Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan;[3] born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often considered one of the greatest songwriters of all time,[4][5][6] Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 60-year career. He rose to prominence in the 1960s, when songs such as "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements. Initially modeling his style on Woody Guthrie's folk songs,[7]Robert Johnson's blues[8] and what he called the "architectural forms" of Hank Williams's country songs,[9] Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry".[4] His lyrics incorporated political, social and philosophical influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture.[10]
In July 1966, a motorcycle accident led to Dylan's withdrawal from touring. During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of the Band, who had previously backed him on tour. These recordings were later released as The Basement Tapes in 1975. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan explored country music and rural themes on John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969) and New Morning (1970). In 1975, he released Blood on the Tracks, which many saw as a return to form. In the late 1970s, he became a born-again Christian and released three albums of contemporary gospel music before returning to his more familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. Dylan's Time Out of Mind (1997) marked the beginning of a career renaissance. He has released five critically acclaimed albums of original material since, most recently Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). He also recorded a trilogy of albums covering the Great American Songbook, especially songs sung by Frank Sinatra, and an album smoothing his early rock material into a mellower Americana sensibility, Shadow Kingdom (2023). Dylan has toured continuously since the late 1980s on what has become known as the Never Ending Tour.[13]
Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew: שבתאי זיסל בן אברהםShabtai Zisl ben Avraham)[1][16][17] in St. Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota,[18] and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Range west of Lake Superior. Dylan's paternal grandparents, Anna Kirghiz and Zigman Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Odesa, Ukraine) to the United States, following the pogroms against Jews of 1905.[19] His maternal grandparents, Florence and Ben Stone, were Lithuanian Jews who had arrived in the United States in 1902.[19] Dylan wrote that his paternal grandmother's family was originally from the Kağızman district of Kars Province in northeastern Turkey.[20]
Dylan's father Abram Zimmerman and his mother Beatrice "Beatty" Stone were part of a small, close-knit Jewish community.[21][22][23] They lived in Duluth until Dylan was six, when his father contracted polio and the family returned to his mother's hometown of Hibbing, where they lived for the rest of Dylan's childhood, and his father and paternal uncles ran a furniture and appliance store.[23][24]
In the early 1950s Dylan listened to the Grand Ole Opry radio show and heard the songs of Hank Williams. He later wrote: "The sound of his voice went through me like an electric rod."[9] Dylan was also impressed by the delivery of Johnnie Ray: "He was the first singer whose voice and style, I guess, I totally fell in love with… I loved his style, wanted to dress like him too."[25] As a teenager, Dylan heard rock and roll on radio stations broadcasting from Shreveport and Little Rock.[26]
Dylan formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School. In the Golden Chords, he performed covers of songs by Little Richard[27] and Elvis Presley.[28] Their performance of Danny & the Juniors' "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone.[29] In 1959, Dylan's high school yearbook carried the caption "Robert Zimmerman: to join 'Little Richard'".[27][30] That year, as Elston Gunnn, he performed two dates with Bobby Vee, playing piano and clapping.[31][32][33] In September 1959, Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota.[34] Living at the Jewish-centric fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu house, Dylan began to perform at the Ten O'Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse a few blocks from campus, and became involved in the Dinkytownfolk music circuit.[35][36] His focus on rock and roll gave way to American folk music, as he explained in a 1985 interview:
The thing about rock'n'roll is that for me anyway it wasn't enough ... There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms ... but the songs weren't serious or didn't reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.[37]
During this period, he began to introduce himself as "Bob Dylan".[38] In his memoir, he wrote that he considered adopting the surname Dillon before unexpectedly seeing poems by Dylan Thomas, and deciding upon the given name spelling.[39][a 1] In a 2004 interview, he said, "You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free."[40]
1960s
Relocation to New York and record deal
In May 1960, Dylan dropped out of college at the end of his first year. In January 1961, he traveled to New York City to perform and visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie[41] at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital.[42] Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and influenced his early performances. He wrote of Guthrie's impact: "The songs themselves had the infinite sweep of humanity in them... [He] was the true voice of the American spirit. I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie's greatest disciple".[43] In addition to visiting Guthrie, Dylan befriended his protégé Ramblin' Jack Elliott.[44]
In August 1962, Dylan changed his name to Bob Dylan,[a 2] and signed a management contract with Albert Grossman.[52] Grossman remained Dylan's manager until 1970, and was known for his sometimes confrontational personality and protective loyalty.[53] Dylan said, "He was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker figure ... you could smell him coming."[36] Tension between Grossman and John Hammond led to the latter suggesting Dylan work with the jazz producer Tom Wilson, who produced several tracks for the second album without formal credit. Wilson produced the next three albums Dylan recorded.[54][55]
By the release of Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in May 1963, he had begun to make his name as a singer-songwriter. Many songs on the album were labeled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger's topical songs.[59] "Oxford Town" was an account of James Meredith's ordeal as the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.[60] The first song on the album, "Blowin' in the Wind", partly derived its melody from the traditional slave song "No More Auction Block",[61] while its lyrics questioned the social and political status quo. The song was widely recorded by other artists and became a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary.[62] "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" was based on the folk ballad "Lord Randall". With its apocalyptic premonitions, the song gained resonance when the Cuban Missile Crisis developed a few weeks after Dylan began performing it.[63][a 3] Both songs marked a new direction in songwriting, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with traditional folk form.[64]
Dylan's topical songs led to his being viewed as more than just a songwriter. Janet Maslin wrote of Freewheelin':
These were the songs that established [Dylan] as the voice of his generation—someone who implicitly understood how concerned young Americans felt about nuclear disarmament and the growing Civil Rights Movement: his mixture of moral authority and nonconformity was perhaps the most timely of his attributes.[65][a 4]
Freewheelin' also included love songs and surreal talking blues. Humor was an important part of Dylan's persona,[66] and the range of material on the album impressed listeners, including the Beatles. George Harrison said of the album: "We just played it, just wore it out. The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude—it was incredibly original and wonderful".[67]
The rough edge of Dylan's singing unsettled some but attracted others. Author Joyce Carol Oates wrote: "When we first heard this raw, very young, and seemingly untrained voice, frankly nasal, as if sandpaper could sing, the effect was dramatic and electrifying".[68] Many early songs reached the public through more palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez, who became Dylan's advocate and lover.[69] Baez was influential in bringing Dylan to prominence by recording several of his early songs and inviting him on stage during her concerts.[70] Others who had hits with Dylan's songs in the early 1960s included the Byrds, Sonny & Cher, the Hollies, the Association, Manfred Mann and the Turtles.
"Mixed-Up Confusion", recorded during the Freewheelin' sessions with a backing band, was released as Dylan's first single in December 1962, but then swiftly withdrawn. In contrast to the mostly solo acoustic performances on the album, the single showed a willingness to experiment with a rockabilly sound. Cameron Crowe described it as "a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards Elvis Presley and Sun Records".[71]
Dylan said of "The Times They Are a-Changin'": "This was definitely a song with a purpose. I wanted to write a big song, some kind of theme song, with short concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close and allied together at that time."[37]
The final track on the album contained Dylan's angry response to a hostile profile of the singer that had appeared in Newsweek magazine.[76] As biographer Clinton Heylin puts it, the Newsweek journalist wrote a story about "the way the Bar Mitzvah boy from Hibbing, Minnesota, had reinvented himself as the prince of protest", emphasising his birth name Robert Zimmerman, his attendance at the University of Minnesota and his close relationship with his parents whom he claimed to be estranged from.[76][77] The day after the article appeared, Dylan returned to the studio to record "Restless Farewell" which ends with his vow to "make my stand/ And remain as I am/ And bid farewell and not give a damn".[78]
By the end of 1963, Dylan felt manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements.[79] Accepting the "Tom Paine Award" from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, an intoxicated Dylan questioned the role of the committee, characterized the members as old and balding, and claimed to see something of himself and of every man in Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.[80]
Bobby Dylan, as the college yearbook lists him: St. Lawrence University, upstate New York, November 1963
In the latter half of 1964 and into 1965, Dylan moved from folk songwriter to folk-rock pop-music star. His jeans and work shirts were replaced by a Carnaby Street wardrobe, sunglasses day or night, and pointed "Beatle boots". A London reporter noted "Hair that would set the teeth of a comb on edge. A loud shirt that would dim the neon lights of Leicester Square. He looks like an undernourished cockatoo."[84] Dylan began to spar with interviewers. Asked about a movie he planned while on Les Crane's television show, he told Crane it would be a "cowboy horror movie." Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied, "No, I play my mother."[85]
Dylan's late March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home was another leap,[86] featuring his first recordings with electric instruments, under producer Tom Wilson's guidance.[87] The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", owed much to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business";[88] its free-association lyrics described as harking back to the energy of beat poetry and as a forerunner of rap and hip-hop.[89] The song was provided with an early music video, which opened D. A. Pennebaker's cinéma vérité presentation of Dylan's 1965 British tour, Dont Look Back.[90] Instead of miming, Dylan illustrated the lyrics by throwing cue cards containing key words on the ground. Pennebaker said the sequence was Dylan's idea, and it has been imitated in music videos and advertisements.[91]
In 1965, headlining the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed his first electric set since high school with a pickup group featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar and Al Kooper on organ.[96] Dylan had appeared at Newport in 1963 and 1964, but in 1965 was met with cheering and booing and left the stage after three songs. One version has it that the boos were from folk fans whom Dylan had alienated by appearing, unexpectedly, with an electric guitar. Murray Lerner, who filmed the performance, said: "I absolutely think that they were booing Dylan going electric."[97] An alternative account claims audience members were upset by poor sound and a short set.[98][99]
Dylan's performance provoked a hostile response from the folk music establishment.[100][101] In the September issue of Sing Out!, Ewan MacColl wrote: "Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside disciplines formulated over time ...'But what of Bobby Dylan?' scream the outraged teenagers ... Only a completely non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music, could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel".[102] On July 29, four days after Newport, Dylan was back in the studio in New York, recording "Positively 4th Street". The lyrics contained images of vengeance and paranoia,[103] and have been interpreted as Dylan's put-down of former friends from the folk community he had known in clubs along West 4th Street.[104]
