sounes, Howard. Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan. New York: Grove Press, 2001.

Web Sites

Bobdylan.com.http://www.bobdylan.com (accessed August 2004).

Dylan, Bob

views updated May 29 2018

DYLAN, Bob


Nationality: American. Born: Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, 24 May 1941. Education: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1959–60. Family: Married Sara Lowndes in 1965 (divorced 1977), three sons and two daughters. Career: Composer and performer. Awards: Emergency Civil Liberties Committee Tom Paine award, 1963; Grammy award, 1980, 1993; American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers Founder's award, 1986; Légion de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres (France), 1990; Lifetime Achievement award, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, 1991; Arts award, Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize Trust, 1997; Lifetime Achievement award, John F. Kennedy Center honors, 1997; 3 Grammy awards, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, for Album of the Year, Best Male Rock Performance, and Best Contemporary Folk Album, 1998, for Time out of Mind. Named to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio, 1988. D. Mus.: Princeton University, New Jersey, 1970. Address: c/o Jeff Rosen, P.O. Box 870, Cooper Station, New York, New York 10276, U.S.A.

Publications

Poetry

Tarantula. New York, Macmillan, 1966.

Approximately Complete Works. Amsterdam, De Bezige Bij-Thomas Rap, 1970.

Poem to Joanie. London, Aloes Press, 1972.

Words. London, Cape, 1973.

Writings and Drawings. New York, Knopf, and London, Cape, 1973.

The Songs of Bob Dylan 1966–1975. New York, Knopf, 1976.

XI Outlined Epitaphs, and Off the Top of My Head. London, Aloes Seola, 1981 (?). Lyrics 1962–1985. New York, Knopf, 1985; London, Cape, 1986.

Scores: Oh Mercy, New York, Amsco, 1989; Fingerpicking Dylan, London and New York, Amsco, 1990; Bob Dylan Anthology, New York, Amsco, 1990; Bob Dylan Rock Score, London and New York, Wise, 1990; Under the Red Sky, New York, Amsco, 1990; Classic Dylan, New York, Amsco, 1991; The Harp Styles of Bob Dylan, London and New York, Amsco, 1992; Bob Dylan, New York, Amsco, 1993; The Very Best, New York, Amsco, 1993; The Songs of Bob Dylan: From 1966 through 1975, New York, Knopf/ Cherry Lane, 1994; Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, New York, Amsco, 1994; World Gone Wrong, New York, Amsco, 1994; Greatest Hits, Songtab Edition, Volume 2, New York, Amsco, 1999.

Recordings: Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1962; The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1963; The Times They Are A-Changin', Columbia, 1964; Another Side of Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1964; Bringing It All Back Home, Columbia, 1965; Highway 61 Revisited, Columbia, 1965; Blonde on Blonde, Columbia, 1966; Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Columbia, 1967; John Wesley Harding, Columbia, 1968; Nashville Skyline, Columbia, 1969; Self Portrait, Columbia, 1970; New Morning, Columbia, 1970; Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, vol. 2, Columbia, 1971; Dylan, Columbia, 1973; incidental music for the film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, 1973; Planet Waves, Asylum, 1974; Before the Flood, Asylum, 1974; Blood on the Tracks, Columbia, 1975; The Basement Tapes, CBS, 1975; Desire, Columbia, 1976; Hard Rain, CBS, 1976; Masterpieces, CBS/ Sony, 1978; Street Legal, CBS, 1978; Bob Dylan at Budokan, Columbia, 1979; Slow Train Coming, Columbia, 1979; Saved, Columbia, 1980; Shot of Love, Columbia, 1981; Infidels, Columbia, 1983; Real Live, Columbia, 1984; Empire Burlesque, Columbia, 1985; Biograph, Columbia, 1985; Knocked Out Loaded, Columbia, 1986; Dylan & The Dead, Columbia, 1987; Hearts of Fire, Columbia, 1987; Down in the Groove, Columbia, 1988; Emotionally Yours, EMI, 1988; Oh Mercy, Columbia, 1989; The Songs of Bob Dylan, Start, 1989; All the Way Down to Italy, Templar, 1991; The Bootleg Series, vols. 1–3, Columbia, 1991; Good As I Been to You, Columbia, 1992; Hammersmith Highlights, One Over the Gate, 1993; Oh Mercy, Columbia, 1989; Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, Yellow Dog, 1994; Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, vol. 3, Columbia, 1994; MTV Unplugged, Columbia, 1995; Time out of Mind, Columbia, 1997; Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, vol. 2, Columbia, 1999.

Other

Bob Dylan in His Own Words, compiled by Miles, edited by Pearce Marchbank. London, Omnibus Press, and New York, Quick Fox, 1978.

Save!: The Gospel Speeches of Bob Dylan. Madras and New York, Hanuman Books, 1990.

Drawn Blank. New York, Random House, 1994.

*

Bibliography: Bob Dylan, American Poet and Singer: An Annotated Bibliography and Study Guide of Sources and Background Materials, 1961–1991, Greenburg, Pennsylvania, Eadmer Press, 1991; Bob Dylan: A Bio-Bibliography by William McKeen, Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1993; Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography and Filmography, 1961–1993 by John Nogowski, Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland, 1995.

