This article is about the musician. For his debut album, seeBob Dylan (album).
This articlemay betoo long to read and navigate comfortably. When this tag was added, itsreadable prose size was almost 15,000 words. Considersplitting content into sub-articles,condensing it, or addingsubheadings. Please discuss this issue on the article'stalk page.(October 2025)
Bob Dylan (legallyRobert Dylan;[3] bornRobert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time,[4][5][6] Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 68-year career. With an estimated 125 million records sold worldwide,[7] he is one of thebest-selling musicians.[8] Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to thefolk music of the early 1960s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry".[6] His lyrics incorporated political, social, and philosophical influences, defyingpop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoningcounterculture.[9]
Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman (hisHebrew name isShabtai Zisl ben Avraham)[1][14][15] in St. Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, inDuluth, Minnesota.[16] Dylan's paternal grandparents, Anna Kirghiz and Zigman Zimmerman, emigrated fromOdessa in theRussian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States after the1905 pogroms against Jews. His maternal grandparents, Florence and Ben Stone, wereLithuanian Jews who had arrived in the US in 1902.[17] Dylan wrote that his paternal grandmother's family was originally from theKağızman District ofKars Province, northeastern Turkey.[18]
Dylan's father Abram Zimmerman and his mother Beatrice "Beatty" Stone were part of a small, close-knit Jewish community.[19][20][21] They lived in Duluth until Dylan was six, when his father contractedpolio and the family returned to his mother's hometown ofHibbing, where they lived for the rest of Dylan's childhood, and his father and paternal uncles ran a furniture and appliance store.[21][22]
In the early 1950s, Dylan listened to theGrand Ole Opry radio show and heard the songs ofHank Williams. He later wrote: "The sound of his voice went through me like an electric rod."[23] Dylan was also impressed by the delivery ofJohnnie 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."[24] As a teenager, Dylan heardrock and roll on radio stations broadcasting fromShreveport andLittle Rock.[25]
Dylan formed several bands while attendingHibbing High School. In the Golden Chords, he performedcovers of songs byLittle Richard[26] andElvis Presley.[27] Their performance ofDanny & the Juniors' "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone.[28] On January 31, 1959, 17-year-old Dylan sawBuddy Holly perform at theDuluth Armory, four days beforeHolly's fatal plane crash. Dylan was electrified, and in his Nobel Prize lecture, he explained: "Buddy wrote songs – songs that had beautiful melodies and imaginative verses. And he sang great – sang in more than a few voices. He was the archetype. Everything I wasn't and wanted to be."[29]
In 1959, Dylan's high school yearbook carried the caption "Robert Zimmerman: to join 'Little Richard'".[26][30] That year, as Elston Gunnn, he performed twice withBobby Vee, playing piano and clapping.[31][32][33] In September 1959, Dylan enrolled at theUniversity of Minnesota.[34] Living at the Jewish-centric fraternitySigma Alpha Mu house, Dylan began to perform at the Ten O'Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse near campus, and became involved in theDinkytown folk music circuit.[35][36] His focus on rock and roll gave way toAmerican 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 surnameDillon before unexpectedly seeing poems byDylan Thomas, and deciding to spell his name that way.[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]
Career
1960–1962: Move to New York and stardom
Dylan dropped out of college in May 1960 at the end of his first year. In January 1961, he traveled to New York City to perform and to visit his musical idolWoody Guthrie[41] atGreystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey.[42] Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and influenced his early performances. "The songs themselves had the infinite sweep of humanity in them," Dylan wrote inChronicles: Volume One, his 2004 memoir. Guthrie "was the true voice of the American spirit. I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie's greatest disciple."[43] He wrote that his early songwriting was also shaped byRobert Johnson'sblues[44] and what he called the "architectural forms" ofHank Williams'scountry songs.[23]
On August 9, 1962, Dylan legally changed his name to Robert Dylan in theSt. Louis County Court, Hibbing. His father, Abraham Zimmerman, was the witness.[52] That month, Dylan signed a management contract withAlbert Grossman.[53] Grossman remained Dylan's manager until 1970, and was known for his sometimes confrontational personality and protective loyalty.[54] Dylan said, "He was kind of like aColonel Tom Parker figure ... you could smell him coming."[36] Tension between Grossman and John Hammond led to Hammond's suggesting that Dylan work with the jazz producerTom Wilson, who produced several tracks for Dylan's second album without receiving formal credit. Wilson also produced Dylan's next three albums.[55][56]
With the release of his second album,The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in May 1963, Dylan began to make his name as a singer-songwriter. Many of the songs wereprotest songs, inspired by Guthrie and influenced byPete Seeger's passion for topical songs.[60] "Oxford Town" was an account ofJames Meredith's ordeal as the first Black student at theUniversity of Mississippi.[61] The album's first song, "Blowin' in the Wind", partly derived its melody from the traditionalslave song "No More Auction Block",[62] while its lyrics called for the end of war and injustice. The song was widely recorded by other artists and became a hit forPeter, Paul, and Mary.[63] "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" was based on the folk ballad "Lord Randall". With its apocalyptic premonitions, the song gained resonance when theCuban Missile Crisis occurred a month after Dylan began performing it.[64][65][a 2] Both songs marked a new direction in songwriting, blending astream-of-consciousness,imagist lyrical attack with traditional folk form.[66] Dylan's topical songs led to his being viewed as more than just a songwriter.Janet Maslin wrote ofFreewheelin':
These were the songs that established [Dylan] as the voice of his generation —someone who implicitly understood how concerned young Americans felt aboutnuclear disarmament and the growingcivil rights movement: his mixture of moral authority and nonconformity was perhaps the most timely of his attributes.[67][a 3]
Freewheelin' also included love songs and surrealtalking blues. Humor was an important part of Dylan's persona,[68] and the range of material on the album impressed listeners, includingthe Beatles.George Harrison said: "We just played it, just wore it out. The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude — it was incredibly original and wonderful."[69]
The rough edge of Dylan's singing unsettled some, but attracted others. The authorJoyce 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."[70] Many early Dylan songs reached the public through more palatable versions by other performers, such asJoan Baez, who became Dylan's advocate and lover.[71] Baez was influential in bringing Dylan to prominence by recording several of his early songs and inviting him on stage during her concerts.[72] "Mixed-Up Confusion", recorded during theFreewheelin' sessions with a backing band, was released as Dylan's first single in December 1962, but swiftly withdrawn. In contrast to the mostly solo acoustic performances on the album, the single showed a willingness to experiment with arockabilly sound.Cameron Crowe described it as "a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards Elvis Presley andSun Records".[73]