Dylan's 1965 hit single, which appeared on the album Highway 61 Revisited. In 2004, it was chosen as the greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.[105]
In July 1965, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" peaked at number two in the US chart. In 2004 and in 2011, Rolling Stone listed it as number one on "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".[11][105]Bruce Springsteen recalled first hearing the song: "that snare shot sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind."[106] The song opened Dylan's next album, Highway 61 Revisited, named after the road that led from Dylan's Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans.[107] The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, flavored by Mike Bloomfield's blues guitar and Al Kooper's organ riffs. "Desolation Row", backed by acoustic guitar and understated bass,[108] offers the sole exception, with Dylan alluding to figures in Western culture in a song described by Andy Gill as "an 11-minute epic of entropy, which takes the form of a Fellini-esque parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge cast of celebrated characters".[109] Poet Philip Larkin, who also reviewed jazz for The Daily Telegraph, wrote "I'm afraid I poached Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited (CBS) out of curiosity and found myself well rewarded."[110]
Dylan in 1966
In support of the album, Dylan was booked for two US concerts with Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks from his studio crew and Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, former members of Ronnie Hawkins's backing band the Hawks.[111] On August 28 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the group was heckled by an audience still annoyed by Dylan's electric sound. The band's reception on September 3 at the Hollywood Bowl was more favorable.[112]
From September 24, 1965, in Austin, Texas, Dylan toured the US and Canada for six months, backed by the five musicians from the Hawks who became known as The Band.[113] While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences, their studio efforts foundered. Producer Bob Johnston persuaded Dylan to record in Nashville in February 1966, and surrounded him with top-notch session men. At Dylan's insistence, Robertson and Kooper came from New York City to play on the sessions.[114] The Nashville sessions produced the double album Blonde on Blonde (1966), featuring what Dylan called "that thin wild mercury sound".[115] Kooper described it as "taking two cultures and smashing them together with a huge explosion": the musical worlds of Nashville and of the "quintessential New York hipster" Bob Dylan.[116]
On November 22, 1965, Dylan quietly married 25-year-old former model Sara Lownds.[117] Some of Dylan's friends, including Ramblin' Jack Elliott, say that, immediately after the event, Dylan denied he was married.[117] Writer Nora Ephron made the news public in the New York Post in February 1966 with the headline "Hush! Bob Dylan is wed".[118]
Dylan toured Australia and Europe in April and May 1966. Each show was split in two. Dylan performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second, backed by the Hawks, he played electrically amplified music. This contrast provoked many fans, who jeered and slow clapped.[119] The tour culminated in a raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England on May 17, 1966.[120] A recording of this concert was released in 1998: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966. At the climax of the evening, a member of the audience, angered by Dylan's electric backing, shouted: "Judas!" to which Dylan responded, "I don't believe you ... You're a liar!" Dylan turned to his band and said, "Play it fucking loud!"[121]
During his 1966 tour, Dylan was described as exhausted and acting "as if on a death trip".[122] D. A. Pennebaker, the filmmaker accompanying the tour, described Dylan as "taking a lot of amphetamine and who-knows-what-else".[123] In a 1969 interview with Jann Wenner, Dylan said, "I was on the road for almost five years. It wore me down. I was on drugs, a lot of things ... just to keep going, you know?"[124]
Motorcycle accident and reclusion
On July 29, 1966, Dylan crashed his motorcycle, a Triumph Tiger 100, near his home in Woodstock, New York. Dylan said he broke several vertebrae in his neck.[125] The circumstances of the accident are unclear since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized.[125][126] Dylan's biographers have written that the crash offered him the chance to escape the pressures around him.[125][127] Dylan concurred: "I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race."[128] He made very few public appearances, and did not tour again for almost eight years.[126][129]
Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began to edit D. A. Pennebaker's film of his 1966 tour. A rough cut was shown to ABC Television, but they rejected it as incomprehensible to mainstream audiences.[130] The film, titled Eat the Document on bootleg copies, has since been screened at a few film festivals.[131] Secluded from public gaze, Dylan recorded over 100 songs during 1967 at his Woodstock home and in the basement of the Hawks' nearby house, "Big Pink".[132] These songs were initially offered as demos for other artists to record and were hits for Julie Driscoll, the Byrds, and Manfred Mann. The public heard these recordings when Great White Wonder, the first "bootleg recording", appeared in West Coast shops in July 1969, containing Dylan material recorded in Minneapolis in 1961 and seven Basement Tapes songs. This record gave birth to a minor industry in the illicit release of recordings by Dylan and other major rock artists.[133] Columbia released a Basement selection in 1975 as The Basement Tapes.
Nashville Skyline (1969), featured Nashville musicians, a mellow-voiced Dylan, a duet with Johnny Cash and the single "Lay Lady Lay".[138]Variety wrote, "Dylan is definitely doing something that can be called singing. Somehow he has managed to add an octave to his range."[139] During one recording session, Dylan and Cash recorded a series of duets, but only their version of "Girl from the North Country" appeared on the album.[140][141] The album influenced the nascent genre of country rock.[4]
In 1969, Dylan was asked to write songs for Scratch, Archibald MacLeish's musical adaptation of "The Devil and Daniel Webster". MacLeish initially praised Dylan's contributions, writing to him "Those songs of yours have been haunting me—and exciting me," but creative differences led to Dylan leaving the project. Some of the songs were later recorded by Dylan in a revised form.[142] In May 1969, Dylan appeared on the first episode of The Johnny Cash Show where he sang a duet with Cash on "Girl from the North Country" and played solos of "Living the Blues" and "I Threw It All Away". Dylan traveled to England to top the bill at the Isle of Wight Festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at the Woodstock Festival closer to home.[143]
1970s
In the early 1970s, critics charged that Dylan's output was varied and unpredictable. Greil Marcus asked "What is this shit?" upon first hearing Self Portrait, released in June 1970.[144][145] It was a double LP including few original songs and was poorly received.[146] In October 1970, Dylan released New Morning, considered a return to form.[147] The title track was from Dylan's ill-fated collaboration with MacLeish,[142] and "Day of the Locusts" was his account of receiving an honorary degree from Princeton University on June 9, 1970.[148] In November 1968, Dylan co-wrote "I'd Have You Anytime" with George Harrison;[149] Harrison recorded that song and Dylan's "If Not for You" for his album All Things Must Pass. Olivia Newton-John covered "If Not For You" on her debut album and "The Man in Me" was prominently featured in the film The Big Lebowski (1998).
Tarantula, a freeform book of prose-poetry, had been written by Dylan during a creative burst in 1964–65.[150] Dylan shelved his book for several years, apparently uncertain of its status,[151] until he suddenly informed Macmillan at the end of 1970 that the time had come to publish it.[152] The book attracted negative reviews but later critics have suggested its affinities with Finnegans Wake and A Season In Hell.[153]
In 1972, Dylan joined Sam Peckinpah's film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providing the soundtrack and playing "Alias", a member of Billy's gang.[157] Despite the film's failure at the box office, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" became one of Dylan's most covered songs.[158][159] That same year, Dylan protested the move to deport John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who had been convicted for marijuana possession, by sending a letter to the US Immigration Service which read in part: "Hurray for John & Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country's got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!"[160]
Return to touring
Bob Dylan and the Band commenced their 1974 tour in Chicago on January 3.[161]
Dylan began 1973 by signing with a new label, David Geffen's Asylum Records, when his contract with Columbia Records expired.[162] His next album, Planet Waves, was recorded in the fall of 1973, using the Band as his backing group as they rehearsed for a major tour.[163] The album included two versions of "Forever Young", which became one of his most popular songs.[164] As one critic described it, the song projected "something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke of the father in Dylan",[165] and Dylan said "I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental".[37] Columbia Records simultaneously released Dylan, a collection of studio outtakes, widely interpreted as a churlish response to Dylan's signing with a rival record label.[166]
In January 1974, Dylan, backed by the Band, embarked on a North American tour of 40 concerts—his first tour for seven years. A live double album, Before the Flood, was released on Asylum Records. Soon, according to Clive Davis, Columbia Records sent word they "will spare nothing to bring Dylan back into the fold".[167] Dylan had second thoughts about Asylum, unhappy that Geffen had sold only 600,000 copies of Planet Waves despite millions of unfulfilled ticket requests for the 1974 tour;[168] he returned to Columbia Records, which reissued his two Asylum albums.[169]
Dylan said of the opening song from Blood on the Tracks: "I was trying to deal with the concept of time, and the way the characters change from the first person to the third person, and you're never sure if the first person is talking or the third person. But as you look at the whole thing it really doesn't matter."[37]
After the tour, Dylan and his wife became estranged. He filled three small notebooks with songs about relationships and ruptures, and recorded the album Blood on the Tracks in September 1974.[170][171] Dylan delayed the album's release and re-recorded half the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production assistance from his brother, David Zimmerman.[172] Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. In NME, Nick Kent described the "accompaniments" as "often so trashy they sound like mere practice takes".[173] In Rolling Stone, Jon Landau wrote that "the record has been made with typical shoddiness".[173] Over the years critics came to see it as one of Dylan's masterpieces. In Salon, journalist Bill Wyman wrote:
Blood on the Tracks is his only flawless album and his best produced; the songs, each of them, are constructed in disciplined fashion. It is his kindest album and most dismayed, and seems in hindsight to have achieved a sublime balance between the logorrhea-plagued excesses of his mid-1960s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years.[174]
In the middle of 1975, Dylan championed boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, imprisoned for triple murder, with his ballad "Hurricane" making the case for Carter's innocence. Despite its length—over eight minutes—the song was released as a single, peaking at 33 on the US Billboard chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue.[a 7][175] Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour featured about one hundred performers and supporters from the Greenwich Village folk scene, among them Ramblin' Jack Elliott, T-Bone Burnett, Joni Mitchell,[176][177]David Mansfield, Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson, Ronee Blakely, Joan Baez and Scarlet Rivera, whom Dylan discovered walking down the street, her violin case on her back.[178] The tour encompassed the January 1976 release of the album Desire. Many of Desire's songs featuring a travelogue-like narrative style, influenced by Dylan's new collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy.[179][180] The 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special, Hard Rain, and the LP Hard Rain.
Dylan performing in the De Kuip Stadium, Rotterdam, June 23, 1978
The 1975 tour with the Revue provided the backdrop to Dylan's film Renaldo and Clara, a sprawling narrative mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Actor and playwright Sam Shepard accompanied the Revue and was to serve as screenwriter, but much of the film was improvised. Released in 1978, it received negative, sometimes scathing, reviews.[181][182] Later in the year, a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, was more widely released.[183] In November 1976, Dylan appeared at the Band's farewell concert with Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Martin Scorsese's 1978 film of the concert, The Last Waltz, included most of Dylan's set.[184]
A promotional poster released by CBS to promote Bob Dylan's 1978 Japan tour. The Japanese caption on the poster translates as, "If you see Bob Dylan, say hello."