Critical Studies: Bob Dylan: A Retrospective edited by Craig McGregor, New York, Morrow, 1972, revised edition, London, Angus and Robertson, 1980; Bob Dylan by Anthony Scaduto, New York, New American Library, 1973; Rolling Thunder Logbook by Sam Shepard, New York, Viking Press, 1977, London, Penguin, 1978; Bob Dylan: An Illustrated History by Robert Alexander, London, Elm Tree, 1978; Bob Dylan: His Unreleased Works by Paul Cable, London, Scorpion-Dark Star, 1978, New York, Associated Music, 1980; The Art of Bob Dylan, Song and Dance Man by Michael Gray, London, Hamlyn, and New York, St. Martin's Press, 1981; Twenty Years of Recording: The Bob Dylan Reference Book by Michael Korgsgaard, Copenhagen, Scandinavian Institute for Rock Research, 1981; Bob Dylan: From a Hard Rain to a Slow Train by Tim Dowley, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Midas, 1982; Voice without Restraint: A Study of Bob Dylan's Lyrics and Their Background by John Herdman, Edinburgh, Harris, and New York, Delilah, 1982; Performed Literature: Words and Music by Bob Dylan by Betsy Bowden, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1982; Blood on the Tracks: The Story of Bob Dylan by Chris Rowley, New York, Proteus, 1983; A Darker Shade of Pale: A Backdrop to Bob Dylan by Wilfrid Mellers, London, Faber, 1984, New York, Oxford University Press, 1985; Dylan by Jonathan Cott, New York, Doubleday, and London, Vermilion, 1984; Bob Dylan: Escaping on the Run by Aidan Day, Bury, Wanted Man, 1984, and Jokerman: Reading the Lyrics of Bob Dylan by Day, Oxford and New York, Blackwell, 1988; The Bible in the Lyrics of Bob Dylan by Bert Cartwright, Bury, Wanted Man, 1985; No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan by Robert Shelton, London, New English Library, 1986; Jokermen and Thieves: Bob Dylan and the Ballad Tradition by Nick De Somogyi, Bury, Wanted Man, 1986; Dylan: A Biography by Bob Spitz, New York, McGraw Hill, 1988; Dylan: Stolen Moments, Romford, Wanted Man, 1988, and Dylan: Behind the Shades, London, Penguin, 1992, both by Clinton Heylin; Performing Artist: The Music of Bob Dylan 1960–1973 (vol. 1) by Paul Williams, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Underwood Miller, 1990; The Dylan Companion edited by Elizabeth Thomson and David Gutman, London, Macmillan, 1990; Bob Dylan: Performing Artist by Paul Williams, London, Omnibus, 1990; Oh No! Not Another Bob Dylan Book by Patrick Humphries, Brentwood, Square One, 1991; Bob Dylan: A Portrait of the Artist's Early Years by Daniel Kramer, N.p., Plexus, 1991; Bob Dylan: Performing Artist: The Middle Years, 1974–1986, Novato, California, Underwood-Miller, 1992; Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary by Tim Riley, New York, Vintage Books, 1992; Wanted Man: In Search of Bob Dylan by John Bauldie, London, Penguin, 1992; The Bob Dylan Concordance by Steve Michel, Grand Junction, Colorado, Rolling Tomes, 1992; Bob Dylan by Jay Allen Sanford, San Diego, California, Revolutionary Comics, 1992; Dylan: A Man Called Alias by Richard Williams, London, Bloomsbury, 1992; Jewels & Binoculars by Phil Bowen, Exeter, Stride/Westwords, 1993; The Cracked Bells: A Guide to Tarantula by Robin Witting, Scunthorpe, Exploding Rooster Books, 1993; Bob Dylan by Susan Richardson, New York, Chelsea House, 1995; "Methane Emissions" by David Partenheimer, in McNeese Review (Lake Charles, Louisiana), 34, 1995–96; "'Read Books, Repeat Quotations': A Note on Possible Conradian Influences on Bob Dylan's 'Black Diamond Bay'" by Allan H. Simmons, in The Conradian (London), 20(1–2), spring-autumn 1995; "Synergies and Reciprocities: The Dynamics of Musical and Professional Interaction between the Beatles and Bob Dylan" by Ian Inglis, in Popular Music and Society, 20(4), winter 1996; "(Pass through) The Mirror Moment and Don't Look Back: Music and Gender in a Rockumentary" by Susan Knobloch, in Feminism and Documentary, edited by Diane Waldman and Janet Walker, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

Theatrical Activities: Actor: Films— Don't Look Back, 1965; Eat the Document, 1966; Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, 1973; Renaldo and Clara, 1978; Hearts of Fire, 1987.

*  *  *

Bob Dylan's lyrics show the influence of a remarkably eclectic range of styles, from the blues, folk songs, and the American popular song to the Bible and symbolist and modernist poetry. His integration of these influences is unparalleled. Dylan has never sacrificed the musical side of his inspiration; his is a song-poetry and is written not to an accentual syllabic but to a strongly accentual meter, supported by a sophisticated sense of rhyme. At the same time he has repeatedly demonstrated that songs may bear the same load of meaning as conventional poetry. His career has been marked by the relentless adoption and abandonment of different lyrical and musical stances, so that looking back over his career one sees a bewildering series of lyric identities. As far as it is possible to distinguish them, his main themes—often overlapping in the same song—are social and political commentary, love, religion, and the nature of personal identity.

First there was the Dylan whose political lyrics helped galvanize the New Left in the early 1960s. This was the Dylan who extended the ironic wit and gravity of the talking blues form in "Talkin' World War III Blues" (The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan) or who wrote a finely constructed piece on the murder of a Baltimore waitress in "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" (The Times They Are A-Changin'). In songs on his second album of 1964 (Another Side of Bob Dylan) he began to show a distinct unease with direct social and political statement, and the 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home— which includes "Mr. Tambourine Man," an excellent piece on the nature of poetic inspiration—marks Dylan's decisive movement into a lyric mode characterized by indirection and obscurity. This was a mode also dominating, in different forms, Highway 61 Revisited, which includes "Desolation Row," a highly allusive reading of personal and cultural identity; Blonde on Blonde, which has "Visions of Johanna," one of Dylan's most surrealistic lyrics, dealing with the question of subjectivity; and John Wesley Harding, which reveals Dylan concentrating on vividly drawn and peculiarly compact narratives.

After these four, frequently lyrically recondite albums Dylan reemphasized, as he was to do at periodic intervals, his place within the tradition of American popular music by recording a set of almost sublimely banal country songs (Nashville Skyline) and a group of cover versions of other people's songs on an album ironically titled Self Portrait. He then just kept on changing. By 1975 he had released Blood on the Tracks, which investigates love and personal identity in a series of complex and elusive narratives distinguished as much by what they leave out as by what they contain. Two more albums, Desire and Street Legal, show him experimenting further with modernist effects, particularly in "Isis" on Desire and "Changing of the Guards" on Street Legal. By the end of the 1970s, however, Dylan was to adopt yet another verbal register when he began recording three explicitly Christian albums(from Slow Train Coming to Shot of Love), all of which are charged by insecurity as much as by a security of vision.

Along with shifting personae, themes, and tones there are, of course, reinterpreted consistencies in Dylan's lyric concerns. There is the reiterated acuity and severity of his writing about love and relationships, for instance, from the sharply straightforward "Positively 4th Street" to the sharp but more arcane manner of the dramatic monologue "Idiot Wind" from Blood on the Tracks. Another of Dylan's recurrent themes is his uneasy preoccupation with apocalypse. Even his work of the early 1960s distanced itself from the naively optimistic millenarianism of the times. In "A Hard Rain's AGonna Fall" (The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan), for example, he drew simultaneously on both the ballad tradition and the Bible to compose a picture of a world on the verge of Armageddon. But the song merely warns of the "hard rain" that will fall like the pestilences in Revelation. Unlike Revelation, however, there is no machinery of renovation to offset the doom. A comparable kind of darkness underlies many of Dylan's more complicated songs of the mid-1960s. In "Desolation Row" the state of Western culture is envisaged in terms of the voyage of the Titanic: "Praise be to Nero's Neptune / The Titanic sails at dawn." Here the Neptune belonging to the drowned passengers of the Titanic also belongs to Nero, who presided over Rome while it burned. The end of an overproud culture is to come to an apocalyptic conflux of water and fire.