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 expressed Dylan's angry response to a hostile profile published inNewsweek.[79] As biographerClinton Heylin puts it, the profile wrote about "the way the Bar Mitzvah boy from Hibbing, Minnesota, had reinvented himself as the prince of protest", emphasising his birth name, his attendance at the University of Minnesota, and his close relationship with his parents from whom he claimed to be estranged.[79][80] 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".[81]
By the end of 1963, Dylan felt manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements.[82] Accepting the "Tom Paine Award" from theEmergency Civil Liberties Committee three weeks after theassassination 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.[83]
Johnny Cash supported Dylan in his refusal to conform when he wrote a letter toBroadside magazine in March 1964, expressing admiration for Dylan's writing and ending with the injunction: "Shut up! And let him sing!"[84] When Cash died in 2003, Dylan remembered: "Johnny wrote the magazine saying to shut up and let me sing, that I knew what I was doing. This was before I had ever met him, and the letter meant the world to me."[85][86] Cash and Dylan met for the first time at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1964 and became friends.[87]
In late 1964 and early 1965, Dylan moved from folk songwriter tofolk-rock pop-music star. His jeans and work shirts were replaced by aCarnaby Street wardrobe, sunglasses day and 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 ofLeicester Square. He looks like an undernourishedcockatoo."[91] Dylan began to spar with interviewers. While onLes Crane's television show, asked about a movie he planned, he told Crane it would be a "cowboy horror movie". Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied, "No, I play my mother."[92]
From April 30 to May 10, 1965, Dylan played aneight-concert tour in England. The tour would be memorialized inDont Look Back,D. A. Pennebaker's 1967cinéma vérité presentation.[101] The movie opens with an earlymusic video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in which Dylan, instead oflipsynching the lyrics, dropped cue cards containing key words to the ground. Pennebaker said the sequence was Dylan's idea; it has been imitated in music videos and advertisements.[102]
On July 25, 1965, headlining theNewport Folk Festival, Dylan performed his first electric set since high school with apickup group featuringMike Bloomfield on guitar andAl Kooper on organ.[103] Dylan had appeared at Newport in 1963 and 1964, but in 1965 he 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."[104] An alternative account claims audience members were upset by poor sound and a short set.[105][106]
Dylan's performance provoked a hostile response from the folk music establishment.[107][108] In the September issue ofSing 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".[109] 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,[110] and have been interpreted as Dylan's put-down of former friends from the folk community he had known in clubs alongWest 4th Street.[111]
Dylan's 1965 hit single, which appeared on the albumHighway 61 Revisited. In 2004, it was chosen as the greatest song of all time byRolling Stone magazine.[112]
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".[10][112]Bruce Springsteen recalled first hearing the song: "that snare shot sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind."[113] The song opened Dylan's next album,Highway 61 Revisited, named after the road that led from Dylan's Minnesota to the musical hotbed ofNew Orleans.[114] 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,[115] 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 aFellini-esque parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge cast of celebrated characters".[116] PoetPhilip Larkin, who also reviewed jazz forThe Daily Telegraph, wrote "I'm afraid I poached Bob Dylan'sHighway 61 Revisited (CBS) out of curiosity and found myself well rewarded. Dylan's cawing, derisive voice is probably well suited to his material."[117]
In support of the album, Dylan was booked for two US concerts with Al Kooper andHarvey Brooks from his studio crew andRobbie Robertson andLevon Helm, former members ofRonnie Hawkins's backing bandthe Hawks.[118] On August 28 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the group was heckled by an audience still annoyed by Dylan's electric sound, though their reception on September 3 at theHollywood Bowl was more favorable.[119]
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 asthe Band.[120] While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences, their studio efforts floundered. ProducerBob Johnston persuaded Dylan to record inNashville 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.[121] The Nashville sessions produced the double albumBlonde on Blonde (1966), featuring what Dylan called "that thin wild mercury sound".[122] 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.[123]
On November 22, 1965, Dylan quietly married 25-year-old former modelSara Lownds.[124] Some of Dylan's friends, including Ramblin' Jack Elliott, say that, immediately after the event, Dylan denied he was married.[124] WriterNora Ephron made the news public in theNew York Post in February 1966 with the headline "Hush! Bob Dylan is wed".[125]
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 onacoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second, backed by the Hawks, he played electrically amplified music. This contrast provoked many fans, who jeered andslow clapped.[126] The tour culminated in a raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the ManchesterFree Trade Hall in England on May 17, 1966.[127] 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!"[128]
Dylan was described as exhausted and behaving as if "he was on some kind of death trip" during his 1966 tour.[129] D. A. Pennebaker, the filmmaker accompanying the tour, described Dylan as "taking a lot of amphetamine and who-knows-what-else".[130] In a 1969 interview withJann 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?"[131]
On July 29, 1966, Dylan crashed his motorcycle, aTriumph Tiger 100, near his home inWoodstock, New York. Dylan said he broke severalvertebrae in his neck.[132] The circumstances of the accident are unclear since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized.[132][133] Dylan's biographers have written that the crash offered him the chance to escape the pressures around him.[132][134] 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."[135] He made very few public appearances, and did not tour again for almost eight years.[133][136]
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.[137] The film, titledEat the Document onbootleg copies, has since been screened at a few film festivals.[138] Secluded from public gaze, Dylan recordedover 100 songs during 1967 at his Woodstock home and in the basement of the Hawks' nearby house, "Big Pink".[139] These songs were initially offered as demos for other artists to record and were hits forJulie Driscoll, the Byrds, and Manfred Mann. The public heard these recordings whenGreat 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.[140] Columbia released a Basement selection in 1975 asThe Basement Tapes.