In 1978, Dylan embarked on a year-long world tour, performing 114 shows in Japan, the Far East, Europe and North America, to a total audience of two million. Dylan assembled an eight-piece band and three backing singers. Concerts in Tokyo in February and March were released as the live double album Bob Dylan at Budokan.[185] Reviews were mixed. Robert Christgau awarded the album a C+ rating,[186] while Janet Maslin defended it: "These latest live versions of his old songs have the effect of liberating Bob Dylan from the originals".[187] When Dylan brought the tour to the US in September 1978, the press described the look and sound as a "Las Vegas Tour".[188] The 1978 tour grossed more than $20 million, and Dylan told the Los Angeles Times that he had debts because "I had a couple of bad years. I put a lot of money into the movie, built a big house ... and it costs a lot to get divorced in California."[185] In April and May 1978, Dylan took the same band and vocalists into Rundown Studios in Santa Monica, California, to record an album of new material, Street-Legal.[189] It was described by Michael Gray as "after Blood On The Tracks, arguably Dylan's best record of the 1970s: a crucial album documenting a crucial period in Dylan's own life".[190] However, it had poor sound and mixing (attributed to Dylan's studio practices), muddying the instrumental detail until a remastered CD release in 1999 restored some of the songs' strengths.[191][192]
Dylan took five months off at the beginning of 1979 to attend Bible school.[37] His subsequent album Slow Train Coming reached No. 3 on the US Billboard 200 chart and included this Grammy-winning song.
Years ago they ... said I was a prophet. I used to say, "No I'm not a prophet", they say "Yes you are, you're a prophet." I said, "No it's not me." They used to say "You sure are a prophet." They used to convince me I was a prophet. Now I come out and say Jesus Christ is the answer. They say, "Bob Dylan's no prophet." They just can't handle it.[198]
Dylan's Christianity was unpopular with some fans and musicians.[199] John Lennon, shortly before being murdered, recorded "Serve Yourself" in response to "Gotta Serve Somebody".[200] In 1981, Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times that "neither age (he's now 40) nor his much-publicized conversion to born-again Christianity has altered his essentially iconoclastic temperament".[201]
1980s
In late 1980, Dylan briefly played concerts billed as "A Musical Retrospective", restoring popular 1960s songs to the repertoire. His second Christian album, Saved (1980), received mixed reviews, described by Michael Gray as "the nearest thing to a follow-up album Dylan has ever made, Slow Train Coming II and inferior".[202] His third Christian album was Shot of Love (1981).[203] The album featured his first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with Christian songs. The lyrics of "Every Grain of Sand" recall William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence".[204]Elvis Costello wrote that "Shot of Love may not be your favorite Bob Dylan record, but it might contain his best song: 'Every Grain of Sand'."[205]
Between July 1984 and March 1985, Dylan recorded Empire Burlesque.[209]Arthur Baker, who had remixed hits for Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper, was asked to engineer and mix the album. Baker said he felt he was hired to make Dylan's album sound "a little bit more contemporary".[209] In 1985 Dylan sang on USA for Africa's famine relief single "We Are the World". He also joined Artists United Against Apartheid, providing vocals for their single "Sun City".[210] On July 13, 1985, he appeared at the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. Backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, he performed a ragged version of "Ballad of Hollis Brown", a tale of rural poverty, and then said to the worldwide audience: "I hope that some of the money ... maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe ... one or two million, maybe ... and use it to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks".[211] His remarks were widely criticized as inappropriate, but inspired Willie Nelson to organize a concert, Farm Aid, to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.[212]
In October 1985, Dylan released Biograph, a box set featuring 53 tracks, 18 of them previously unreleased. Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote: "Historically, Biograph is significant not for what it did for Dylan's career, but for establishing the box set, complete with hits and rarities, as a viable part of rock history."[213]Biograph also contained liner notes by Cameron Crowe in which Dylan discussed the origins of some of his songs.[214]
In April 1986, Dylan made a foray into rap when he added vocals to the opening verse of "Street Rock" on Kurtis Blow's album Kingdom Blow.[215] Dylan's next studio album, Knocked Out Loaded (1986), contained three covers (by Junior Parker, Kris Kristofferson and the gospel hymn "Precious Memories"), plus three collaborations (with Tom Petty, Sam Shepard and Carole Bayer Sager), and two solo compositions by Dylan. A reviewer wrote that "the record follows too many detours to be consistently compelling, and some of those detours wind down roads that are indisputably dead ends. By 1986, such uneven records weren't entirely unexpected by Dylan, but that didn't make them any less frustrating."[216] It was the first Dylan album since his 1962 debut to fail to make the Top 50.[217] Some critics have called the song Dylan co-wrote with Shepard, "Brownsville Girl", a masterpiece.[218]
In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. Dylan also toured with the Grateful Dead in 1987, resulting in the live album Dylan & The Dead, which received negative reviews; Erlewine said it was "quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead".[219] Dylan initiated what came to be called the Never Ending Tour on June 7, 1988, performing with a back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. Dylan would continue to tour with a small, changing band for the next 30 years.[220] In 1987, Dylan starred in Richard Marquand's movie Hearts of Fire, in which he played Billy Parker, a washed-up rock star turned chicken farmer whose teenage lover (Fiona) leaves him for a jaded English synth-pop sensation (Rupert Everett).[221] Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack—"Night After Night", and "Had a Dream About You, Baby", as well as a cover of John Hiatt's "The Usual". The film was a critical and commercial flop.[222]
Dylan in Barcelona, Spain, 1984
Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1988. Bruce Springsteen, in his introduction, declared, "Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body. He showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual".[106]Down in the Groove (1988) sold even more poorly than Knocked Out Loaded.[223] Gray wrote: "The very title undercuts any idea that inspired work may lie within. Here was a further devaluing of the notion of a new Bob Dylan album as something significant."[224] The critical and commercial disappointment of that album was swiftly followed by the success of the Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup Dylan co-founded with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. In late 1988, their Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 reached number three on the US albums chart,[223] featuring songs described as Dylan's most accessible compositions in years.[225] Despite Orbison's death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990, Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.[226]
Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with Oh Mercy, produced by Daniel Lanois. Gray praised the album as "Attentively written, vocally distinctive, musically warm, and uncompromisingly professional, this cohesive whole is the nearest thing to a great Bob Dylan album in the 1980s."[224] "Most of the Time", a lost-love composition, was prominently featured in the film High Fidelity (2000), while "What Was It You Wanted" has been interpreted both as a catechism and a wry comment on the expectations of critics and fans.[227] The religious imagery of "Ring Them Bells" struck some critics as a re-affirmation of faith.[228]
1990s
Dylan's 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990), an about-face from the serious Oh Mercy. It contained several apparently simple songs, including "Under the Red Sky" and "Wiggle Wiggle". The album was dedicated to "Gabby Goo Goo", a nickname for the daughter of Dylan and Carolyn Dennis, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, who was four.[229] Musicians on the album included George Harrison, Slash, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Elton John. The record received negative reviews and sold poorly.[230] In 1990 and 1991 Dylan was described by his biographers as drinking heavily, impairing his performances on stage.[231][232] In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan dismissed allegations that drinking was interfering with his music: "That's completely inaccurate. I can drink or not drink. I don't know why people would associate drinking with anything I do, really".[233]
Defilement and remorse were themes Dylan addressed when he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from Jack Nicholson in February 1991.[234] The event coincided with the start of the Gulf War and Dylan played "Masters of War"; Rolling Stone called his performance "almost unintelligible".[235] He made a short speech: "My daddy once said to me, he said, 'Son, it is possible for you to become so defiled in this world that your own mother and father will abandon you. If that happens, God will believe in your ability to mend your own ways'".[234][236] This was a paraphrase of 19th-century Orthodox Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's commentary on Psalm 27.[237] On October 16, 1992, the thirtieth anniversary of Dylan's debut album was celebrated with a concert at Madison Square Garden, christened "Bobfest" by Neil Young and featuring John Mellencamp, Stevie Wonder, Lou Reed, Eddie Vedder, Dylan and others. It was recorded as the live album The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration.[235]
Over the next few years Dylan returned to his roots with two albums covering traditional folk and blues songs: Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), backed solely by his acoustic guitar.[238] Many critics and fans noted the quiet beauty of the song "Lone Pilgrim",[239] written by a 19th-century teacher. In August 1994, he played at Woodstock '94; Rolling Stone called his performance "triumphant".[235] In November, Dylan recorded two live shows for MTV Unplugged. He said his wish to perform traditional songs was overruled by Sony executives who insisted on hits.[240] The resulting album, MTV Unplugged, included "John Brown", an unreleased 1962 song about how enthusiasm for war ends in mutilation and disillusionment.[241]
Dylan performs during the 1996 Lida Festival in Stockholm.
With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed in on his Minnesota ranch,[242] Dylan booked recording time with Daniel Lanois at Miami's Criteria Studios in January 1997. The subsequent recording sessions were, by some accounts, fraught with musical tension.[243] Before the album's release Dylan was hospitalized with life-threatening pericarditis, brought on by histoplasmosis. His scheduled European tour was canceled, but Dylan made a speedy recovery and left the hospital saying, "I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon".[244] He was back on the road by mid-year, and performed before Pope John Paul II at the World Eucharistic Conference in Bologna, Italy. The Pope treated the audience of 200,000 to a homily based on Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind".[245]
In September, Dylan released the new Lanois-produced album, Time Out of Mind. With its bitter assessments of love and morbid ruminations, Dylan's first collection of original songs in seven years was highly acclaimed. Alex Ross called it "a thrilling return to form."[246] "Cold Irons Bound" won Dylan another Grammy For Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and the album won him his first Grammy Award for Album of the Year.[247] The album's first single, "Not Dark Yet", has been called one of Dylan's best songs[248] and "Make You Feel My Love" was covered by Billy Joel, Garth Brooks, Adele and others. Elvis Costello said "I think it might be the best record he's made."[249]
Dylan's Oscar-winning song was featured in the movie Wonder Boys. The line "sapphire-tinted skies" echoes the verse of Shelley[250] while "forty miles of bad road" echoes Duane Eddy's hit single.