The dominant tendency of Dylan's use of apocalyptic imagery in the 1960s—to express apocalyptic despair—shadows his use of similar imagery in his later songs. The religious lyrics identify the possibility of an ultimate hope, but the Christian lyrics never hold such perspectives simply or easily. The closing lines of "Jokerman," from Infidels, again recall Revelation ("a woman … upon a scarlet colored beast") as they picture the birth of an Antichrist. But in the final verse ultimate outcomes are left radically uncertain as the figure of the Jokerman, the questionable spirit of human nature, responds with an ambiguous lack of response:

   It's a shadowy world, skies are slippery gray,
   A woman just gave birth to a prince today and dressed him in scarlet.
   He'll put the priest in his pocket, put the blade to the heat,
   Take the motherless children off the street
   And place them at the feet of a harlot.
       Oh, Jokerman, you know what he wants,
   Oh, Jokerman, you don't show any response.

Apocalyptic tonalities reappear on Dylan's 1989 album Oh Mercy in a song of reflection on past life and present circumstance: "It's the last temptation, the last account, / The last time you might hear the Sermon on the Mount, / The last radio is playing …" It is a sense of urgency like this that fires Dylan's best lyrics, whatever their subject.

One of the greatest of Dylan's albums, the 1997 Time out of Mind explores the experience of aging, the experience of no longer being young and of yet still being driven by the harrowing energies of love. The urgency of the album is founded in a very personal sense of death bearing down ("It's not dark yet, but it's getting there"). But despair is not given free rein. The last song of the collection, "Highlands," alludes to and massively elaborates and complicates Robert Burns's "My Heart's in the Highlands." Whereas Burns looks back nostalgically to a lost ideal, Dylan's future-oriented lyric uses the image of the Highlands to suggest a condition yet to be achieved: "There's a way to get there, and I'll figure it out somehow / But I'm already there in my mind / And that's good enough for now."

—Aidan Day

Dylan, Bob

views updated May 21 2018

BOB DYLAN

Born: Robert Allen Zimmerman; Duluth, Minnesota, 24 May 1941

Genre: Rock, Folk Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Time Out of Mind (1997)



More than any other single figure of the 1960s and 1970s, Bob Dylan defined the direction of American popular music. Through his influence, the singer as composer became standard, and popular music began to deal with serious matterswar, social injustice, and similar topicsin lyrics that qualified as poetry. With a long and distinguished list of songs to his credit and a record of concertizing equaled by few of his generation, Dylan remains a potent force on the musical scene: respected, even revered, and still musically active.

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, Dylan moved to New York in early 1961 after attending the University of Minnesota for three semesters. He took his new name from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and his musical identity from folk music great Woody Guthrie. In New York, Dylan played the coffeehouse circuit, an important venue for folk artists, especially after the Beat movement of the 1950s. He adopted Guthrie's signature harmonica racka metal frame suspended at the neck so the performer can accompany himselfand covered many of his songs while beginning to create his own. In "a voice that came from you and me" (as late-sixties folk rock musician Don McLean would later describe in his cult song "American Pie"), Dylan soon attracted a following and the attention of John Hammond, a music scout from Columbia Records. Soon afterward, Hammond signed Dylan to his first contract. Hammond's colleagues at Columbia called the young singer "Hammond's Folly." Little did they realize that in a few years Dylan would become the voice of his generation. He expressed the inner feelings of the youth culture of the 1960s, putting them into the words and music of his songs. This was music to be listened to, the message of its lyrics as important as its melody or rhythm.

By the mid-1960s, on the albums Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965), and Blonde on Blonde (1966), Dylan had moved from the folk style that had made him famous to a rock style incorporating certain features of folk music; this style of music became known as folk rock. In the process of undertaking this change, Dylan changed his instrument to electric guitar and his subject matter to intensely personal experiences often rendered in surrealistic imagery and language. "From now on," Dylan told an interviewer during this period, "I want to write from inside me." From then until now, Dylan has always expected his audience to catch up with him. No performer of his stature and achievement has done less to woo fans, more at times to alienate them.

By the 1980s Dylan seemed to have run dry. Then in one of those musical surprises for which he is famous, Dylan ended the decade with the Daniel Lanois-produced Oh Mercy (1989), an album of distinctive new material. He had passed through a period of born-again Christianity and musical uncertainty. As if to prove, however, that once a major talent always a major talent, he went on in the 1990s to produce five new albums, two major reissues (one a double album and the other a triple), and a third volume of his greatest hits, reprising past work. Under any circumstances this is a major accomplishment, but all the more so for someone in the fourth decade of his musical career.


Tradition and Individual Talent

What is most notable about Dylan's work since 1990 is its variety. Under the Red Sky (1990) is a transitional work, somewhere between the folk rock style of Dylan's earlier work and the albums that follow it. Many tracks have folklike lyrics, but musically lack the folk music sound associated with Dylan. "TV Talkin' Song," for instance, recalls the talking blues style in its lyric, but is up-tempo folk rock in sound. Other lyrics recall nursery songs in their structure and rhythm. "Two by Two" is a retelling of the story of Noah's ark, and "Cat's in the Well" is a spin-off of the traditional "Pussy's in the Well." The final track on the album, "Wiggle Wiggle," qualifies as nonsense verse. "God Knows," on the other hand, a strong number left out of the Oh Mercy album by Dylan's choice, carries on the born-again theme found in Dylan's gospel music of the early 1980s. Uneven, somewhat quirky in effect, Red Sky points the way to Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), which have a common indebtedness to the folk traditions that informed Dylan's earliest music. In form, content, and instrumentation, they constitute a revisiting of a key part of Dylan's musical roots.

On Good as I Been to You, Dylan, accompanying himself Woody Guthrie style on acoustic guitar and harmonica, revises and updates traditional folk songs. They vary from tragic ballads like "Little Maggie," "a-drinkin' down her troubles / Over courtin' some other man," and "Frankie and Albert," about a woman who murders her "man" when he does her wrong, to lighthearted lyrics like "Froggie Went a Courtin'" and "Tomorrow Night." Other trackssuch as "You're Gonna Quit Me"derive from the blues tradition, in a collection as diverse in its way as the classic, recently reissued Harry Smith anthology of early folk music recordings (for Folkways Records) that inspired Dylan and others in the folk music revival of the early 1960s.

World Gone Wrong continues in the same vein. The songs are adapted from a variety of sources, their performers acknowledged carefully in Dylan's liner notes for the album. He pays tribute to the compositions and arrangements of great folk artists like Blind Willie McTell, Tom Paley (of the New Lost City Ramblers), Frank Hutchinson, the Mississippi Sheiks, and Doc Watson (plus one song by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead). The result is another return to musical roots by an artist who has reached the point in his life where he feels the need to review his past. For a musician like Dylan, that means only one thingthe music he started with, which sustained him at a time in the early 1990s when he was considering giving up recording altogether.