Nashville Skyline (1969), featured Nashville musicians, a mellow-voiced Dylan, a duet withJohnny Cash and the single "Lay Lady Lay".[145]Variety wrote, "Dylan is definitely doing something that can be called singing. Somehow he has managed to add an octave to his range."[146] 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.[147][148] The album influenced the nascent genre ofcountry rock.[6] Dylan traveled to England to top the bill at theIsle of Wight Festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at theWoodstock Festival closer to home.[149]
Tarantula, a freeform book of prose-poetry, had been written by Dylan during a creative burst in 1964–65.[157] Dylan shelved his book for several years, apparently uncertain of its status,[158] until he suddenly informedMacmillan at the end of 1970 that the time had come to publish it.[159] The book attracted negative reviews but later critics have suggested its affinities withFinnegans Wake andA Season in Hell.[160]
In 1972, Dylan joinedSam Peckinpah's filmPat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providingthe soundtrack and playing "Alias", a member of Billy's gang.[164] Despite the film's failure at the box office, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" became one of Dylan's most covered songs.[165][166] That same year, Dylan protested the move to deportJohn Lennon andYoko Ono, who had been convicted formarijuana possession, by sending a letter to the USImmigration 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!"[167]
Bob Dylan andthe Band commenced their 1974 tour in Chicago on January 3.[168]
Dylan began 1973 by signing with a new label,David Geffen'sAsylum Records, when his contract with Columbia Records expired.[169] 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.[170] The album included two versions of"Forever Young", which became one of his most popular songs.[171] As one critic described it, the song projected "something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke of the father in Dylan",[172] and Dylan said "I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental".[37] Columbia Records simultaneously releasedDylan, a collection of studio outtakes, widely interpreted as a churlish response to Dylan's signing with a rival record label.[173]
In January 1974, Dylan, backed by the Band, embarked on aNorth 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 toClive Davis, Columbia Records sent word they "will spare nothing to bring Dylan back into the fold".[174] Dylan had second thoughts about Asylum, unhappy that Geffen had sold only 600,000 copies ofPlanet Waves despite millions of unfulfilled ticket requests for the 1974 tour;[175] he returned to Columbia Records, which reissued his two Asylum albums.[176]
Dylan said of the opening song fromBlood 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 albumBlood on the Tracks in September 1974.[177][178] Dylan delayed the album's release and re-recorded half the songs atSound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production assistance from his brother, David Zimmerman.[179] Released in early 1975,Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. InNME,Nick Kent described the "accompaniments" as "often so trashy they sound like mere practice takes".[180] InRolling Stone,Jon Landau wrote that "the record has been made with typical shoddiness".[180] Over the years critics came to see it as one of Dylan's masterpieces. InSalon, 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.[181]
In the middle of 1975, Dylan championed boxerRubin "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 USBillboard chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, theRolling Thunder Revue.[a 6][182] 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,[183][184]David Mansfield,Roger McGuinn,Mick Ronson,Ronee Blakely, Joan Baez andScarlet Rivera, whom Dylan discovered walking down the street, her violin case on her back.[185] The tour encompassed the January 1976 release of the albumDesire. Many ofDesire's songs featuring atravelogue-like narrative style, influenced by Dylan's new collaborator, playwrightJacques Levy.[186][187] The 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special,Hard Rain, and the LPHard Rain.
Dylan performing in theDe Kuip Stadium, Rotterdam, June 23, 1978
The 1975 tour with the Revue provided the backdrop to Dylan's filmRenaldo and Clara, a sprawling narrative mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Actor and playwrightSam 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.[188][189] Later in the year, a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, was more widely released.[190] In November 1976, Dylan appeared at the Band's farewell concert withEric 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.[191]In 1978, Dylan embarked on ayear-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 albumBob Dylan at Budokan.[192] Reviews were mixed.Robert Christgau awarded the album a C+ rating,[193] while Janet Maslin defended it: "These latest live versions of his old songs have the effect of liberating Bob Dylan from the originals".[194] When Dylan brought the tour to the US in September 1978, the press described the look and sound as a "Las Vegas Tour".[195] The 1978 tour grossed more than $20 million, and Dylan told theLos 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."[192] In April and May 1978, Dylan took the same band and vocalists into Rundown Studios inSanta Monica, California, to record an album of new material,Street-Legal.[196] It was described byMichael Gray as "afterBlood On The Tracks, arguably Dylan's best record of the 1970s: a crucial album documenting a crucial period in Dylan's own life".[197] 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.[198][199]
Dylan took five months off at the beginning of 1979 to attend Bible school.[37] His subsequent albumSlow Train Coming reached No. 3 on the USBillboard 200 chart and included thisGrammy-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.[205]
Dylan's Christianity was unpopular with some fans and musicians.[206] John Lennon, shortly beforebeing murdered, recorded "Serve Yourself" in response to "Gotta Serve Somebody".[207] In 1981,Stephen Holden wrote inThe 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".[208]
1980–1989: Career fluctuations
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".[209] His third Christian album wasShot of Love (1981).[210] The album featured his first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with Christian songs. The lyrics of"Every Grain of Sand" recallWilliam Blake's "Auguries of Innocence".[211]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'."[212]
Between July 1984 and March 1985, Dylan recordedEmpire Burlesque.[216]Arthur Baker, who had remixed hits for Bruce Springsteen andCyndi 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".[216] In 1985 Dylan sang onUSA for Africa's famine relief single "We Are the World". He also joinedArtists United Against Apartheid, providing vocals for their single "Sun City".[217] On July 13, 1985, he appeared at theLive Aid concert atJFK Stadium, Philadelphia. Backed byKeith Richards andRonnie 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".[218] His remarks were widely criticized as inappropriate, but inspiredWillie Nelson to organize a concert,Farm Aid, to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.[219]
In October 1985, Dylan releasedBiograph, 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."[220]Biograph also contained liner notes byCameron Crowe in which Dylan discussed the origins of some of his songs.[221]
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.[223]
It was the first Dylan album since his 1962 debut to fail to make the Top 50.[224] Some critics have called the song Dylan co-wrote with Shepard, "Brownsville Girl", a masterpiece.[225]