In 2004, Dylan published the first part of his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One. Confounding expectations,[262] Dylan devoted three chapters to his first year in New York City in 1961–1962, virtually ignoring the mid-1960s when his fame was at its height, while devoting chapters to the albums New Morning (1970) and Oh Mercy (1989). The book reached number two on The New York Times' Hardcover Non-Fiction bestseller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award.[263]
Critics noted that Chronicles contained many examples of pastiche and borrowing; sources included Time magazine[264] and the novels of Jack London.[265]
Biographer Clinton Heylin queried the veracity of Dylan's autobiography, noting "Not a single checkable story held water; not one anecdote couldn't be shot full of holes by any half-decent researcher."[266]
Dylan's career as a radio presenter began on May 3, 2006, with his weekly program, Theme Time Radio Hour, on XM Satellite Radio. He played songs with a common theme, such as "Weather", "Weddings", "Dance" and "Dreams".[271][272] Dylan's records ranged from Muddy Waters to Prince, L.L. Cool J to the Streets. Dylan's show was praised for the breadth of his musical selections[273] and for his jokes, stories and eclectic references.[274][275] In April 2009, Dylan broadcast the 100th show in his radio series; the theme was "Goodbye" and he signed off with Woody Guthrie's "So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh".[276]
Dylan, the Spectrum, 2007
Dylan released Modern Times in August 2006. Despite some coarsening of Dylan's voice (a critic for The Guardian characterized his singing on the album as "a catarrhal death rattle"[277]) most reviewers praised the album, and many described it as the final installment of a successful trilogy, encompassing Time Out of Mind and "Love and Theft".[278]Modern Times entered the US charts at number one, making it Dylan's first album to reach that position since 1976's Desire.[279]The New York Times published an article exploring similarities between some of Dylan's lyrics in Modern Times and the work of the Civil War poet Henry Timrod.[280]Modern Times won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album and Dylan won Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for "Someday Baby".[281]Modern Times was named Album of the Year by Rolling Stone[282] and Uncut.[283] On the same day that Modern Times was released, the iTunes Music Store released Bob Dylan: The Collection, a digital box set containing all of his albums (773 tracks), along with 42 rare and unreleased tracks.[284]
Bob Dylan performs at Air Canada Centre, Toronto, November 7, 2006.
On October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released the triple CD retrospective Dylan, anthologizing his entire career under the Dylan 07 logo.[285] The sophistication of the Dylan 07 marketing campaign was a reminder that Dylan's commercial profile had risen considerably since the 1990s. This became evident in 2004, when Dylan appeared in a TV advertisement for Victoria's Secret.[286] In October 2007, he participated in a multi-media campaign for the 2008 Cadillac Escalade.[287][288] In 2009 he gave the highest profile endorsement of his career to date, appearing with rapper will.i.am in a Pepsi ad that debuted during Super Bowl XLIII. The ad opened with Dylan singing the first verse of "Forever Young" followed by will.i.am doing a hip hop version of the song's third and final verse.[289]
The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 – Tell Tale Signs was released in October 2008, as both a two-CD set and a three-CD version with a 150-page hardcover book. The set contains live performances and outtakes from selected studio albums from Oh Mercy to Modern Times, as well as soundtrack contributions and collaborations with David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley.[290] The pricing of the album—the two-CD set went on sale for $18.99 and the three-CD version for $129.99—led to complaints about "rip-off packaging".[291][292] The release was widely acclaimed by critics.[293] The abundance of alternative takes and unreleased material suggested to one reviewer that this volume of old outtakes "feels like a new Bob Dylan record, not only for the astonishing freshness of the material, but also for the incredible sound quality and organic feeling of everything here".[294]
Together Through Life and Christmas in the Heart
Dylan released Together Through Life on April 28, 2009. In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, Dylan explained it originated when French director Olivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his movie My Own Love Song. He initially intended to record a single track, "Life Is Hard", but "the record sort of took its own direction".[295] Nine of the album's ten songs are credited as co-written by Dylan and Robert Hunter.[296] The album received largely favorable reviews,[297] although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan's canon.[298] In its first week of release, the album reached number one on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, making Dylan, at 67 years of age, the oldest artist to ever debut at number one on that chart.[299]
Volume 9 of Dylan's Bootleg Series, The Witmark Demos, was issued in October 18, 2010. It comprised 47 demo recordings of songs taped between 1962 and 1964 for Dylan's earliest music publishers: Leeds Music in 1962, and Witmark Music from 1962 to 1964. One reviewer described the set as "a hearty glimpse of young Bob Dylan changing the music business, and the world, one note at a time."[305] On the critical aggregator Metacritic, the album has a score of 86, indicating "universal acclaim".[306] In the same week, Sony Legacy released Bob Dylan: The Original Mono Recordings, a box set that presented Dylan's eight earliest albums, from Bob Dylan (1962) to John Wesley Harding (1967), in their original mono mix in the CD format for the first time. The set was accompanied by a booklet featuring an essay by Greil Marcus.[307][308]
On April 12, 2011, Legacy Recordings released Bob Dylan in Concert – Brandeis University 1963, taped at Brandeis University on May 10, 1963, two weeks before the release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The tape was discovered in the archive of music writer Ralph J. Gleason, and the recording carries liner notes by Michael Gray, who says it captures Dylan "from way back when Kennedy was President and the Beatles hadn't yet reached America. It reveals him not at any Big Moment but giving a performance like his folk club sets of the period ... This is the last live performance we have of Bob Dylan before he becomes a star."[309]
Dylan and the Obamas at the White House, after a performance celebrating music from the civil rights movement (February 9, 2010)
On Dylan's 70th birthday, three universities organized symposia on his work: the University of Mainz,[310] the University of Vienna,[311] and the University of Bristol[312] invited literary critics and cultural historians to give papers on aspects of Dylan's work. Other events, including tribute bands, discussions and simple singalongs, took place around the world, as reported in The Guardian: "From Moscow to Madrid, Norway to Northampton and Malaysia to his home state of Minnesota, self-confessed 'Bobcats' will gather today to celebrate the 70th birthday of a giant of popular music."[313]
Dylan's 35th studio album, Tempest, was released on September 11, 2012.[314] The album features a tribute to John Lennon, "Roll On John", and the title track is a 14-minute song about the sinking of the Titanic.[315] In Rolling Stone, Will Hermes gave Tempest five out of five stars, writing: "Lyrically, Dylan is at the top of his game, joking around, dropping wordplay and allegories that evade pat readings and quoting other folks' words like a freestyle rapper on fire".[316]
Volume 10 of Dylan's Bootleg Series, Another Self Portrait (1969–1971), was released in August 2013.[317] The album contained 35 previously unreleased tracks, including alternative takes and demos from Dylan's 1969–1971 recording sessions during the making of the Self Portrait and New Morning albums. The box set also included a live recording of Dylan's performance with the Band at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969. Thom Jurek wrote, "For fans, this is more than a curiosity, it's an indispensable addition to the catalog."[318] Columbia Records released a boxed set containing all 35 Dylan studio albums, six albums of live recordings and a collection of non-album material (Sidetracks) as Bob Dylan: Complete Album Collection: Vol. One, in November 2013.[319][320] To publicize the box set, an innovative video of "Like a Rolling Stone" was released on Dylan's website. The interactive video, created by director Vania Heymann, allowed viewers to switch between 16 simulated TV channels, all featuring characters who are lip-synching the lyrics.[321][322]
Dylan appeared in a commercial for the Chrysler 200 car which aired during the 2014 Super Bowl. In it, he says that "Detroit made cars and cars made America... So let Germany brew your beer, let Switzerland make your watch, let Asia assemble your phone. We will build your car." Dylan's ad was criticized for its protectionist implications, and people wondered whether he had "sold out".[323][324]The Lyrics: Since 1962 was published by Simon & Schuster in the fall of 2014. The book was edited by literary critic Christopher Ricks, Julie Nemrow and Lisa Nemrow and offered variant versions of Dylan's songs, sourced from out-takes and live performances. A limited edition of 50 books, signed by Dylan, was priced at $5,000. "It's the biggest, most expensive book we've ever published, as far as I know", said Jonathan Karp, Simon & Schuster's president and publisher.[325][326] A comprehensive edition of the Basement Tapes, songs recorded by Dylan and the Band in 1967, was released as The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete in November 2014. The album included 138 tracks in a six-CD box; the 1975 album The Basement Tapes contained just 24 tracks from the material which Dylan and the Band had recorded at their homes in Woodstock, New York in 1967. Subsequently, over 100 recordings and alternate takes had circulated on bootleg records. The sleeve notes are by author Sid Griffin.[327][328]The Basement Tapes Complete won the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album.[329] The box set earned a score of 99 on Metacritic.[330]
Shadows in the Night, Fallen Angels and Triplicate
In February 2015, Dylan released Shadows in the Night, featuring ten songs written between 1923 and 1963,[331][332] which have been described as part of the Great American Songbook.[333] All of the songs had been recorded by Frank Sinatra, but both critics and Dylan himself cautioned against seeing the record as a collection of "Sinatra covers".[331][334] Dylan explained: "I don't see myself as covering these songs in any way. They've been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day".[335] Critics praised the restrained instrumental backings and the quality of Dylan's singing.[333][336] The album debuted at number one in the UK Albums Chart in its first week of release.[337]The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966, consisting of previously unreleased material from the three albums Dylan recorded between January 1965 and March 1966 (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde) was released in November 2015. The set was released in three formats: a 2-CD "Best Of" version, a 6-CD "Deluxe edition", and an 18-CD limited "Collector's Edition". On Dylan's website the "Collector's Edition" was described as containing "every single note recorded by Bob Dylan in the studio in 1965/1966".[338][339]The Best of the Cutting Edge entered the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart at number one on November 18, based on its first-week sales.[340]
Dylan released Fallen Angels, described as "a direct continuation of the work of 'uncovering' the Great Songbook that he began on Shadows In the Night", in May.[341] The album contained twelve songs by classic songwriters such as Harold Arlen, Sammy Cahn and Johnny Mercer, eleven of which had been recorded by Sinatra.[341] Jim Farber wrote in Entertainment Weekly: "Tellingly, [Dylan] delivers these songs of love lost and cherished not with a burning passion but with the wistfulness of experience. They're memory songs now, intoned with a present sense of commitment. Released just four days ahead of his 75th birthday, they couldn't be more age-appropriate".[342]The 1966 Live Recordings, including every known recording of Dylan's 1966 concert tour, was released in November 2016.[343] The recordings commence with the concert in White Plains New York on February 5, 1966, and end with the Royal Albert Hall concert in London on May 27.[344][345]The New York Times reported most of the concerts had "never been heard in any form", and described the set as "a monumental addition to the corpus".[346]
In March 2017, Dylan released a triple album of 30 more recordings of classic American songs, Triplicate. Dylan's 38th studio album was recorded in Hollywood's Capitol Studios and features his touring band.[347] Dylan posted a long interview on his website to promote the album, and was asked if this material was an exercise in nostalgia.