Reprising the Past

Another sign of Dylan's musical life review is the major reissues of the nineties. From early in Dylan's career, pirates of concert, coffeehouse, and private performances circulated widely among his fans. The most famous of these were the so-called Basement Tapes, the product of sessions with Dylan and the Band at Woodstock, New York, in 1967, during the hiatus in Dylan's public career following his celebrated motorcycle accident of the preceding year. Ultimately issued commercially by Columbia in 1975 under the same title, these recordings have an important place in the history of American music because they marked a return to the roots of rock music at a time when psychedelic rock had moved it into outer space.

Dylan has always been more a performance artist than a recording artist. In general, his attitude toward recording sessions has been casual. As a result, many excellent performancesin the form of demos, outtakes, alternative takes, and unreleased concert performanceswere available for The Bootleg Series, vols. 13 (Rare & Unreleased), 19611991 (1991). Too varied to describe in detail, this collection gives an extraordinary overview of Dylan's long career and increases any listener's appreciation for the sheer diversity of his art.

The third of the Greatest Hits series (1994) repackages work already issued commercially in other forms. These range from songs made familiar by their popularity and the frequency with which they are performed in concert by Dylan"Forever Young," "Tangled Up in Blue," or "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"to the less familiar but still worthwhile, such as "Dignity" or "Series of Dreams."

Of equal significance to the first three volumes of the Bootleg Series is The Bootleg Series, vol. 4: Bob Dylan LIVE 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (1998), which was recorded in Manchester, England, in the spring of 1966, not at the famous London venue. The previous summer Dylan debuted an electric set at the Newport Folk Festival, provoking a negative response from an audience used to Dylan only as a folk artist. To them, he had betrayed the cause, but their response was mild compared with the Manchester audience of the following spring. This recording, frequently pirated, captures an important moment in Dylan's evolution as an artist. With concerts like this, combined with the very popular recording of the previous year of "Like a Rolling Stone," from Highway 61 Revisited, folk rock was born.

Like a number of these reissues, Bob Dylan Unplugged (1995), recorded during his appearance on MTV's Unplugged, consists almost entirely of material for which Dylan is well known. What makes these interpretations of songs like "Desolation Row" and "Like a Rolling Stone" notable is the spontaneity of their performances on this disk. With so many of Dylan's television appearances uneven or disappointing, this set has a dynamic that sets it apart.


Time Out of Mind

Among the albums of the 1990s, Time Out of Mind (1997) occupies a special place. Dylan's second effort with Daniel Lanois as producer would net him several Grammy Awards, including Best Album of the Year. Conceptually, sonically, artistically, it is work on a very high level. In subject matter, the songs Dylan recorded here broke new ground, or at least dug much deeper in certain turf than anything that precedes them in his songbook. And the sessions that produced the album, which took place in Miami, Florida, occurred with a degree of concentration unusual in Dylan's recording history. In fact, the closest approach to what this project involved is probably the Dylan-Lanois combination on Oh Mercy, recorded nearly a decade earlier in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In a Rolling Stone interview several years after the album's release, Dylan was quick to deny that his own mortality is at the root of some of these tracks but, undeniably, the issues of death, lost love, and disillusionment are addressed here in almost every song. (A serious heart disease nearly took his life as the album was in the editing phase.) "Love Sick," the opening track, became a favorite at Dylan's concerts, with its lament, "I'm sick of love / I wish I'd never met you / I'm sick of love / I'm tryin' to forget you." In "Standin' in the Doorway" Dylan again is left alone: "You left me standin' in the doorway cryin'/ Blues wrapped around my head."

"Not Dark Yet" takes the sense of loneliness one step further, to the edge of the grave: "Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear / It's not dark yet but it's getting there." In "Trying to Get to Heaven," he dreams of reaching the heavenly kingdom before it is too late: "I've been walkin' through the middle of nowhere / Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door." The same dark imagery enters virtually every song, as in the penultimate "Can't Wait": "I'm strollin' through the lonely graveyard of my mind / I left my life with you."

Only the rambling final track, "Highlands," the record of a conversation between the narrator and a waitress he encounters, seems to lift the mood of the album in closing: "Well, my heart's in the Highlands at the break of day / Over the hills and far away / There's a way to get there, and I'll figure it out somehow / Well, I'm already there in my mind and that's good enough for now." With a title perhaps borrowed from Irish poet William Butler Yeatshis poem of 1910"Upon a House Shaken by the Land Agitation" begins "How should the world be luckier if this house, / Where passion and precision have been one / Time out of mind . . ."this album marked a major revival of interest in Dylan, which carried him and his newly widened audience into the new millennium.

In 2001 Dylan released the outstanding Love and Theft, yet another revisiting of his musical past. Generically as varied as Time Out of Mind is consistent, this album takes Dylan back as far as the 1940s and 1950s, with songs that echo the eras of swing and early rock and roll. Aside from the anthologies, there is little in Dylan's discography with which to compare it.

For Dylan, as for the hobbits of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the road has gone ever on. From his beginnings as the most influential artist of the folk revival of the sixties, to his creation of the genre of folk rock and his return to the roots of rock music, Dylan has always stayed one step ahead of his audience, urging them on with the certainty, and indifference, of his genius.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Bringing It All Back Home (Columbia, 1965); Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia, 1965); Blonde on Blonde (Columbia, 1966); Nashville Skyline (Columbia, 1969); Planet Waves (Asylum, 1974); The Basement Tapes (Columbia, 1975); Blood on the Tracks (Columbia, 1975); Desire (Columbia, 1976); Infidels (Columbia, 1983); Oh Mercy (Columbia, 1989); Under the Red Sky (Columbia, 1990); The Bootleg Series, vols. 13 (Rare & Unreleased), 19611991 (1991); Good as I Been to You (Columbia, 1992); World Gone Wrong (Columbia, 1993); The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (Columbia, 1993); Bob Dylan Unplugged (Columbia, 1995); Time Out of Mind (Columbia, 1997); The Bootleg Series, vol. 4: Bob Dylan LIVE 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (Columbia, 1998); Love and Theft (Columbia, 2001).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

A. Muir, The Razor's Edge: Bob Dylan and the Never Ending Tour (London, 2001); H. Sounes, Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (New York, 2001); D. Hajdu, Positively 4th Street (New York, 2002).

archie loss

Bob Dylan

views updated Jun 08 2018

Bob Dylan

Throughout a career that has seen the better part of three decades, Bob Dylan (born 1941) has been pop music's master poet and an ever-changing performer.