In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured withTom Petty and the Heartbreakers, sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. Dylan also toured with theGrateful Dead in 1987, resulting in the live albumDylan & The Dead, which received negative reviews; Erlewine said it was "quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead".[226] Dylan initiated what came to be called theNever Ending Tour on June 7, 1988, performing with a back-up band featuring guitaristG. E. Smith. Dylan would continue to tour with a small, changing band for the next 30 years.[227] In 1987, Dylan starred inRichard Marquand's movieHearts 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).[228] Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack—"Night After Night", and "Had a Dream About You, Baby", as well as a cover ofJohn Hiatt's "The Usual". The film was a critical and commercial flop.[229]
Dylan in Barcelona, Spain, 1984
Dylan was inducted into theRock 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".[113]Down in the Groove (1988) sold even more poorly thanKnocked Out Loaded.[230] 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."[231] The critical and commercial disappointment of that album was swiftly followed by the success of theTraveling Wilburys, asupergroup Dylan co-founded with George Harrison,Jeff Lynne,Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. In late 1988, theirTraveling Wilburys Vol. 1 reached number three on the US albums chart,[230] featuring songs described as Dylan's most accessible in years.[232] Despite Orbison's death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990,Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.[233]
Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note withOh Mercy, produced byDaniel 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."[231] "Most of the Time", a lost-love composition, was prominently featured in the filmHigh 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.[234] The religious imagery of"Ring Them Bells" struck some critics as a re-affirmation of faith.[235]
1990–1999: Return to folk music and resurgence
Dylan's 1990s began withUnder the Red Sky (1990), an about-face from the seriousOh 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 andCarolyn Dennis, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, who was four.[236] Musicians on the album included George Harrison,Slash,David Crosby,Bruce Hornsby,Stevie Ray Vaughan, andElton John. The record received negative reviews and sold poorly.[237] In 1990 and 1991 Dylan was described by his biographers as drinking heavily, impairing his performances on stage.[238][239] In an interview withRolling 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 withanything I do, really".[240]
Defilement and remorse were themes Dylan addressed when he received aGrammy Lifetime Achievement Award fromJack Nicholson in February 1991.[241] The event coincided with the start of theGulf War and Dylan played "Masters of War";Rolling Stone called his performance "almost unintelligible".[242] 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'".[241][243] This was a paraphrase of 19th-century Orthodox RabbiSamson Raphael Hirsch's commentary on Psalm 27.[244] On October 16, 1992, the thirtieth anniversary of Dylan's debut album was celebrated with a concert atMadison Square Garden, christened "Bobfest" by Neil Young and featuringJohn Mellencamp,Stevie Wonder,Lou Reed,Eddie Vedder, Dylan and others. It was recorded as the live albumThe 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration.[242]
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) andWorld Gone Wrong (1993), backed solely by his acoustic guitar.[245] Many critics and fans noted the quiet beauty of the song "Lone Pilgrim",[246] written by a 19th-century teacher. In August 1994, he played atWoodstock '94;Rolling Stone called his performance "triumphant".[242] In November, Dylan recorded two live shows forMTV Unplugged. He said his wish to perform traditional songs was overruled bySony executives who insisted on hits.[247] The resulting album,MTV Unplugged, included"John Brown", an unreleased 1962 song about how enthusiasm for war ends in mutilation and disillusionment.[248]
Dylan performs during the 1996 Lida Festival inStockholm.
With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed in on his Minnesota ranch,[249] Dylan booked recording time with Daniel Lanois at Miami'sCriteria Studios in January 1997. The subsequent recording sessions were, by some accounts, fraught with musical tension.[250] Before the album's release Dylan was hospitalized with life-threateningpericarditis, brought on byhistoplasmosis. 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".[251] He was back on the road by mid-year, and performed beforePope John Paul II at the World Eucharistic Conference inBologna, Italy. The Pope treated the audience of 200,000 to ahomily based on Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind".[252]
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".[253] "Cold Irons Bound" won Dylan another Grammy For Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and the album won him his firstGrammy Award for Album of the Year.[254] The album's first single, "Not Dark Yet", has been called one of Dylan's best songs[255] and "Make You Feel My Love" was covered byBilly Joel,Garth Brooks,Adele and others. Elvis Costello said "I think it might be the best record he's made."[256]
In 2004, Dylan published the first part of his memoir,Chronicles: Volume One. Confounding expectations,[269] 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 albumsNew Morning (1970) andOh Mercy (1989). The book reached number two onThe New York Times' Hardcover Non-Fiction bestseller list in December 2004 and was nominated for aNational Book Award.[270]
Critics noted thatChronicles contained many examples of pastiche and borrowing; sources includedTime magazine[271] and the novels ofJack London.[272]BiographerClinton 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."[273]
Dylan's career as a radio presenter began on May 3, 2006, with his weekly program,Theme Time Radio Hour, onXM Satellite Radio. He played songs with a common theme, such as "Weather", "Weddings", "Dance" and "Dreams".[278][279] Dylan's records ranged fromMuddy Waters toPrince,L.L. Cool J tothe Streets. Dylan's show was praised for the breadth of his musical selections[280] and for his jokes, stories and eclectic references.[281][282] 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".[283]
Dylan, the Spectrum, 2007
Dylan releasedModern Times in August 2006. Despite some coarsening of Dylan's voice (a critic forThe Guardian characterized his singing on the album as "a catarrhal death rattle"[284]) most reviewers praised the album, and many described it as the final installment of a successful trilogy, encompassingTime Out of Mind and"Love and Theft".[285]Modern Times entered the US charts at number one, making it Dylan's first album to reach that position since 1976'sDesire.[286]The New York Times published an article exploring similarities between some of Dylan's lyrics inModern Times and the work of theCivil War poetHenry Timrod.[287]Modern Times won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album and Dylan wonBest Solo Rock Vocal Performance for "Someday Baby".[288]Modern Times was named Album of the Year byRolling Stone[289] andUncut.[290] On the same day thatModern Times was released, theiTunes Music Store releasedBob Dylan: The Collection, a digital box set containing all of his albums (773 tracks), along with 42 rare and unreleased tracks.[291]
Bob Dylan performs at Air Canada Centre, Toronto, November 7, 2006.