Nostalgic? No I wouldn't say that. It's not taking a trip down memory lane or longing and yearning for the good old days or fond memories of what's no more. A song like 'Sentimental Journey' is not a way back when song, it doesn't emulate the past, it's attainable and down to earth, it's in the here and now.[348]
Critics praised the thoroughness of Dylan's exploration of the Great American Songbook, though, in the opinion of Uncut, "For all its easy charms, Triplicate labours its point to the brink of overkill. After five albums' worth of croon toons, this feels like a fat full stop on a fascinating chapter."[349]
The next volume of Dylan's Bootleg Series revisited his "Born Again" Christian period of 1979 to 1981, described by Rolling Stone as "an intense, wildly controversial time that produced three albums and some of the most confrontational concerts of his long career".[350] Reviewing the box set The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981, comprising 8 CDs and 1 DVD,[350]Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times:
Decades later, what comes through these recordings above all is Mr. Dylan's unmistakable fervor, his sense of mission. The studio albums are subdued, even tentative, compared with what the songs became on the road. Mr. Dylan's voice is clear, cutting and ever improvisational; working the crowds, he was emphatic, committed, sometimes teasingly combative. And the band tears into the music.[351]
Trouble No More includes a DVD of a film directed by Jennifer Lebeau consisting of live footage of Dylan's gospel performances interspersed with sermons delivered by actor Michael Shannon.
In April 2018, Dylan made a contribution to the compilation EP Universal Love, a collection of reimagined wedding songs for the LGBT community.[352] The album was funded by MGM Resorts International and the songs are intended to function as "wedding anthems for same-sex couples".[353] Dylan recorded the 1929 song "She's Funny That Way", changing the gender pronoun to "He's Funny That Way". The song was previously recorded by Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra.[353][354] That same month, The New York Times reported that Dylan was launching Heaven's Door, a range of three whiskeys. The Times described the venture as "Mr. Dylan's entry into the booming celebrity-branded spirits market, the latest career twist for an artist who has spent five decades confounding expectations".[355] Dylan has been involved in both the creation and the marketing of the range; on September 21, 2020, Dylan resurrected Theme Time Radio Hour with a two-hour special with the theme of "Whiskey".[356] On November 2, 2018, Dylan released More Blood, More Tracks as Volume 14 in the Bootleg Series. The set comprises all Dylan's recordings for Blood On the Tracks and was issued as a single CD and also as a six-CD Deluxe Edition.[357]
In 2019, Netflix released Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, billed as "Part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream".[358][359] The film received largely positive reviews but also aroused controversy because it mixed documentary footage filmed during the Rolling Thunder Revue in the fall of 1975 with fictitious characters and stories.[360][361] Coinciding with the film release, the box set The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, was released by Columbia Records. The set comprises five full Dylan performances from the tour and recently discovered tapes from Dylan's tour rehearsals.[362] The box set received an aggregate score of 89 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim".[363] The next installment of Dylan's Bootleg Series, Bob Dylan (featuring Johnny Cash) – Travelin' Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15, was released on November 1. The set comprises outtakes from Dylan's albums John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, and songs that Dylan recorded with Johnny Cash in Nashville in 1969 and with Earl Scruggs in 1970.[364][365]
On March 26, 2020, Dylan released "Murder Most Foul", a seventeen-minute song revolving around the Kennedy assassination, on his YouTube channel.[366]Billboard reported on April 8 that "Murder Most Foul" had topped the Billboard Rock Digital Song Sales Chart, the first time that Dylan had scored a number one song on a pop chart under his own name.[367] Three weeks later, on April 17, 2020, Dylan released another new song, "I Contain Multitudes".[368][369] The title is from Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself".[370] On May 7, Dylan released a third single, "False Prophet", accompanied by the news that the three songs would all appear on a forthcoming double album.
Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan's 39th studio album and his first album of original material since 2012, was released on June 19 to favorable reviews.[371]Alexis Petridis wrote: "For all its bleakness, Rough and Rowdy Ways might well be Bob Dylan's most consistently brilliant set of songs in years: the die-hards can spend months unravelling the knottier lyrics, but you don't need a PhD in Dylanology to appreciate its singular quality and power."[372]Rob Sheffield wrote: "While the world keeps trying to celebrate him as an institution, pin him down, cast him in the Nobel Prize canon, embalm his past, this drifter always keeps on making his next escape. On Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan is exploring terrain nobody else has reached before—yet he just keeps pushing on into the future".[373] The album earned a score of 95 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim".[371] In its first week of release Rough and Rowdy Ways reached number one on the UK album chart, making Dylan "the oldest artist to score a No. 1 of new, original material".[374]
In December 2020, it was announced that Dylan had sold his entire song catalog to Universal Music Publishing Group,[375] including both the income he receives as a songwriter and his control of their copyright. Universal, a division of the French media conglomerate Vivendi, will collect all future income from the songs.[376]The New York Times stated Universal had purchased the copyright to over 600 songs and the price was "estimated at more than $300 million",[376] although other reports suggested the figure was closer to $400 million.[377]
In February 2021, Columbia Records released 1970, a three-CD set of recordings from the Self Portrait and New Morning sessions, including the entirety of the session Dylan recorded with George Harrison on May 1, 1970.[378][379] Dylan's 80th birthday was commemorated by a virtual conference, Dylan@80, organized by the University of Tulsa Institute for Bob Dylan Studies. The program featured seventeen sessions over three days delivered by over fifty international scholars, journalists and musicians.[380] Several new biographies and studies of Dylan were published.[381][382]
In July 2021, livestream platform Veeps presented a 50-minute performance by Dylan, Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan.[383] Filmed in black and white with a film noir look,[384] Dylan performed 13 songs in a club setting with an audience.[383][385] The performance was favorably reviewed,[385][384] and one critic suggested the backing band resembled the style of the musical Girl from the North Country.[386] The soundtrack to the film was released on 2 LP and CD formats in June 2023.[387] In September, Dylan released Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 (1980–1985), issued in 2 LP, 2 CD and 5 CD formats. It comprised rehearsals, live recordings, out-takes and alternative takes from Shot of Love, Infidels and Empire Burlesque.[388] In The Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick wrote: "These bootleg sessions remind us that Dylan's worst period is still more interesting than most artists' purple patches".[389]Springtime in New York received an aggregate score of 85 on Metacritic.[390]
On July 7, 2022, Christie's, London, auctioned a 2021 recording of Dylan singing "Blowin' in the Wind". The record was in an innovative "one of one" recording medium, branded as Ionic Original, which producer T Bone Burnett claimed "surpasses the sonic excellence and depth for which analogue sound is renowned, while at the same time boasting the durability of a digital recording."[391][392] The recording fetched GBP £1,482,000—equivalent to $1,769,508.[393][394] In November, Dylan published The Philosophy of Modern Song, a collection of 66 essays on songs by other artists. The New Yorker described it as "a rich, riffy, funny, and completely engaging book of essays".[395] Other reviewers praised the book's eclectic outlook,[396] while some questioned its variations in style and dearth of female songwriters.[397]
In January 2023, Dylan released The Bootleg Series Vol. 17: Fragments – Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996–1997) in multiple formats. The 5-CD version comprised a re-mix of the 1997 album "to sound more like how the songs came across when the musicians originally played them in the room" without the effects and processing which producer Daniel Lanois applied later; 25 previously unreleased out-takes from the studio sessions; and a disc of live performances of each song on the album performed by Dylan and his band in concert.[398] On November 17, 2023, Dylan released The Complete Budokan 1978, containing the full recordings of the February 28 and March 1 Tokyo concerts from his 1978 Tour.[399]
Dylan contributed a cover version of Cole Porter's song "Don't Fence Me In" to the soundtrack of the biographical film Reagan, which was released on August 30, 2024.[400] On September 20, 2024, Dylan released The 1974 Live Recordings, a 27-disc CD boxset of recordings from the 1974 Bob Dylan & The Band tour, featuring 417 previously unreleased live tracks.[401]
Dylan performing at Finsbury Park, London, June 18, 2011
The Never Ending Tour commenced on June 7, 1988.[402] Dylan has played roughly 100 dates a year since, a heavier schedule than most performers who started in the 1960s.[403] By April 2019, Dylan and his band had played more than 3,000 shows,[404] anchored by long-time bassist Tony Garnier.[405]
To the dismay of some of his audience,[406] Dylan's performances are unpredictable as he often alters his arrangements and changes his vocal approach.[407] These variable performances have divided critics. Richard Williams and Andy Gill argued that Dylan has found a successful way to present his rich legacy of material.[408][409] Others have criticized his live performances for changing "the greatest lyrics ever written so that they are effectively unrecognisable", and giving so little to the audience that "it is difficult to understand what he is doing on stage at all".[410]
In September 2021, Dylan's touring company announced a series of tours which were billed as the "Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour, 2021–2024". The Rough and Rowdy Ways World Tour replaced Dylan's varied set lists with a more stable repertory, performing nine of the ten songs on his 2020 album.[411] Nevertheless, the tour has been referred to by the media as an extension of his ongoing Never Ending Tour.[412]
In the fall of 2024 Dylan embarked on a European tour, beginning in Prague, Czech Republic, on October 4 and ending in London on November 14.[413][414] Alex Ross has summarised Dylan's touring career: "his shows cause his songs to mutate, so that no definitive or ideal version exists. Dylan's legacy will be the sum of thousands of performances, over many decades... Every night, whether he's in good or bad form, he says, in effect, 'Think again.'"[246]
Personal life
Romantic relationships
Echo Helstrom
Echo Helstrom was Dylan's high school girlfriend. The couple listened together to rhythm-and-blues on the radio, and her family exposed him to singers such as Jimmie Rodgers on 78 RPM records, and a plethora of folk music magazines, sheet music, and manuscripts.[415] Helstrom is believed by some to be the inspiration for Dylan's song "Girl from the North Country", though this is disputed.[416]
Suze Rotolo
Dylan's first serious relationship was with artist Suze Rotolo, a daughter of Communist Party USA radicals. According to Dylan, "She was the most erotic thing I'd ever seen ... The air was suddenly filled with banana leaves. We started talking and my head started to spin".[417] Rotolo was photographed arm-in-arm with Dylan on the cover of his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Critics have connected Rotolo to some of Dylan's early love songs, including "Don't Think Twice It's All Right". The relationship ended in 1964.[418] In 2008, Rotolo published a memoir about her life in Greenwich Village and relationship with Dylan in the 1960s, A Freewheelin' Time.[419]
Joan Baez