In the early 1960s Bob Dylan was heralded as the spokesman for his generation, writing and singing folk songs that were as deep and moving as those of any artist since his idol, Woody Guthrie. At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival Dylan shocked his following by going electric and venturing into rock and roll. He proved to be equally superior in that field also and by 1968 he was trying his hand at folk-rock, creating an impact that touched even the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. As the 1980s came around Dylan was undergoing a spiritual rebirth and his writing reflected a religious conviction that was truly heartfelt.

Began Exploring Folk Music

Born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, Dylan was raised in the northern mining town of Hibbing from the age of six. His earliest musical influences, Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker, were brought to him via the airwaves of a Shreveport, Louisiana, radio station. He played in a variety of bands during high school, including the Golden Chords, before enrolling at the University of Minnesota in 1959. It was at college that he changed his name to Dylan (probably after the poet Dylan Thomas) and began creating his own mythological background, which made him out to be everything from an Indian to a hobo to Bobby Vee. After hearing the Kingston Trio and Odetta he began to explore folk music, learning older tunes and sitting in at local coffee-houses around campus.

Just one year into college, Dylan dropped out and hitchhiked to New York to meet legendary singer Woody Guthrie, who was in an East Coast hospital suffering from Huntington's disease. "Guthrie was my last idol," Dylan said in Rock 100. "My future idols will be myself." Obviously in little need of self-confidence, by April 1961 he was gigging at Gerde's Folk City in New York's Greenwich Village. With the folk scene booming, Columbia executive and talent scout John Hammond had just signed Pete Seeger; Dylan followed soon after.

His debut LP, Bob Dylan, was released in March 1962. Recorded for a mere $402, the album featured acoustic reinterpretations of old folk songs, but also included two Dylan originals, "Song for Woody" and "Talking New York." Within a year his second LP, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan—containing self-penned compositions only—was released. Protest tunes like "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," "Masters of War," and "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" were making listeners more conscious and aware, both politically and personally. The trio of Peter, Paul & Mary recorded a version of "Blowin' in the Wind" from the LP that helped put the spotlight on Dylan. In July of that year at the Newport Folk Festival he was crowned leader of the folk movement with Joan Baez as the reigning queen. The new voice of youth, "Dylan's albums were listened to as if they were seismic readings from an impending apocalypse," reported Rock 100.

Unique Phrasing

The Times They Are a-Changin', with its title track and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," broke in the new year of 1964. Imitators of his guitar/harmonica rig and odd singing (talking?) voice were sprouting up everywhere. "It's phrasing," Dylan told Rolling Stone, "I think I've phrased everything in a way that it's never been phrased before." In addition to his unique voice, lyrics, and meter, Dylan's physical image was just as intriguing with his wild conk of hair, stovepipe legs, and facial scowl. As much as the public and critics adored him, they also were frustrated as attempts to gain insight were met with toying word games and sometimes downright humiliation. Dylan began to question his role as guru on his fourth LP, Another Side of Bob Dylan, moving away from political themes and towards personal love songs. "My Back Pages" and "It Ain't Me Babe" signalled that a different Dylan had now arrived.

Bringing It All Back Home (1965) was a half-acoustic, half-electric outing that featured Dylan classics "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Maggie's Farm," "Mr. Tambourine Man," and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." Dylan's first step into rock was also his first million-seller. Even so, his die-hard fans were not prepared for Dylan's performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when he appeared onstage backed by the electric Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Cries of "sell-out" and "gone commercial" filled the air as he was booed off the stage only to return for a final acoustic number, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." Anyone who doubted his commitment only needed to check out the next LP, Highway 61 Revisited, which was able to leap off the turntable courtesy of Michael Bloomfield's stinging guitar lines. The album featured the songs "Desolation Row," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," "Queen Jane Approximately," and perhaps Dylan's most popular tune yet, "Like a Rolling Stone" (which went all the way to number two).

1966's Masterpiece Blond on Blonde

His masterpiece, Blond on Blonde (1966), is considered by some to be the finest rock album in history. A double LP recorded with Nashville session men, it is filled with an amazing display of Dylan's songwriting abilities: "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," "Absolutely Sweet Marie," "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35," "Memphis Blues Again," "I Want You," and others that firmly established Dylan as the most prolific stylist of all time. Just when it seemed he was in full force, Dylan was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident on July 29, 1966. He would spend the next year and a half recuperating from a broken neck in upstate New York. He recorded tracks with his backup group, the Band, but they would not be released until 1975 as The Basement Tapes (an LP that was bootlegged endlessly during the nine-year delay).

After flirting with death, Dylan's comeback album, John Wesley Harding, relied more on religious themes and a mellower country flavor. "All Along the Watchtower" became a hit shortly after for Jimi Hendrix while the entire mood of JWH sent an influential wave out that touched other artists of the time. Dylan carried the country style even further on Nashville Skyline, recording a duet with Johnny Cash, and the easy-going "Lay Lady Lay." His next release, however, was a commercial and critical disappointment. Self-Portrait was a double album consisting mainly of non-originals that seemed to be almost intentionally bad. New Morning, also from 1970, did not fare much better; Dylan's talent seemed to have peaked.

In 1973 Dylan's Columbia contract expired and he signed with Asylum just after releasing his soundtrack to the movie Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which included one of his biggest hits, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." (Dylan also played the part of Alias in the film. Actor Sam Shepard told Rolling Stone that Dylan "knows how to play a part. He and Billy Graham are the two greatest actors in the world.") As if in retaliation for his leaving, Columbia released Dylan, a collection of studio outtakes and cover tunes that accomplished little more than embarrassing Dylan. His two Asylum LPs, Planet Waves and Before the Flood, were both recorded with the Band, the first being a studio album and the second featuring live recordings of the ensuing tour in early 1974.

Recordings Reflected Religious Beliefs

In 1975 Dylan resigned with Columbia and recorded one of his best records yet, Blood on the Tracks, which seemed to harken back to his earlier style. "Tangled up in Blue," "Idiot Wind," "Shelter From the Storm," "Meet Me in the Morning," and "Buckets of Rain" amongst others had critics gushing with joy over yet another Dylan comeback. He then hit the road with a musically varied ensemble called the Rolling Thunder Revue: Mick Ronson, Joan Baez, T-Bone Burnett, Roger McGuinn, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and David Mansfield, all blasting off on Dylan classics and material from his newest LP, Desire. That album topped both the British and U.S. charts riding a crest of popularity created by "Hurricane," Dylan's thumping plea for the release of the imprisoned boxer Ruben "Hurricane" Carter. In 1976 the live Hard Rain album captured the revue on vinyl. Two years later he would release another fine studio effort, Street Legal, featuring "Where Are You Tonight," "Baby Stop Crying," and "Changing of the Guards."

