He was named one of Time Magazine's hundred most important people of the twentieth century along with such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, and James Joyce. He has won a Pulitzer Prize, an honorary doctorate from Princeton, a National Medal of the Arts, a slew of Grammys, a Golden Globe and an Oscar. He has been nominated repeatedly for the Nobel Prize, sparking debate as to whether or not song lyrics, no matter how narrative, qualify for literature's most prestigious award.
Bob Dylan is a towering figure in the music world and a master of reinvention. Throughout his five-decade career, the singer-songwriter has molted from folkie to country singer to bluesman to rocker. He both found and then lost Jesus. Revolutionized our perception of what a singing voice should sound like. He defied popular music conventions with lyrics that were political, social, philosophical and inspired by literature, and songs that went far beyond the three-minute mark. At the height of his popularity in the 1960s, he inspired The Beatles' shift toward introspective songwriting. Dylan is a poet and a painter, has been hailed as a prophet, a mystic, and the voice of a generation. He has even earned his own adjective, "Dylanesque."
Bob Dylan turned 70 this past Tuesday. Much has been written on this brilliant, mercurial songwriter over the last half century—including articles, biographies, cultural studies, dissertations, monographs, coffee-table books, even the scholarly "Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan"—and even more words were generated this week with Dylan now a septuagenarian that I needn't add my puny voice to the choir, but genius is an irresistible topic. A gargantuan one, too, as I soon discovered.
Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24, 1941, to Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice Stone. He lived in Duluth until age six, when his father contracted polio and the family moved to a middle-class neighborhood in nearby Hibbing. As a child, Bob spent considerable time listening to the radio, first to blues and country stations and later, to early rock and roll. He learned to play piano and harmonica by age ten and at fourteen, taught himself to play acoustic guitar. His purchased his first electric guitar from Sears Roebuck.
As a teenager, Zimmerman listened to everyone from Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie to Roy Orbison and Chuck Berry. He formed several bands while still in high school, among them the short-lived group The Shadow Blasters and the cover band known as The Golden Chords. After graduating high school in 1959, Zimmerman moved to Minneapolis to attend the University of Minnesota, where he studied art.
While in college Zimmerman became part of the burgeoning bohemian scene and developed an interest in more traditional music. He traded his electric guitar for an acoustic, rock 'n' roll for folk. Dylan explains the pull folk music had on him saying that, "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."
Zimmerman began performing folk songs in coffeehouses around campus under the name Bob Dylan, a surname he says he adopted from the poet Dylan Thomas. After reading Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory, Dylan left Minneapolis in January 1961 and headed for Greenwich Village to visit Guthrie, who was laid up in a New Jersey hospital dying of Huntington's chorea. Dylan became part of the folk and blues community on Bleecker Street and in April of that year, opened for blues great John Lee Hooker at Gerde's Folk City. Five months later, after playing harmonica on a session for folk singer Carolyn Hester, producer John Hammond signed him to a contract with Columbia Records.
Dylan's eponymous debut, released in March 1962, was a collection of folk and blues standards that included only two original songs. The album fell flat. Over the remainder of that year, however, Dylan began writing a fair amount of original material, much of which was political in nature. His sophomore release, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, dropped in May 1963 and, in contrast to his first record, was almost entirely self-composed. The album was an immediate success and included one of his most famous songs, "Blowin' in the Wind." Many performers of the day began covering songs from the record, including Peter, Paul and Mary, who made "Blowin' in the Wind" a huge pop hit that summer. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan climbed to #22 on the US charts and to #1 in the UK, and roundly announced Dylan's arrival on the folk scene.
The prolific songwriter was releasing music at the breakneck pace of nearly an album a year, sometimes two, in the '60s. The poetically inspired The Times They Are a-Changin' dropped in January 1964 and was followed up six months later with the more bluesy Another Side of Bob Dylan, an album that marked a departure from his earlier political work. This didn't sit well with the folkies, who were further disappointed when an electric Dylan performed songs that were more personal, and less protest, in nature at the Newport Folk Festival that summer.
Bringing it All Back Home and his first full-fledged rock 'n' roll album Highway 61 Revisited followed in 1965, and were released within five months of one another. The latter record gave Dylan his breakthrough hit "Like a Rolling Stone," which was a milestone in his career and instantly elevated him to iconic status. The song has been covered by everyone from Jimi Hendrix to The Stones and Green Day.
Up next was Dylan's seventh studio album, Blonde on Blonde, which featured members of Ronnie Hawkins' backing band The Hawks, who would later become The Band. Released in June 1966, the double album spawned the hit "Just Like a Woman." A month after the album's release, Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident outside his home in Woodstock, New York, suffering a concussion and injuries to his neck vertebrae. Details of the accident remain elusive—he was reportedly in critical condition for a week and had amnesia—and some biographers have gone so far as to question its severity. After the accident, Dylan became a recluse, retreating to his home in Woodstock where he lived the quiet life of a family man. He would not tour again for another eight years.
While he was in seclusion, rock 'n' roll had become heavier and artier in the wake of the psychedelic revolution. Dylan returned in December 1967 with the album John Wesley Harding. Filled with Biblical imagery and possessing a gentle country ambience, the record was a pleasant surprise. It peaked at #2 in the US and at #1 in the UK. Dylan closed out the decade with the decidedly country album Nashville Skyline. Released in April 1969, the album was recorded in Nashville with several of the country industry's top session men and popped the Top 10 single, "Lay Lady Lay."