When Joan Baez met Dylan in April 1961, she had already released her first album and was acclaimed as the "Queen of Folk".[420] On hearing Dylan perform his song "With God on Our Side", Baez later said, "I never thought anything so powerful could come out of that little toad".[421] In July 1963, Baez invited Dylan to join her on stage at the Newport Folk Festival, setting the scene for similar duets over the next two years.[422] By the time of Dylan's 1965 tour of the UK, their romantic relationship had begun to fizzle out, as captured in D. A. Pennebaker's documentary film Dont Look Back.[422] Baez later toured with Dylan as a performer on his Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975–76. Baez also starred as "The Woman In White" in the film Renaldo and Clara (1978), directed by Dylan.[423] Dylan and Baez toured together again in 1984 with Carlos Santana.[422]
Baez recalled her relationship with Dylan in Martin Scorsese's documentary film No Direction Home (2005). Baez wrote about Dylan in two autobiographies—admiringly in Daybreak (1968), and less admiringly in And A Voice to Sing With (1987). Her song "Diamonds & Rust" has been described as "an acute portrait" of Dylan.[422]
Sara Lownds
Dylan married Sara Lownds, who had worked as a model and secretary at Drew Associates, on November 22, 1965.[424] They had four children: Jesse Byron Dylan (born January 6, 1966), Anna Lea (born July 11, 1967), Samuel Isaac Abram (born July 30, 1968), and Jakob Luke (born December 9, 1969). Dylan also adopted Sara's daughter from a prior marriage, Maria Lownds (later Dylan, born October 21, 1961). Sara Dylan played the role of Clara in Dylan's film Renaldo and Clara (1978). Bob and Sara Dylan were divorced on June 29, 1977.[424]
Carolyn Dennis
Dylan and his backing singer Carolyn Dennis (often professionally known as Carol Dennis) have a daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, born on January 31, 1986.[425] The couple were married on June 4, 1986, and divorced in October 1992. Their marriage and child remained a closely guarded secret until the publication of Howard Sounes's biography Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, in 2001.[426]
Home
When not touring, Dylan is believed to live primarily in Point Dume, a promontory on the coast of Malibu, California, though he owns property around the world.[427][428]
Religious beliefs
Growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, Dylan and his family were part of the area's small, close-knit Jewish community, and Dylan had his Bar Mitzvah in May 1954.[429][23] Around the time of his 30th birthday, in 1971, Dylan visited Israel, and also met Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the New York-based Jewish Defense League.[430]
In the late 1970s, Dylan converted to Christianity. In November 1978, guided by his friend Mary Alice Artes, Dylan made contact with the Vineyard School of Discipleship.[194] Vineyard Pastor Kenn Gulliksen recalled: "Larry Myers and Paul Emond went over to Bob's house and ministered to him. He responded by saying yes, he did in fact want Christ in his life. And he prayed that day and received the Lord".[431][432] From January to March 1979, Dylan attended Vineyard's Bible study classes in Reseda, California.[194][433]
By 1984, Dylan was distancing himself from the "born again" label. He told Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone: "I've never said I'm 'born again'. That's just a media term. I don't think I've been an agnostic. I've always thought there's a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there's a world to come."[434] In 1997, he told David Gates of Newsweek:
Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like "Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain" or "I Saw the Light"—that's my religion. I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I've learned more from the songs than I've learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.[435]
Dylan has continued to perform songs from his gospel albums in concert, occasionally covering traditional religious songs. He has made passing references to his religious faith, such as in a 2004 interview with 60 Minutes, when he told Ed Bradley, "the only person you have to think twice about lying to is either yourself or to God". He explained his constant touring schedule as part of a bargain he made a long time ago with the "chief commander—in this earth and in the world we can't see".[40]
President Obama presents Dylan with a Medal of Freedom, May 2012.Sara Danius announces the Nobel Prize in Literature 2016.
Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1997, US President Bill Clinton presented Dylan with a Kennedy Center Honor in the East Room of the White House, saying: "He probably had more impact on people of my generation than any other creative artist. His voice and lyrics haven't always been easy on the ear, but throughout his career Bob Dylan has never aimed to please. He's disturbed the peace and discomforted the powerful".[440] In May 2000, Dylan received the Polar Music Prize from Sweden's King Carl XVI.[441] In June 2007, Dylan received the Prince of Asturias Award in the Arts category; the jury called him "a living myth in the history of popular music and a light for a generation that dreamed of changing the world."[4][442] In 2008, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power".[443]
Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in May 2012.[444][445] President Barack Obama, presenting Dylan with the award, said "There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music." Obama praised Dylan's voice for its "unique gravelly power that redefined not just what music sounded like but the message it carried and how it made people feel".[446] In November 2013, Dylan was awarded France's highest honor, the Légion d'Honneur,[447] despite the misgiving of the grand chancellor of the Légion who had declared the singer was unworthy.[447] In February 2015, Dylan accepted the MusiCares Person of the Year award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, in recognition of his philanthropic and artistic contributions.[448]
In 1996, Gordon Ball of the Virginia Military Institute nominated Dylan for the Nobel Prize in Literature,[449][450] initiating a campaign that lasted for 20 years.[451] On October 13, 2016, the Nobel committee announced that it would be awarding Dylan the prize "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".[452]The New York Times reported: "Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901."[452] Dylan remained silent for days after receiving the award,[453] and then told journalist Edna Gundersen that it was "amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?"[454] Dylan's Nobel Lecture was posted on the Nobel Prize website on June 5, 2017.[455]Horace Engdahl, a member of the Nobel Committee, described Dylan's place in literary history:
a singer worthy of a place beside the Greek bards, beside Ovid, beside the Romantic visionaries, beside the kings and queens of the blues, beside the forgotten masters of brilliant standards.[456]
Legacy
Dylan has been described as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, musically and culturally. He was included in the Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century, where he was called "master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation".[457]Paul Simon suggested that Dylan's early compositions virtually took over the folk genre: "[Dylan's] early songs were very rich ... with strong melodies. 'Blowin' in the Wind' has a really strong melody. He so enlarged himself through the folk background that he incorporated it for a while. He defined the genre for a while."[458]
For many critics, Dylan's greatest achievement was the cultural synthesis exemplified by his mid-1960s trilogy of albums—Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. In Mike Marqusee's words:
Between late 1964 and the middle of 1966, Dylan created a body of work that remains unique. Drawing on folk, blues, country, R&B, rock'n'roll, gospel, British beat, symbolist, modernist and Beat poetry, surrealism and Dada, advertising jargon and social commentary, Fellini and Mad magazine, he forged a coherent and original artistic voice and vision. The beauty of these albums retains the power to shock and console.[459]
Dylan's lyrics began to receive critical study as early as 1998, when Stanford University sponsored the first international academic conference on Bob Dylan held in the United States.[460] In 2004, Richard F. Thomas, Classics professor at Harvard University, created a freshman seminar titled "Dylan", which aimed "to put the artist in context of not just popular culture of the last half-century, but the tradition of classical poets like Virgil and Homer."[461] Thomas went on to publish Why Bob Dylan Matters, exploring Dylan's connections with Greco-Roman literature.[462] Literary critic Christopher Ricks published Dylan's Visions of Sin, an appreciation of Dylan's work.[463] Following Dylan's Nobel win, Ricks reflected: "I'd not have written a book about Dylan, to stand alongside my books on Milton and Keats, Tennyson and T.S. Eliot, if I didn't think Dylan a genius of and with language."[464] The critical consensus that Dylan's songwriting was his outstanding creative achievement was articulated by Encyclopædia Britannica: "Hailed as the Shakespeare of his generation, Dylan ... set the standard for lyric writing."[4] Former British poet laureateAndrew Motion said Dylan's lyrics should be studied in schools.[465] His lyrics have entered the vernacular; Edna Gundersen notes that
Lines that branded Dylan a poet and counterculture valedictorian in the '60s are imprinted on the culture: "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose"; "a hard rain's a-gonna fall"; "to live outside the law you must be honest." Some lyrics — "you don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows" and "the times they are a-changin' " — appear in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.[466]
Dylan's voice also received critical attention. Robert Shelton described his early vocal style as "a rusty voice suggesting Guthrie's old performances, etched in gravel like Dave Van Ronk's".[470] His voice continued to develop as he began to work with rock'n'roll backing bands; Michael Gray described the sound of Dylan's vocal work on "Like a Rolling Stone" as "at once young and jeeringly cynical".[471] As Dylan's voice aged during the 1980s, for some critics, it became more expressive. Christophe Lebold writes in the journal Oral Tradition:
Dylan's more recent broken voice enables him to present a world view at the sonic surface of the songs—this voice carries us across the landscape of a broken, fallen world. The anatomy of a broken world in "Everything is Broken" (on the album Oh Mercy) is but an example of how the thematic concern with all things broken is grounded in a concrete sonic reality.[472]
Some critics have dissented from the view of Dylan as a visionary figure in popular music. In his book Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, Nik Cohn objected: "I can't take the vision of Dylan as seer, as teenage messiah, as everything else he's been worshipped as. The way I see him, he's a minor talent with a major gift for self-hype".[492] Australian critic Jack Marx credited Dylan with changing the persona of the rock star: "What cannot be disputed is that Dylan invented the arrogant, faux-cerebral posturing that has been the dominant style in rock since, with everyone from Mick Jagger to Eminem educating themselves from the Dylan handbook".[493]
Fellow musicians have also expressed critical views. Joni Mitchell described Dylan as a "plagiarist" and his voice as "fake" in a 2010 interview in the Los Angeles Times.[494][495][496] Mitchell's comments led to discussions on Dylan's use of other people's material, both supporting and criticizing him.[497] Talking to Mikal Gilmore in Rolling Stone in 2012, Dylan responded to the allegation of plagiarism, including his use of Henry Timrod's verse in his album Modern Times,[280] by saying that it was "part of the tradition".[498][a 8]
Dylan's music has inspired artists in other fields. Dave Gibbons recalls how he and Alan Moore were inspired by the lines of "Desolation Row" beginning "At midnight, all the agents/ And the superhuman crew...":
It was a glimpse, a mere fragment of something; something ominous, paranoid and threatening. But something that showed that comics, like poetry or rock and roll or Bob Dylan himself, might feasibly become part of the greater cultural continuum. The lines must have also lodged in Alan's consciousness for, nearly twenty years later, Dylan's words eventually provided the title of the first issue of our comic book series Watchmen.