Dylan's next phase can be summed up in three albums, Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love, and one word: Christianity. In 1979 he became "born-again," as writers coined it, studying the Bible at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship school in California. Although raised a Jew, Dylan took his new-found belief to the point of righteousness. "Dylan hadn't simply found Jesus but seemed to imply that he had His home phone number as well," wrote Kurt Loder in his Rolling Stone review of Slow Train Coming. The LP revolved around Dylan's beliefs, but it also rocked with the aid of Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler. Critics and the public were split over the newest Dylan. Jann Wenner explained his view of this period in Rolling Stone: "Dylan created so many images and expectations that he narrowed his room for maneuverability and finally became unsure of his own instincts."

Made MTV Unplugged Appearance

A rejuvenated Dylan appeared in 1983 on Infidels, produced by Knopfler with ex-Rolling Stone Mick Taylor on guitar. Dylan had joined an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, Lubavitcher Hasidim, and the songs reflected the move (although more subtly than during his Christian phase). In the mid-1980s Dylan continued to record and toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the Grateful Dead as his backup bands. In 1988 he appeared as one of the Traveling Wilburys alongside Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, George Harrison, and the late Roy Orbison. More changes can probably be expected from this master of the unexpected; Dylan has stayed on top by keeping ahead of the pack, knowing where his audience wants to be next, and then delivering.

Another important year for Dylan was 1995, as he reemerged as "the bard who matters most," according to the Boston Globe. The rock legend embarked on a U.S. tour, released an MTV Unplugged album, and a new CD-ROM entitled Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Interactive, all to favorable reviews.

Further Reading

Christgau, Robert, Christgau's Record Guide, Ticknor & Fields, 1981.

Dalton, David, and Lenny Kaye, Rock 100, Grosset & Dunlap, 1977.

Dylan, Bob, Tarantula, Macmillan, 1970.

Bob Dylan: The Illustrated Record, Harmony, 1978.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, compiled by Nick Logan and Bob Woffinden, Harmony, 1977.

The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, edited by Jim Miller, Random House/Rolling Stone Press, 1976.

The Rolling Stone Record Guide, edited by Dave Marsh with John Swenson, Random House/Rolling Stone Press, 1979.

Shepard, Sam, Rolling Thunder Logbook, Viking Press, 1977.

Spitz, Bob, Dylan, A Biography, McGraw, 1989.

What's That Sound?, edited by Ben Fong-Torres, Anchor, 1976.

Boston Globe, December 8, 1995; February 9, 1995.

Detroit News, July 9, 1989.

Musician, September 1986.

New York Times, April 30, 1995.

Oakland Press, July 2, 1989.

Rolling Stone, March 11, 1976; September 21, 1978; November 16, 1978; July 12, 1979; September 20, 1979; September 18, 1980; June 21, 1984; Summer 1986; College Papers, Number 3.

USA Today, May 5, 1995.

Washington Post, May 17, 1995; February 8, 1995. □

Dylan, Bob

views updated May 29 2018

DYLAN, Bob

(b. 24 May 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota), song-writer, musician, and folksinger whose poetic songs, eclectic style, and creation of folk-rock music made him one of the most influential forces in the popular music of the 1960s.

Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, was one of two sons of Abram Zimmerman, a manager for the Standard Oil Company, and Beatrice Stone, a homemaker. When Dylan was five the family moved to Hibbing, northwest of Duluth. Young Dylan loved music and taught himself to play the piano without learning how to read music. He also tried the trumpet and saxophone, finally settling on the acoustic guitar as his main instrument.

Listening to music on the radio, he grew particularly fond of Johnny Ray and Hank Williams, Sr., who, he thought, was the greatest American songwriter. He also loved the blues and learned to play them himself. His favorite movie star was James Dean, but he also loved Elvis Presley and Little Richard.

In Hibbing High School, from which he graduated in June 1959, Dylan formed several bands with friends. He had been performing in high school bands as Bobby Zimmerman, a name he felt was too Jewish for success, and felt he needed a stage name. He took the common Hibbing surname Dillon, changing the spelling due to his fondness for the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. His name was changed legally to Bob Dylan on 9 August 1962.

In September 1959 Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, majoring in music, which he was fonder of than attending classes. He frequented the Ten O'Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse hangout in Dinky-town, the bohemian neighborhood in downtown Minneapolis. He was fascinated by folk music, imitating the folk songs of the popular Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger, and his idol, Woody Guthrie, whose memoir, Bound for Glory, Dylan loved so much that he copied Guthrie's use of a wire harmonica rack worn around the neck while playing the guitar.

During his first year of college Dylan smoked marijuana and became sexually promiscuous. When he was not playing his acoustic guitar he was reading the Beat literature of the day, such as Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Allen Ginsberg's Howl, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind.

Leaving college to pursue his ambition of becoming a singing movie star like Elvis, Dylan hitchhiked from Minneapolis to New York City, arriving in Greenwich Village on 24 January 1961. After a visit to his hero, Woody Guthrie, in East Orange, New Jersey, Dylan wrote "Song to Woody," his first important composition. He sang for room and board at coffeehouses in Manhattan's Greenwich Village and, helped by new friends, including Tom Paxton and the Clancy Brothers, he got a regular gig at Gerde's Folk City on West Fourth Street.

In June 1961 he was spotted performing by Roy Silver, a show business manager, who signed Dylan with Columbia Records, the biggest record label in the United States. His first album, Bob Dylan, released in March 1962, sold only 5,000 copies at first. A year later, Albert B. Grossman, a successful Chicago businessman who was looking for talent to develop, became Dylan's personal manager.

The struggling artist had a banner year in 1962. He wrote "Blowin' in the Wind," the foundation stone of his career; the song became the anthem of the civil rights movement, sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary, a new group also managed by Grossman. This was followed by some of Dylan's most famous songs, including "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," which, because of the Cuban Missile Crisis, caught on and made Dylan famous. A solo concert at New York City's Town Hall made him a star, as well as the high priest of protest singers for the new generation.

Dylan came along at just the right moment for these protesting idealists. His use of folk music created a connection with the common folk, the working class. Unlike his folk-singing predecessors, he was a true poet. His words dealt with the serious issues of the day. He was the resurrection of the troubadour singer who stuffed his possessions into a knapsack and traveled the road.

In May 1963 Dylan appeared at the Monterey Folk Festival in California with Joan Baez, a major folk star. This was the start of one of the most celebrated love affairs of the 1960s. Dylan's albums, including The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), The Times They Are a-Changin' (1964), and Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), sold very well, and he played standing-room-only concerts. His fifth album, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), integrated the rock-and-roll sound of the Beatles with his own poetic lyrics, creating a new style of music, folk rock. In 1965 he recorded "Like a Rolling Stone," which rose to number two on the Billboard chart. However, when he traded in his acoustic guitar for an amplified electric guitar, often associated with rock-and-roll commercialism, Dylan lost many fans and was openly heckled and booed during concerts. This did not daunt the individualistic Dylan. He put together a rock-and-roll band, the Hawks, which later became The Band, led by Robbie Robertson. They toured the country playing rock music despite the boos. Other albums Dylan released in the 1960s include Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Blonde on Blonde (1966), Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (1967), John Wesley Harding (1967), and Nashville Skyline (1969).