On October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released the triple CD retrospectiveDylan, anthologizing his entire career under theDylan 07 logo.[292] The sophistication of theDylan 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 forVictoria's Secret.[293] In October 2007, he participated in a multi-media campaign for the 2008Cadillac Escalade.[294][295] In 2009 he gave the highest profile endorsement of his career to date, appearing with rapperwill.i.am in aPepsi ad that debuted duringSuper Bowl XLIII. The ad opened with Dylan singing the first verse of "Forever Young" followed by will.i.am doing ahip hop version of the song's final verse.[296]
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 fromOh Mercy toModern Times, as well as soundtrack contributions and collaborations withDavid Bromberg andRalph Stanley.[297] 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".[298][299] The release was widely acclaimed by critics.[300] 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".[301]
Dylan releasedTogether Through Life on April 28, 2009. In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, Dylan explained it originated when French directorOlivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his movieMy Own Love Song. He initially intended to record a single track, "Life Is Hard", but "the record sort of took its own direction".[302] Nine of the album's ten songs are credited as co-written by Dylan andRobert Hunter.[303] The album received largely favorable reviews,[304] although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan's canon.[305] In its first week of release, the album reached number one on theBillboard 200 chart in the US, making Dylan, at 67 years of age, the oldest artist to ever debut at number one on that chart.[306]
Volume 9 of Dylan's Bootleg Series,The Witmark Demos, was issued in October 2010. It compriseddemo recordings of songs taped between 1962-64 for Dylan's earliest music publishers: Leeds Music in 1962, andWitmark Music from 1962-64. A reviewer described the set as "a hearty glimpse of young Bob Dylan changing the music business, and the world, one note at a time."[312] OnMetacritic, the album has a score of 86, indicating "universal acclaim".[313]Sony Legacy releasedBob Dylan: The Original Mono Recordings, a boxset that presented Dylan's eight earliest albums, fromBob Dylan (1962) toJohn Wesley Harding (1967), in their original mono mix.[314][315]
In April 2011, Legacy Recordings releasedBob Dylan in Concert – Brandeis University 1963, taped atBrandeis University on May 10, 1963, two weeks before the release ofThe Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The tape was discovered in the archive of music writerRalph 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.[316]
On Dylan's 70th birthday, the universities ofMainz,[317]Vienna,[318] andBristol[319] invited literary critics and historians to give papers on Dylan's work. Other events, including tribute bands, discussions and singalongs, took place. The Guardian wrote: "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."[320]
Dylan's 35th studio album,Tempest, was released on September 11, 2012.[321] The album features a tribute to Lennon, "Roll On John", andthe title track is a 14-minute song about thesinking of theTitanic.[322] InRolling Stone, Will Hermes gaveTempest five out of five stars: "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".[323]
Volume 10 of Dylan's Bootleg Series,Another Self Portrait (1969–1971), was released in August 2013.[324] The album contained 35 previously unreleased tracks, including alternative takes and demos from Dylan's 1969–71 recording sessions during the making of theSelf Portrait andNew Morning albums. The box set 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."[325] Columbia Records released a boxset containing all 35 studio albums, six albums of live recordings and a collection of non-album material (Sidetracks) asBob Dylan: Complete Album Collection: Vol. One, in November.[326][327] To publicize the box set, a video of "Like a Rolling Stone" was released on Dylan's website. The interactive video, allowed viewers to switch between 16 simulated TV channels, all featuring characters lip-synching the lyrics.[328][329]
Dylan appeared in a commercial for theChrysler 200 which aired during the2014 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 itsprotectionist implications, and people wondered whether he had "sold out".[330][331]The Lyrics: Since 1962 was published bySimon & Schuster in the fall of 2014. The book was edited by literary criticChristopher 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.[332][333] A comprehensive edition of the Basement Tapes, songs recorded by Dylan and the Band in 1967, was released asThe Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete in November 2014. The album included 138 tracks; the 1975 albumThe 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 authorSid Griffin.[334][335]The Basement Tapes Complete won theGrammy Award for Best Historical Album.[336] The box set earned a score of 99 on Metacritic.[337]
In February 2015, Dylan releasedShadows in the Night, featuring ten songs written between 1923 and 1963,[338][339] which have been described as part of theGreat American Songbook.[340] All the songs had been recorded byFrank Sinatra, but critics and Dylan himself cautioned against seeing the record as a collection of "Sinatra covers".[338][341] 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".[342] Critics praised the restrained instrumental backings and quality of Dylan's singing.[340][343] The album debuted at number one in theUK Albums Chart.[344]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 andBlonde on Blonde) was released in November 2015. 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".[345][346][347]
Dylan releasedFallen Angels, described as "a direct continuation of the work of 'uncovering' the Great Songbook that he began onShadows In the Night", in May.[348] The album contained twelve songs by classic songwriters such asHarold Arlen,Sammy Cahn andJohnny Mercer, eleven of which had been recorded by Sinatra.[348] Jim Farber wrote: "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".[349]The 1966 Live Recordings, including every known recording of Dylan's 1966 concert tour, was released in November 2016.[350] The recordings commence with the concert in White Plains New York on February 5, 1966, and end with theRoyal Albert Hall concert in London on May 27.[351][352]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".[353]
In March 2017, Dylan released a triple album of 30 recordings of classic American songs,Triplicate. Dylan's 38th studio album was recorded inHollywood's Capitol Studios and features his touring band.[354] Dylan posted an 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.[355]
Critics praised the thoroughness of Dylan's exploration of the Great American Songbook, though, in the opinion ofUncut, "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."[356]The next volume of Dylan's Bootleg Series revisited his "Born Again" Christian period of 1979 to 1981, described byRolling Stone as "an intense, wildly controversial time that produced three albums and some of the most confrontational concerts of his long career".[357] Reviewing the box setThe Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981,[357]Jon Pareles wrote:
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.[358]
Trouble No More includes a DVD of a film consisting of live footage of Dylan's gospel performances interspersed with sermons delivered by actorMichael Shannon.