Gibbons says of their seminal comic, "It began with Bob Dylan."[499]
If Dylan's work in the 1960s was seen as bringing intellectual ambition to popular music,[459] critics in the 21st century described him as a figure who had greatly expanded the folk culture from which he initially emerged. In his review of I'm Not There, J. Hoberman wrote:
Elvis might never have been born, but someone else would surely have brought the world rock 'n' roll. No such logic accounts for Bob Dylan. No iron law of history demanded that a would-be Elvis from Hibbing, Minnesota, would swerve through the Greenwich Village folk revival to become the world's first and greatest rock 'n' roll beatnik bard and then—having achieved fame and adoration beyond reckoning—vanish into a folk tradition of his own making.[505]
In 2005, 7th Avenue East in Hibbing, Minnesota, the street on which Dylan lived from ages 6 to 18, received the honorary name Bob Dylan Drive.[510][511] In 2006, a cultural pathway, Bob Dylan Way, was inaugurated in Duluth, Minnesota, where Dylan was born. The 1.8-mile path links "cultural and historically significant areas of downtown for the tourists".[512]
In 2015, a 160-foot-wide Dylan mural by Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra was unveiled in downtown Minneapolis.[513]
In December 2013, the Fender Stratocaster which Dylan had played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival fetched $965,000, the second highest price paid for a guitar.[514] In June 2014, Dylan's hand-written lyrics of "Like a Rolling Stone" fetched $2 million at auction, a record for a popular music manuscript.[515][516]
Visual art
Dylan's visual art was first seen by the public via a painting he contributed for the cover of The Band's Music from Big Pink album in 1968.[517] The cover of Dylan's own 1970 album Self Portrait features the painting of a human face by Dylan.[518] More of Dylan's artwork was revealed with the 1973 publication of his book Writings and Drawings.[519] The cover of Dylan's 1974 album Planet Waves again featured one of his paintings. In 1994 Random House published Drawn Blank, a book of Dylan's drawings.[520] In 2007, the first public exhibition of Dylan's paintings, The Drawn Blank Series, opened at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany;[521] it showcased more than 200 watercolors and gouaches made from the original drawings. The exhibition coincided with the publication of Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series.[521][522] From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, The Brazil Series.[523]
In July 2011, a leading contemporary art gallery, Gagosian Gallery, announced their representation of Dylan's paintings.[524] An exhibition of Dylan's art, The Asia Series, opened at the Gagosian Madison Avenue Gallery on September 20, displaying Dylan's paintings of scenes in China and the Far East.[525]The New York Times reported that "some fans and Dylanologists have raised questions about whether some of these paintings are based on the singer's own experiences and observations, or on photographs that are widely available and were not taken by Mr. Dylan". The Times pointed to close resemblances between Dylan's paintings and historic photos of Japan and China, and photos taken by Dmitri Kessel and Henri Cartier-Bresson.[526] Art critic Blake Gopnik has defended Dylan's artistic practice, arguing: "Ever since the birth of photography, painters have used it as the basis for their works: Edgar Degas and Édouard Vuillard and other favorite artists—even Edvard Munch—all took or used photos as sources for their art, sometimes barely altering them".[527] The Magnum photo agency confirmed that Dylan had licensed the reproduction rights of these photographs.[528]
Dylan's second show at the Gagosian Gallery, Revisionist Art, opened in November 2012. The show consisted of thirty paintings, transforming and satirizing popular magazines, including Playboy and Babytalk.[529][530] In February 2013, Dylan exhibited the New Orleans Series of paintings at the Palazzo Reale in Milan.[531] In August 2013, Britain's National Portrait Gallery in London hosted Dylan's first major UK exhibition, Face Value, featuring twelve pastel portraits.[532]
In November 2013, the Halcyon Gallery in London mounted Mood Swings, an exhibition in which Dylan displayed seven wrought iron gates he had made. In a statement released by the gallery, Dylan said,
I've been around iron all my life ever since I was a kid. I was born and raised in iron ore country, where you could breathe it and smell it every day. Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.[533][534]
In November 2016, the Halcyon Gallery featured a collection of drawings, watercolors and acrylic works by Dylan. The exhibition, The Beaten Path, depicted American landscapes and urban scenes, inspired by Dylan's travels across the US.[535] The show was reviewed by Vanity Fair and Asia Times Online.[536][537][538] In October 2018, the Halcyon Gallery mounted an exhibition of Dylan's drawings, Mondo Scripto. The works consisted of Dylan hand-written lyrics of his songs, with each song illustrated by a drawing.[539]
Retrospectrum, the largest retrospective of Dylan's visual art to date, consisting of over 250 works in a variety of media, debuted at the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai in 2019.[540] Building on the exhibition in China, a version of Retrospectrum, which includes a new series of paintings, "Deep Focus", drawn from film imagery,[541] opened at the Frost Art Museum in Miami on November 30, 2021.[542]
In 2024 an abstract painting by Dylan from the late 1960s sold at auction for approximately $200,000. The painting was originally given to a relative of the seller in exchange for an astrology chart.[546]
Dylan has published Tarantula, a work of prose poetry; Chronicles: Volume One, the first part of his memoirs; several books of the lyrics of his songs, and nine books of his art. Dylan's third full length book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, which contains 66 essays on songs by other artists, was published on November 1, 2022. Dylan has also been the subject of numerous biographies and critical studies.
^According to Dylan biographer Robert Shelton, Dylan first confided his change of name to his high school girlfriend, Echo Helstrom, in 1958, telling her that he had found a "great name, Bob Dillon". Shelton surmises that Dillon had two sources: Marshal Matt Dillon was the hero of the TV western Gunsmoke; Dillon was also the name of one of Hibbing's principal families. While Shelton was writing Dylan's biography in the 1960s, Dylan told him, "Straighten out in your book that I did not take my name from Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas's poetry is for people that aren't really satisfied in their bed, for people who dig masculine romance." At the University of Minnesota, Dylan told a few friends that Dillon was his mother's maiden name, which was untrue. He later told reporters that he had an uncle named Dillon. Shelton added that only when he reached New York in 1961 did he begin to spell his name "Dylan", by which time he was acquainted with the life and work of Dylan Thomas. Shelton (2011), pp. 44–45.
^On August 9, 1962, he legally changed his name from Robert Allen Zimmerman to Robert Dylan in the St. Louis County Court, Hibbing. His father, Abraham Zimmerman, was the witness at this legal event.(Heylin 2021, p. 138)
^In a May 1963 interview with Studs Terkel, Dylan broadened the meaning of the song, saying "the pellets of poison flooding the waters" refers to "the lies people are told on their radios and in their newspapers." Cott (2006), p. 8.
^The title "Spokesman of a Generation" was viewed by Dylan with disgust in later years. He came to feel it was a label the media had pinned on him, and in his autobiography, Chronicles, Dylan wrote: "The press never let up. Once in a while I would have to rise up and offer myself for an interview so they wouldn't beat the door down. Later an article would hit the streets with the headline 'Spokesman Denies That He's A Spokesman.' I felt like a piece of meat that someone had thrown to the dogs." Dylan (2004), p.119
^In an interview with Seth Goddard for Life (July 5, 2001) Ginsberg said Dylan's technique had been inspired by Jack Kerouac: "(Dylan) pulled Mexico City Blues from my hand and started reading it and I said, 'What do you know about that?' He said, 'Somebody handed it to me in '59 in St. Paul and it blew my mind.' So I said 'Why?' He said, 'It was the first poetry that spoke to me in my own language.' So those chains of flashing images you get in Dylan, like 'the motorcycle black Madonna two-wheeled gypsy queen and her silver studded phantom lover,' they're influenced by Kerouac's chains of flashing images and spontaneous writing, and that spreads out into the people". Schumacher, Michael, ed. (2017). First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg. U of Minnesota Press. pp. 322–. ISBN978-1-4529-4995-6.
^Later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose version Dylan acknowledged as definitive.
^According to Shelton, Dylan named the tour Rolling Thunder and then "appeared pleased when someone told him to native Americans, rolling thunder means speaking the truth." A Cherokeemedicine man named Rolling Thunder appeared on stage at Providence, RI, "stroking a feather in time to the music." Shelton (2011), p. 310.
^Dylan told Gilmore: "As far as Henry Timrod is concerned, have you even heard of him? Who's been reading him lately? And who's pushed him to the forefront? ... And if you think it's so easy to quote him and it can help your work, do it yourself and see how far you can get. Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff. It's an old thing—it's part of the tradition."
References
Citations
^ abSounes, p. 14, gives his Hebrew name as Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham
Rowley, Chris (1984). Blood on the Tracks: The Story of Bob Dylan. London: Proteus Books. p. 136. ISBN9780862761271. The petition for divorce stated that the "respondent, Robert Dylan ... "
^Rogovoy, Seth (September 27, 2021). "How Bob Dylan's greatest song changed music history — a deep-dive into an accidental masterpiece". The Forward. Archived from the original on September 28, 2021. Retrieved September 30, 2021. Bruce Springsteen, who was originally touted as a 'new Dylan' when he was signed to Columbia Records, Dylan's label, by the same label honcho, John Hammond, who signed Dylan, said this about 'Like a Rolling Stone': 'Dylan freed your mind and showed us that because the music was physical did not mean it was anti-intellect. He had the vision and talent to make a pop song so that it contained the whole world. He invented a new way a pop singer could sound, broke through the limitations of what a recording could achieve, and he changed the face of rock 'n' roll for ever and ever.'
^Heylin, Clinton, 2011, Bob Dylan: Behind The Shades, The 20th Anniversary Edition, pp. 646–652.