In spite of negative audience reactions, many singers recognized the timelessness of Dylan's words and recorded their own versions of his songs. Cher recorded "All I Really Want to Do" a month after the Byrds released their version. The Turtles had a version of "It Ain't Me, Babe," and Stevie Wonder did a rhythm-and-blues rendition of "Blowin' in the Wind." Imitators ground out what have been called Dylanesque singles, such as Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" and Simon and Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence."

In the mid-1960s Dylan was living in the Arts and Crafts Movement Colony of Byrdcliffe, a mile from Woodstock, New York, with Sara Lownds, whom he had met in Greenwich Village in 1964. Sara moved in with her daughter, whom Dylan later adopted. The couple married on 22 November 1965.

A few months after the birth of his first son, Dylan had a motorcycle accident on 29 July 1966 as he was leaving Grossman's house in upstate New York. After the accident, in which he broke his neck, Dylan became a recluse, leading a quiet, domestic life. He and Sara would have a daughter and two more sons. Because of the havoc wrought at the Woodstock Festival in the summer of 1969, a songfest at which he never appeared, Dylan moved his family to New York City and purchased a townhouse in Greenwich Village. Stalked by aggressive fans, Dylan bought a ranch house in Arizona.

The double album Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Volume II (1971) became the best-selling record of Dylan's career, with over five million sold in the United States. Following this success, Dylan went on Tour '74 with The Band, the first major stadium tour of the rock era. On tour, Dylan returned to drinking and womanizing. His wife left him and, in the summer of 1974, alone in Minnesota, he wrote songs about failed relationships for the album Blood on the Tracks (1975), which rose to number one on the charts. The following year he began the Rolling Thunder Revue, touring small towns by bus, inviting special appearances by celebrities like Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell.

In 1980 Dylan reassessed his career. He had gone through a bitter divorce and lost custody of his five children. His foray into Christian music earned terrible reviews and poor record sales. Mentally disturbed fans stalked him. Finally, he was involved in costly legal battles with Grossman. At the age of forty, Bob Dylan closed down his studios and took a sabbatical from music.

On 4 June 1986 Dylan married Carolyn Dennis, whom he had met during his 1978 world tour. They have one daughter. Dylan's career was at an all-time low. He was drinking more and more. In 1990 Dennis filed for dissolution of their four-year marriage; they divorced in 1992. As usual, whenever escaping domestic or financial problems, Dylan threw himself into touring and began to make a comeback.

Dylan was a huge hit at Woodstock '94. The same year he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. In September 1997 he sang "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" for Pope Paul II at the World Eucharistic Congress. Three months later he received the Kennedy Center Medal in Washington, D.C., from President William J. (Bill) Clinton. Dylan won three Grammy awards in February 1998 for Time Out of Mind, his first album of new songs in years. In 1998 Time magazine named him among the 100 most influential artists and entertainers of the twentieth century. In 2000 Dylan contributed the song "Things Have Changed" to the soundtrack for the film Wonder Boys, which netted him both a Golden Globe and an Oscar the following year for best original song. His album Love and Theft was awarded a Grammy for best contemporary folk album in February 2002. Dylan is credited with composing more than 500 songs, and he has twenty-nine gold albums and thirteen platinum albums.

Dylan helped define the rebellious 1960s. His antiestablishment, peace-loving songs of the early 1960s—"Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'"—influenced countless artists, including the Beatles. Always the individual, he withstood the booing of former fans and the scorn of critics when he entered his electric phase and whenever he changed his style. He continued to be innovative in the twenty-first century, continuing the Never Ending Tour. As Bruce Springsteen said at Dylan's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 20 January 1988, "Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body."

Dylan's autobiography is Bob Dylan: Self Portrait (1970). Biographies of Dylan include Anthony Scaduto, Bob Dylan (1972); Michael Gross and Robert Alexander, Bob Dylan: An Illustrated History (1978); Bob Spitz, Dylan: A Biography (1989); Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades (1991); William McKeen, Bob Dylan: A Bio-Bibliography (1993); Susan Richardson, Bob Dylan (1995); and Howard Sounes, Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (2001). Dylan's official web site is at <www.bobdylan.com>.

John J. Byrne

Dylan, Bob

views updated May 29 2018

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan was the most influential force on the popular music scene of the 1960s. His most famous song, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” became the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement .

Learns to be different

Robert Allen Zimmerman was born on May 24, 1941, in Minnesota . At the age of six, he moved with his family to the mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota, where the majority of residents were Catholic immigrants. Dylan was Jewish and learned at an early age what it meant to be an outsider and not fit in with the crowd.

Dylan grew up in a comfortable, middle-class home. Feeling stifled in Minnesota, he moved to Greenwich Village in New York to pursue a career as a singer of folk music . There he reinvented himself by telling people he had been orphaned at a young age and had run away from home ten times between the ages of ten and eighteen. According to his imaginary biography, Dylan had ridden a train from one end of the country to the other, played in striptease joints, and played piano for pop singer Bobby Vee (1943–), a fellow midwesterner.

Lifelong love

Music had been a love of Dylan's since he could sit at a piano. He learned to play the keys and guitar as a young child, and as a shy teenager he used music to express himself. His goal was to one day be more popular than rock and roll legend Elvis Presley (1935–1977).

Dylan graduated from high school and attended the University of Minnesota for a short time. While at the university, he spent much of his time playing folk music in local Minneapolis coffeehouses. During this period, he read the autobiography of popular folk singer Woody Guthrie (1912–1967). Dylan could not get enough of Guthrie's music, and he was able to relate to the folk hero's use of music as a tool to advocate for social awareness and concern for the downtrodden. Dylan wanted his music to be a political weapon, a vehicle for social protest, just like Guthrie's.

Makes his own fame

In 1961, Dylan dropped out of school and relocated to Greenwich Village. He played regularly in folk clubs and actually met his idol Guthrie, who was dying a slow death from Huntington's disease. Guthrie encouraged Dylan to write and perform his own songs, and one of Dylan's most popular early tunes was titled “Song to Woody.” Dylan worked to imitate Guthrie's style.

Notable music critic Robert Shelton (1926–1995) heard Dylan perform in Greenwich Village and wrote a glowing review of the young folk singer. That review helped cement Dylan's place in music history, and a few weeks later he signed a recording contract with Columbia Records. Before long, Dylan skyrocketed to fame by writing and recording a series of protest songs that would come to define an entire generation.