In April 2018, Dylan contributed to the compilation EPUniversal Love, a collection of reimagined wedding songs for theLGBT community.[359] The songs are intended to function as "wedding anthems for same-sex couples".[360] 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 byBillie Holiday and Frank Sinatra.[360][361]The New York Times reported that Dylan was launching Heaven's Door, a range of threewhiskeys. TheTimes 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".[362] Dylan has been involved in the creation and marketing of the range; on September 21, 2020, Dylan resurrectedTheme Time Radio Hour with a two-hour special with the theme of "Whiskey".[363] In November 2018, Dylan releasedMore Blood, More Tracks as Volume 14 in the Bootleg Series. The set comprises all Dylan's recordings forBlood On the Tracks.[364]
In 2019,Netflix releasedRolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, billed as "Part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream".[365][366] The film received positive reviews but aroused controversy because it mixed documentary footage filmed during the Rolling Thunder Revue in the fall of 1975 with fictitious characters and stories.[367][368] Coinciding with the film, the box setThe Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, was released by Columbia Records. The set comprises five full Dylan performances from the tour and discovered tapes from Dylan's tour rehearsals.[369] The box set received an aggregate score of 89 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim".[370] 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 albumsJohn Wesley Harding andNashville Skyline, and songs that Dylan recorded with Cash in Nashville in 1969 and withEarl Scruggs in 1970.[371][372]
2020–present:Rough and Rowdy Ways
On March 26, 2020, Dylan released "Murder Most Foul", a seventeen-minute song revolving around theKennedy assassination, on his YouTube channel.[373]Billboard reported on April 8 that "Murder Most Foul" had topped the Rock Digital Song Sales Chart, the first time that Dylan had scored a number one song on a pop chart under his own name.[374] Three weeks later, on April 17, 2020, Dylan released another new song, "I Contain Multitudes".[375][376] The title is fromWalt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself".[377] 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.[378]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."[379]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. OnRough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan is exploring terrain nobody else has reached before—yet he just keeps pushing on into the future".[380] The album earned a score of 95 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim".[378] In its first week of releaseRough 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".[381]
In December 2020, Dylan sold his entire song catalog toUniversal Music Publishing Group,[382] including both the income he receives as a songwriter and his control of their copyright. Universal, a division of the French media conglomerateVivendi, will collect all future income from the songs.[383]The New York Times estimated the price at more than $300 million",[383] although other reports suggested the figure was closer to $400 million.[384]
In February 2021, Columbia Records released1970, a three-CD set of recordings from theSelf Portrait andNew Morning sessions, including the entirety of the session Dylan recorded with George Harrison on May 1, 1970.[385][386] Dylan's 80th birthday was commemorated by a virtual conference, Dylan@80, organized by theUniversity of Tulsa Institute for Bob Dylan Studies.[387] Several new biographies and studies of Dylan were published.[388][389]
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."[398][399] The recording fetched GBP £1,482,000—equivalent to $1,769,508.[400][401] In November, Dylan publishedThe 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".[402] Other reviewers praised the book's eclectic outlook,[403] while some questioned its variations in style and dearth of female songwriters.[404]
In January 2023, Dylan releasedThe Bootleg Series Vol. 17: Fragments – Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996–1997) in multiple formats. The 5-CD version included 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.[405] On November 17, 2023, Dylan releasedThe Complete Budokan 1978, containing the full recordings of the February 28 and March 1 Tokyo concerts from his 1978 Tour.[406]
On October 31, 2025, Dylan releasedThe Bootleg Series Vol. 18: Through the Open Window 1956–1963, an 8-CD collection of recordings chronicling his development from a 15 year-old high school student to his major concert atCarnegie Hall in October 1963. It was also released in a 2-CD highlights format.[407] The set included a 125 page booklet by historianSean Wilentz and was awarded a score of 97 on the critical aggregator website Metacritic, indicating universal acclaim.[408]
Dylan performing at Finsbury Park, London, June 18, 2011
The Never Ending Tour commenced on June 7, 1988.[409] Dylan has played roughly 100 dates a year since, a heavier schedule than most performers who started in the 1960s.[410] By April 2019, Dylan and his band had played more than 3,000 shows,[411] anchored by long-time bassistTony Garnier.[412]
To the dismay of some of his audience,[413] Dylan's performances are unpredictable as he often alters hisarrangements and changes his vocal approach.[414] 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.[415][416] 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".[417]
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 his2020 album.[418] Nevertheless, the tour has been referred to by the media as an extension of his ongoing Never Ending Tour.[419]
In February 2025, Dylan announced that he would take part in the Outlaw Music Festival 2025 Tour, appearing alongsideWillie Nelson and other artists, beginning on May 13 inPhoenix, Arizona, and finishing on September 19 inEast Troy, Wisconsin.[420] In July 2025, Dylan's touring company announced the latest leg of his Rough and Rowdy Ways world tour, starting on October 16 in Helsinki and ending in Dublin on November 25.[421]
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.'"[253]
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 asJimmie Rodgers on78 RPM records, and a range of folk music magazines, sheet music, and manuscripts.[424] Helstrom is believed by some to be the inspiration for Dylan's song "Girl from the North Country", though this is disputed.[425]
Suze Rotolo
Dylan's first serious relationship was with artistSuze Rotolo, a daughter ofCommunist 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".[426] Rotolo was photographed arm-in-arm with Dylan on the cover of his albumThe 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.[427] In 2008, Rotolo published a memoir about her life in Greenwich Village and relationship with Dylan in the 1960s,A Freewheelin' Time.[428]
Joan Baez
WhenJoan Baez met Dylan in April 1961, she had already released herfirst album and was acclaimed as the "Queen of Folk".[429] 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".[430] 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.[431] 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 filmDont Look Back.[431] 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 filmRenaldo and Clara (1978), directed by Dylan.[432] Dylan and Baez toured together again in 1984 withCarlos Santana.[431]