^The booklet by John Bauldie accompanying Dylan's The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991 (1991) says: "Dylan acknowledged the debt in 1978 to journalist Marc Rowland: Blowin' In The Wind' has always been a spiritual. I took it off a song called 'No More Auction Block'—that's a spiritual and 'Blowin' In The Wind follows the same feeling.'" pp. 6–8.
^Dylan had recorded "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues" for his Freewheelin album, but the song was replaced by later compositions, including "Masters of War". See Heylin (2000), pp. 114–115.
^Part of Dylan's speech went: "There's no black and white, left and right to me any more; there's only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I'm trying to go up without thinking of anything trivial such as politics...I got to admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don't know exactly where --what he thought he was doing, but I got to admit honestly that I too – I saw some of myself in him. I don't think it would have gone – I don't think it could go that far. But I got to stand up and say I saw things that he felt, in me – not to go that far and shoot. (Boos and hisses) You can boo..."; see, Shelton, pp. 200–205.
^A year earlier, Irwin Silber, editor of Sing Out!, had published an "Open Letter to Bob Dylan", criticizing Dylan's stepping away from political songwriting: "I saw at Newport how you had somehow lost contact with people. Some of the paraphernalia of fame were getting in your way." Sing Out!, November 1964, quoted in Shelton, p. 313. This letter has been mistakenly described as a response to Dylan's 1965 Newport appearance.
^Sing Out!, September 1965, quoted in Shelton, p. 313.
^ ab"The RS 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". Rolling Stone. December 9, 2004. Archived from the original(To see 2004 publishing date, click "Like a Rolling Stone" and scroll to the bottom of the resulting page) on October 25, 2006. Retrieved January 6, 2020.
^"The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." Dylan Interview, Playboy, March 1978; reprinted in Cott, Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews, p. 204.
^C. P. Lee wrote: "In Garrett's ghost-written memoir, The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, published within a year of Billy's death, he wrote that 'Billy's partner doubtless had a name which was his legal property, but he was so given to changing it that it is impossible to fix on the right one. Billy always called him Alias.'" Lee, pp. 66–67.
^Dylan Interview with Karen Hughes, The Dominion, Wellington, New Zealand, May 21, 1980; reprinted in Cott (ed.), Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews, pp. 275–278
^Scott Marshall wrote: "When Dylan sings that 'The sun is going down upon the sacred cow', it's safe to assume that the sacred cow here is the biblical metaphor for all false gods. For Dylan, the world will eventually know that there is only one God." Marshall, Restless Pilgrim, p. 103.
^This is a reprint of the article from The Wall Street Journal cited in next footnote."Did Bob Dylan Lift Lines From Dr Saga?". California State University, Dear Habermas. July 8, 2003. Archived from the original on July 24, 2008. Retrieved September 29, 2011.
^Dylan co-wrote Masked & Anonymous under the pseudonym Seregei Petrov, taken from an actor in the silent movie era; Larry Charles used the alias Rene Fontaine. Gray (2006), p. 453.
^"Dylan, Cadillac". XM Radio. October 22, 2007. Archived from the original on March 12, 2008. Retrieved September 16, 2008.
^Dylan also devoted an hour of his Theme Time Radio Hour to the theme of "the Cadillac". He first sang about the car in his 1963 nuclear war fantasy, "Talkin' World War III Blues", when he described it as a "good car to drive—after a war".
^McCormick, Neil (June 19, 2011). "Bob Dylan at Finsbury Park". London: Telegraph, UK. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022. Retrieved June 20, 2011.
^McCormick, Neil (April 27, 2009). "Bob Dylan – live review". The Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022. Retrieved May 2, 2009.
^Newman, Martin Alan (2021). Bob Dylan's Malibu. Hibbing, Minnesota: EDLIS Café Press. ISBN9781736972304.
^According to Robert Shelton, Dylan's teacher was "Rabbi Reuben Maier of the only synagogue on the Iron Range, Hibbing's Agudath Achim Synagogue". See Shelton, pp. 35–36.
^Fong-Torres, The Rolling Stone Interviews, Vol. 2, p. 424. Reproduced online:"Rolling Stone interview (1972)". Bob Dylan Roots. June 6, 1972. Archived from the original on April 21, 2008. Retrieved September 8, 2009.
^Lennon: "In Paris in 1964 was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all. Paul got the record (The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan) from a French DJ. For three weeks in Paris we didn't stop playing it. We all went potty about Dylan.": Beatles, (2000), The Beatles Anthology, pp. 112–114.
^McCartney: "I'm in awe of Bob ... He hit a period where people went, 'Oh, I don't like him now.' And I said, 'No. It's Bob Dylan.' To me, it's like Picasso, where people discuss his various periods, 'This was better than this, was better than this.' But I go, 'No. It's Picasso. It's all good.' "Siegel, Robert (June 27, 2007). "Paul McCartney interview". A.V. Club. Archived from the original on August 25, 2017. Retrieved August 25, 2015.
^Richardson, P. (2015). No Simple Highway. St. Martin's Press. p. 150. ISBN978-1-250-01062-9. Retrieved May 13, 2016. Dylan's influence on Garcia and Hunter was a given; both admired his songwriting and thought he gave rock music a modicum of respectability and authority. "He took [rock music] out of the realm of ignorant guys banging away on electrical instruments and put it somewhere else altogether," Garcia said later.
^"They asked me what effect Bob Dylan had on me," Townshend said. "That's like asking how I was influenced by being born." Flanagan, (1990), Written In My Soul, p. 88.
^Mitchell: “I can’t really pick just one because I like so many, but the Dylan song that really grabbed me was ‘Positively Fourth Street’ and the reason for that was the subject matter seemed at the time so unique. What it said to me, not only is this a good song, but it means that we can now sing about any kind of emotion. I don’t think there was a song before that that defined the kind of hurt expressed in that song. It widened the scope of possibilities for songwriters.”Hilburn, Robert (May 19, 1991). "The Impact of Dylan's Music 'Widened the Scope of Possibilities'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
^"Bob Dylan, I'll never be Bob Dylan. He's the master. If I'd like to be anyone, it's him. And he's a great writer, true to his music and done what he feels is the right thing to do for years and years and years. He's great. He's the one I look to." Time interview with Neil Young, September 28, 2005. Reproduced online : Tyrangiel, Josh (September 28, 2005). "Resurrection of Neil Young". Time. Archived from the original on December 10, 2005. Retrieved September 15, 2008.
^Bowie: "Dylan taught my generation that it was OK to write pop songs about your worst nightmares." Bowie paid homage with "Song for Bob Dylan" on the album Hunky Dory, 1971.
^In 2007, Ferry released an album of his versions of Dylan songs, Dylanesque
^Time Out interview with Patti Smith, May 16, 2007: "The people I revered in the late '60s and the early '70s, their motivation was to do great work and great work creates revolution. The motivation of Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan or The Who wasn't marketing, to get rich, or be a celebrity.""Patti Smith: interview". Time Out. May 16, 2007. Archived from the original on May 15, 2013. Retrieved September 8, 2008.
^"Dylan laid down the template for lyric, tune, seriousness, spirituality, depth of rock music"."Bob Dylan: His Legacy to Music". BBC News. May 29, 2001. Retrieved October 5, 2008.
^Bono:His voice has been a bee buzzing around my ear since I can remember being conscious. It's an unusual voice, not always soothing, sometimes nagging, but it reminds us of the possibilities for music and its place in the world...U2 kind of came from outer space, where punk was ground zero and you didn't admit to having roots. Bob scolded me, "You're sitting on all this stuff. You should check it out." As we fall over ourselves toward the fast and furious future, Dylan feels like the brakes, reminding us of stuff we might have lost, like our dignity.
^Mojo: What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Nick Cave: "I guess it's Slow Train Coming by Bob Dylan. That's a great record, full of mean-spirited spirituality. It's a genuinely nasty record, certainly the nastiest 'Christian' album I've ever come across." Mojo, January 1997
^Waits: "For a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and saw are to a carpenter." "It's Perfect Madness". The Guardian. March 20, 2005.
^Chuck D, in conversation with Edna Gundersen in USA Today, said of Dylan, “He is stencilled on a lot of aspects of my career. His ability to paint pictures with words and his concerns for society. He taught me to go against the grain.”
^Gilmore, Mikal (September 27, 2012). "Bob Dylan Unleashed". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on September 2, 2017. Retrieved January 11, 2013.
^ abMcCarthy, Todd (September 4, 2007). "I'm Not There". Variety. Archived from the original on August 20, 2013. Retrieved September 10, 2009.
^A. O. Scott (November 7, 2007). "I'm Not There (2007)". The New York Times. Retrieved September 10, 2009.
^Greil Marcus wrote: "There is nothing like 'I'm Not There' in the rest of the basement recordings, or anywhere else in Bob Dylan's career ... Very quickly the listener is drawn into the sickly embrace of the music, its wash of half-heard, half-formed words and the increasing bitterness and despair behind them. Words are floated together in a dyslexia that is music itself – a dyslexia that seems to prove the claims of music over words, to see just how little words can achieve." See Marcus, p. 198.
^Hoberman, J. (November 20, 2007). "Like A Complete Unknown". The Village Voice. Archived from the original on September 21, 2008. Retrieved October 5, 2008.
^Drawn Blank, Random House (November 15, 1994); Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, Prestel (March 31, 2008); Bob Dylan: The Brazil Series, Prestel (October 25, 2010); Bob Dylan: The Asia Series, Gagosian Gallery (October 12, 2011); Revisionist Art: Thirty Works by Bob Dylan, Harry N. Abrams (March 26, 2013); Bob Dylan: Face Value, National Portrait Gallery (February 28, 2014); The Beaten Path, Halcyon Gallery (November 5, 2016); Mondo Scripto, Halcyon Gallery, (October 1, 2018); Bob Dylan: Retrospectrum, Skira Editore, (March 1, 2023)
Hajdu, David (2001). Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina. Farrar Straus Giroux. ISBN978-0-374-28199-1.
Harvey, Todd (2001). The Formative Dylan: Transmission & Stylistic Influences, 1961–1963. The Scarecrow Press. ISBN978-0-8108-4115-4.
Hedin, Benjamin, ed. (2004). Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader. W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN978-0-393-32742-7.
Helm, Levon (2000). This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band. Stephen Davis. a capella. ISBN978-1-55652-405-9.
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