Dylan entered a creatively restless period at the start of the new decade. He kept to the pace of releasing a record or two almost yearly, beginning in 1970 with Self Portrait. The album—a hodgepodge of covers, live tracks, re-interpretations, and new songs that were sung in an affected country crooning voice—received extremely negative reviews and was considered to be far below the standards he'd set in the 1960s. Self Portrait was followed up four months later with New Morning. Dylan returned to his much more familiar nasally singing voice on the album, thus returning the singer to the good graces of both critics and fans alike.
During the '70s, Dylan made some high profile concert appearances including his performance at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971. He launched a gigantic tour in 1975 that was loosely based on traveling medicine shows. Dubbed the Rolling Thunder Revue, the tour played on and off for the next year and included a revolving lineup of stellar supporting musicians like Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Mick Ronson, Roger McGuinn, and poet Allen Ginsberg. Dylan also published a book of poetry and prose called Tarantula and branched out into acting in the early '70s, playing a small role in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid as Alias, a printer's apprentice who takes up with the Kid. He wrote the soundtrack for the film as well, which featured "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," his biggest hit since "Lay Lady Lay." Dylan continued to dabble in film and released the surrealist Renaldo and Clara in 1978. Directed by and starring Dylan and his inner circle from the Rolling Thunder Tour, the ponderous four-hour movie met with disastrous reviews.
When Dylan's contract was up with Columbia Records in 1973, he decided to move to David Geffen's fledgling Asylum label. Columbia didn't take kindly to the move and retaliated with a collection of outtakes from the Self Portrait and New Morning sessions titled Dylan. The album received very poor reviews. Although Dylan's stay with Asylum was brief, it produced his first #1 album, Plant Waves, in 1974. The Band supported Dylan on Planet Waves and its accompanying tour, which became the most successful tour in rock 'n' roll history. It was captured on the double live album, Before the Flood.
Dylan returned to Columbia, where he remains to this day, and released his second consecutive #1 album, 1975s Blood on the Tracks, which was inspired in part by the demise of his marriage. The Basement Tapes, recorded with The Band while Dylan was sequestered at home following his motorcycle accident, came out that same year. Desire followed in 1976, and Street Legal in 1978.
Dylan closed out the '70s with the announcement that he was a born-again Christian. He launched a series of Christian albums that began with 1979s Slow Train Coming. Though the reviews were mixed, the album peaked at #3 and went platinum. His supporting tour featured only his new religious material, which baffled many of his longtime fans. Two other religious albums—Saved (1980) and Shot of Love (1981)—followed. Both were reviewed poorly.
After a 1982 visit to Israel, and with the 1983 release of the more secular Infidels, Dylan's fling with Christianity appeared to have run its course. The album was warmly received and gained attention for its focus on the more personal themes of love and loss as well as environmental and geopolitical issues.
Dylan returned to performing in 1984 and released the live album Real Live at the end of the year. Empire Burlesque followed in 1985, but its odd mix of dance tracks and rock 'n' roll won few fans. However, the five-album/triple-disc retrospective box set Biograph appeared that same year to great acclaim. In 1986, Dylan hit the road with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers for a successful and acclaimed tour, but his album that year, Knocked Out Loaded, was poorly received. The following year, he toured with The Grateful Dead as his backup band. Two years later, the souvenir album Dylan & The Dead was released.
Toward the end of the '80s, Dylan embarked on what became known as "The Never Ending Tour," a constant stream of shows that ran on and off into the late '90s. He became part of a collaboration with George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne known as The Traveling Wilburys and continued to put out music on his own. Dylan released the cover-heavy Down in the Groove in 1988, and followed up with Oh Mercy in 1989. That record, produced by Daniel Lanois, was hailed as a triumph for Dylan after a string of lackluster albums.
Throughout the coming decades, Dylan divided his time between live concerts, painting, and studio projects. He continued to release music regularly to varying reception. He scored an unexpected hit in 1997 with the release of Time Out of Mind, his first album of original material in seven years. The album debuted in the Top 10 and eventually went platinum. It also earned Dylan three Grammy Awards for Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk Album, and Best Male Rock Vocal. It was followed up in 2001 with another album of original material, Love and Theft, which went gold. Dylan opted to self-produce his next studio album, Modern Times, which topped the Billboard charts in 2006 and went platinum in both the US and UK. It was his third consecutive album to receive praise from critics and fans.
Bob Dylan recently made headlines for his concerts in China. Many are accusing him of having sold out to Chinese authorities who insisted on censoring his setlist. And in newly released audio from a March 1966 interview conducted during his legendary 1966 electric tour, Dylan claims to have kicked a $25-a-day heroin habit. The revelation is being met with some amount of skepticism, however, as Dylan has a long history of feeding fabrications to journalists.
There is a staggering amount of information available on Bob Dylan. I have barely scratched the surface of his considerable, incalculable contributions to music. If you are so inclined, I encourage you to dig deeper into the songwriter's extraordinary life through the host of documentaries and biographies available. The latest bio to join the pack, The Ballad of Bob Dylan by award-winning poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein, was just released this month in honor of Dylan's birthday.