Baez recalled her relationship with Dylan inMartin Scorsese's documentary filmNo Direction Home (2005). Baez wrote about Dylan in two autobiographies—admiringly inDaybreak (1968), and less admiringly inAnd A Voice to Sing With (1987). Her song "Diamonds & Rust" has been described as "an acute portrait" of Dylan.[431]
Sara Lownds
Dylan marriedSara Lownds, who had worked as a model and secretary atDrew Associates, on November 22, 1965.[433] They had four children:Jesse Byron (born January 6, 1966), Anna Lea (born July 11, 1967), Samuel Isaac Abram (born July 30, 1968), andJakob 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 filmRenaldo and Clara (1978). Bob and Sara Dylan were divorced on June 29, 1977.[433]
Carolyn Dennis
Dylan and his backing singerCarolyn Dennis (often professionally known as Carol Dennis) have a daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, born on January 31, 1986.[434] They were married on June 4, 1986, and divorced in October 1992. Their marriage and child remained a closely guarded secret until the publication ofHoward Sounes's biographyDown the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, in 2001.[435]
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 hisbar mitzvah in May 1954.[436][21] Around the time of his 30th birthday, in 1971, Dylan visited Israel, and also met RabbiMeir Kahane, founder of the New York-basedJewish Defense League.[437]
In the late 1970s, Dylan converted to Christianity. In November 1978, guided by his friend Mary Alice Artes, Dylan made contact with theVineyard School of Discipleship.[201] 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".[438][439] From January to March 1979, Dylan attended Vineyard's Bible study classes inReseda, California.[201][440]
By 1984, Dylan was distancing himself from the "born again" label. He toldKurt Loder ofRolling 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."[441] In 1997, he toldDavid Gates ofNewsweek:
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.[442]
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 with60 Minutes, when he toldEd 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 theRock and Roll Hall of Fame,Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame andSongwriters Hall of Fame. In 1997, US PresidentBill Clinton presented Dylan with aKennedy Center Honor in the East Room of theWhite 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".[447] In May 2000, Dylan received thePolar Music Prize from Sweden'sKing Carl XVI.[448] In June 2007, Dylan received thePrince 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."[6][449] In 2008, thePulitzer 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".[450]
Dylan received thePresidential Medal of Freedom in May 2012.[451][452] PresidentBarack 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".[453] In November 2013, Dylan was awarded France's highest honor, theLégion d'Honneur,[454] despite the misgiving of the grand chancellor of the Légion, who had declared him unworthy.[454] In February 2015, Dylan accepted theMusiCares Person of the Year award from theNational Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, in recognition of his philanthropic and artistic contributions.[455]
In 1996, Gordon Ball of theVirginia Military Institute nominated Dylan for theNobel Prize in Literature,[456][457] initiating a campaign that lasted for 20 years.[458] 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".[459]The New York Times reported: "Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection was perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901."[459] Dylan remained silent for days after receiving the award,[460] and then told journalistEdna Gundersen that it was "amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?"[461] Dylan's Nobel Lecture was posted on the Nobel Prize website on June 5, 2017.[462]Horace Engdahl, a member of the Nobel Committee, described Dylan as "a singer worthy of a place beside the Greek bards, besideOvid, beside theRomantic visionaries, beside the kings and queens ofthe blues, beside the forgotten masters of brilliantstandards".[463]
Legacy
Dylan has been described as one of the most influential cultural figures of the 20th century. He was included in theTime 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".[464]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."[465]
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 andBlonde on Blonde. InMike 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 andBeat poetry,surrealism andDada, advertising jargon and social commentary,Fellini andMad magazine, he forged a coherent and original artistic voice and vision. The beauty of these albums retains the power to shock and console.[466]
Michael Gray initiated serious critical scrutiny when he publishedSong & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan in 1972, situating Dylan's work in the context of the English literary tradition,Donne,Browning andT. S. Eliot.[467] Also in 1972,Craig McGregor publishedBob Dylan: A Retrospective, an anthology containing critical essays about Dylan byRobert Shelton,Nat Hentoff,Ellen Willis and other contemporary cultural critics. In 1998,Stanford University sponsored the first international academic conference on Bob Dylan held in the United States.[468] In 2004,Richard F. Thomas,Classics professor atHarvard 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 likeVirgil andHomer."[469] Thomas went on to publishWhy Bob Dylan Matters, exploring Dylan's connections withGreco-Roman literature.[470]
Literary criticChristopher Ricks publishedDylan's Visions of Sin, an appreciation of Dylan's work.[471] After Dylan's Nobel win, Ricks reflected: "I'd not have written a book about Dylan, to stand alongside my books onMilton andKeats,Tennyson and T.S. Eliot, if I didn't think Dylan a genius of and with language."[472] The critical consensus that Dylan's songwriting was his outstanding creative achievement was articulated byEncyclopædia Britannica: "Hailed as theShakespeare of his generation, Dylan ... set the standard for lyric writing."[6] Former Britishpoet laureateAndrew Motion said Dylan's lyrics should be studied in schools.[473] The journalistEdna Gundersen noted that lines such as "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" had entered the vernacular, and "you don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows" and "the times they are a-changin'" appear inBartlett's Familiar Quotations.[474]
Some critics have dissented from the view of Dylan as a visionary figure in popular music. In his bookAwopbopaloobop 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".[498] Australian criticJack 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 fromMick Jagger toEminem educating themselves from the Dylan handbook".[499]
Fellow musicians have also expressed critical views. Joni Mitchell described Dylan as a "plagiarist" and his voice as "fake" in a 2010 interview in theLos Angeles Times.[500][501][502] Mitchell's comments led to discussions on Dylan's use of other people's material, both supporting and criticizing him.[503] Talking toMikal Gilmore inRolling Stone in 2012, Dylan responded to the allegation of plagiarism, including his use of Henry Timrod's verse in his albumModern Times,[287] by saying that it was "part of the tradition".[504][a 7]
If Dylan's work in the 1960s was seen as bringing intellectual ambition to popular music,[466] 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 ofI'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.[512]