Many of his songs dealt with issues of the civil rights movement. “The Ballad of Emmett Till” recounts the story of a teenage African American boy who was beaten to death for daring to speak to a white woman. “Only a Pawn in Their Game” tells of the murder of African American civil rights leader Medgar Evers (1925–1963) and is credited with keeping alive the case until his murderer was finally convicted and brought to justice.

Dylan's famous tune “Blowin’ in the Wind” poses questions about racial justice and peace. In addition to becoming the spiritual anthem for the civil rights and antiwar movements , it became a smash hit when performed by the popular folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary in 1963.

Joan Baez and the 1960s

Dylan became romantically involved with another popular folk singer of the 1960s, Joan Baez (1941–). It has been said that Dylan was more interested in her younger sister, Mimi, but the media could not resist the pull of the idea of romance between the two musicians. Baez was already a star on the folk circuit, and she invited Dylan to join her on a concert tour in 1963. This mingling of talent widened Dylan's audience and marked a high point in his career. The two shared an on-again, off-again relationship for four years before Dylan quietly married another woman, Sara Lownds (1939–). They would eventually have four children; Dylan also adopted Lownds's daughter from a previous marriage.

Dylan branched out from protest songs and recorded an album, his fourth, of deeply personal songs. In 1965, he stunned audiences by appearing at the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island , with an electric guitar and amplified backup band. His fans responded to what they perceived as a shocking change with hisses and boos. Dylan refused to back down, explaining he no longer wanted to be anyone's spokesperson.

Dylan and a band called the Hawks (later known as The Band) went on a world tour in 1966. It was no secret that he had been abusing drugs for several years, and his health was not robust. Near Woodstock, New York, he had a motorcycle accident and suffered serious injuries. The accident seemed to be his wake-up call, and Dylan stopped using hard drugs after that.

Dylan settled down near Woodstock and concentrated on his family. He did not release another album until 1968. Years of drug use proved to be too much for his wife and children, however, and the marriage fell apart in the 1970s. The pain of Dylan's marriage troubles was reflected on his 1975 album, Blood on the Tracks. Critics regard the album as a masterpiece, equal to his best songs of the 1960s.

Dylan converted to Christianity for a brief period in the 1980s. His conversion and newfound faith were reflected on three albums from that time. By the mid-1980s, he returned to his Jewish roots. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy ceremonies in 1991.

His album Time Out of Mind, released in 1997, was the first collection of original songs he had released in seven years. It won him three Grammy Awards in 1998, including best album.

Dylan, Bob

views updated Jun 11 2018

DYLAN, BOB

DYLAN, BOB (Robert Allen Zimmerman ; 1941– ), U.S. folk singer, composer. Probably the most significant folk artist in the last half of the 20th century, Dylan was born in Duluth, Minn., and grew up in the small town of Hibbing. He started writing poems at ten and taught himself piano and guitar in his early teens. He fell under the spell of the music of the country, rock, and folk performers Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Hank Williams, and Woody Guthrie. Dylan dropped out of the University of Minnesota and went to New York to be part of the burgeoning folk-music scene, and to meet Guthrie, who was hospitalized with a rare, incurable disease of the nervous system.

Dylan spent all his time with other musicians and began writing songs, including a tribute, "Song to Woody." He began to perform at local nightclubs, honing his guitar and harmonica work and developing the expressive nasal sound that would become the hallmark of his distinctive style. Around this time he adopted the stage name Bob Dylan, presumably in honor of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. In 1961, a reviewer for the New York Times said he was "bursting at the seams with talent." Columbia Records soon signed him to a contract, and in 1962 his first recording, See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, offered the sound of an aging black blues man in the voice of a 21-year-old from Minnesota. His next album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in 1963, contained two of the most important and durable folk anthems, "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and two influential ballads, "Girl From the North Country" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" as well as nine other originals, marking the emergence of the most distinctive and poetic voice in the history of American popular music.

Dylan's next album, The Times They Are A-Changing, provided more of the same: the title cut, the protest song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," and "Boots of Spanish Leather," a sad but graceful love song. In 1965, as he grew tired of the folk genre, Dylan recorded Bringing It All Back Home, a half-electric, half-acoustic album of complex biting songs like "Subterranean Homesick Blues," which featured the line "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." (It was a line that inspired the name, the Weathermen, an American antiwar protest group.) Also on the album were "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." When Dylan introduced his move from folk to rock at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, he was booed off the stage. Nevertheless, he released the album Highway 61 Revisited, which contained the monumental single "Like a Rolling Stone," an angry six-minute-long song that found a huge audience.

Dylan had brought a new, literate standard to rock music writing. In Blonde on Blonde, a two-record set recorded in Nashville, Tenn., in 1966, he offered the now-classic "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again," "Visions of Johanna," and "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands."

After a near-fatal motorcycle accident on July 29, 1966, Dylan retreated to his home in Woodstock, n.y., to reevaluate his career. He produced more recordings: The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline (which included "Lay Lady Lay"). Over the years he dabbled, unsuccessfully, as a film actor and toured extensively with various groups. In the mid-1970s, one rock promoter said there were mail-order requests for more than 12 million tickets, though only 658,000 seats were available for 40 shows in one period. Dylan's pain after his marriage ended resulted in the album Blood on the Tracks, a moving and profound examination of love and loss that included the songs "Tangled Up in Blue," "Idiot Wind," and "Shelter from the Storm." His religious explorations led him to profess to be a born-again Christian in 1978, but in 1983 he reportedly returned to his Jewish roots and was said to have observed the Jewish holidays.

Widely regarded as America's greatest living popular songwriter, Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. In 1990 he received France's highest cultural award, the Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2001 he won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Original Song, "Things Have Changed," for the film Wonder Boys.

The 1967 documentary Don't Look Back chronicles Dylan's 1965 tour of England, which includes appearances by Joan Baez and Donovan. Martin Scorsese's 1978 film The Last Waltz is a documentary about Dylan and The Band performing their last concert after 16 years on the road. Among Dylan's publications are Bob Dylan in His Own Words (with C. Williams, 1993); Tarantula, a book of poetry (1994); Younger Than That Now: The Collected Interviews with Bob Dylan (with J. Ellison, 2004); and his autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. 1 (2004).

Beginning in the mid-1980s Dylan hit the road full-time, performing all over the world. His albums were not as successful as those of his early years, but he continued to perform and sing in his nasal twang through the early years of the 21st century. He rarely granted interviews, refused to explain the meaning of his songs, and remained a significant but enigmatic figure. He had millions of fans – he played in Rome at the behest of Pope John Paul ii – and inspired hundreds of articles, books, and websites. In December 2004 he was one of five recipients of one of the highest awards for artistic excellence, the Kennedy Center honors.

[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]