In 2005, 7th Avenue East in Hibbing, Minnesota, where Dylan lived from ages 6 to 18, received the honorary name Bob Dylan Drive.[517][518] In 2006, the 1.8 miles (2.9 km) Bob Dylan Way cultural path was inaugurated in Duluth, Minnesota; it links "cultural and historically significant areas of downtown for the tourists".[519]
In 2015, a 160-foot-wide Dylan mural by Brazilian street artistEduardo Kobra was unveiled in downtown Minneapolis.[520]
In December 2013, theFender Stratocaster which Dylan had played at the1965 Newport Folk Festival fetched $965,000, the second highest price paid for a guitar.[521] 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.[522][523]
Visual arts
Painting
Dylan's visual art was first seen by the public via a painting he contributed for the cover ofthe Band'sMusic from Big Pink album in 1968.[524] The cover of Dylan's own 1970 albumSelf Portrait features the painting of a human face by Dylan.[525] More of Dylan's artwork was revealed with the 1973 publication of his bookWritings and Drawings.[526] The cover of Dylan's 1974 albumPlanet Waves again featured one of his paintings. In 1994Random House publishedDrawn Blank, a book of Dylan's drawings.[527] In 2007, the first public exhibition of Dylan's paintings,The Drawn Blank Series, opened at the Kunstsammlungen inChemnitz, Germany;[528] it showcased more than 200 watercolors andgouaches made from the original drawings. The exhibition coincided with the publication ofBob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series.[528][529] From September 2010 until April 2011, theNational Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan,The Brazil Series.[530]
In July 2011, a leading contemporary art gallery,Gagosian Gallery, announced their representation of Dylan's paintings.[531] 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.[532]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 byDmitri Kessel andHenri Cartier-Bresson.[533] Art criticBlake 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 andÉdouard Vuillard and other favorite artists—evenEdvard Munch—all took or used photos as sources for their art, sometimes barely altering them".[534] TheMagnum photo agency confirmed that Dylan had licensed the reproduction rights of these photographs.[535]
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, includingPlayboy andBabytalk.[536][537] In February 2013, Dylan exhibited theNew Orleans Series of paintings at thePalazzo Reale in Milan.[538] In August 2013, Britain'sNational Portrait Gallery, London hosted Dylan's first major UK exhibition,Face Value, featuring twelve pastel portraits.[539]
In November 2016, the Halcyon Gallery featured a collection of artworks by Dylan. The exhibition,The Beaten Path, depicted American landscapes and urban scenes, inspired by Dylan's travels across the US.[540] The show was reviewed byVanity Fair andAsia Times Online.[541][542][543] 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.[544]
Retrospectrum, the largest retrospective of Dylan's visual art to date, consisting of over 250 works in various media, debuted at the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai in 2019.[545] Building on the exhibition in China, a version ofRetrospectrum, which includes a new series of paintings, "Deep Focus", drawn from film imagery,[546] opened at theFrost Art Museum in Miami on November 30, 2021,[547] while from December 16, 2022, to April 30, 2023, theMAXXI Museum inRome hosted the retrospective which was the first European monographic exhibition dedicated to Dylan's visual art.[548]
Also in 2022,Drawn Blank in Provence, his first painting exhibition in France, opened atChâteau Lacoste,[549] a contemporary art center inProvence that combines a vineyard, a luxury hotel, several restaurants, and an open-air sculpture park, offering an experience where art, architecture, gastronomy, and nature come together.[550][551] The exhibition took place alongside his first permanent sculpture installation in the country, titledRail Car.[552]
Bob Dylan has also been active as a sculptor, specialising in work with iron.[556] For thirty years, he crafted metal sculptures for family and friends before showcasing his work publicly in November 2013 withMood Swings, an exhibition of sevenwrought iron gates at London'sHalcyon Gallery. 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.[557]
One of his most prominent installations in the United States isPortal, a monumental iron archway permanently displayed at the entrance of theMGM National Harbor resort inMaryland.[556] In 2022, his first permanent sculpture installation in France, titledRail Car, was inaugurated at Château Lacoste in Provence.[558] This immersive work, made up of a wrought-iron freight car set on rails, evokes both industrial history and Dylan's personal history.[552]
Dylan has publishedTarantula, a work ofprose poetry;Chronicles: Volume One, the first part of his memoirs; several books of the lyrics of his songs, and ten 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 biographerRobert 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 westernGunsmoke; 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.
^In a May 1963 interview withStuds 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 forLife (July 5, 2001) Ginsberg said Dylan's technique had been inspired byJack Kerouac: "(Dylan) pulledMexico 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 byJimi Hendrix, whose version Dylan acknowledged as definitive.
^According to Shelton, Dylan named the tour Rolling Thunder and then "appeared pleased when someone told him tonative Americans, rolling thunder means speaking the truth." ACherokeemedicine 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. RetrievedSeptember 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 byJohn Bauldie accompanying Dylan'sThe 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 first performed "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" in public at a Carnegie Hall hootenanny on September 22, 1962. A month later, on October 22, President Kennedy made hisTV announcement that Soviet missiles had been discovered on Cuba. Heylin (1996), p. 33.
^Dylan had recorded "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues" for hisFreewheelin 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.
^Bob Dylan (September 28, 2003)."Bob Dylan on Johnny Cash".forums.Steve Hoffman.Archived from the original on January 21, 2025. RetrievedJanuary 17, 2025.
^A year earlier,Irwin Silber, editor ofSing 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.
^"You got a lotta nerve/To say you are my friend/When I was down/You just stood there grinning" Reproduced online:"Positively 4th Street | The Official Bob Dylan Site".bobdylan.com.Archived from the original on February 12, 2023. RetrievedFebruary 12, 2023.
^ab"The RS 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".Rolling Stone. December 9, 2004. Archived fromthe original(To see 2004 publishing date, click "Like a Rolling Stone" and scroll to the bottom of the resulting page) on October 25, 2006. RetrievedJanuary 6, 2020.
^"The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in theBlonde 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 fromThe Wall Street Journal cited in next footnote."Did Bob Dylan Lift Lines From Dr Saga?". California State University, Dear Habermas. July 8, 2003. Archived fromthe original on July 24, 2008. RetrievedSeptember 29, 2011.
^Dylan co-wroteMasked & 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.
^Sawyer, Miranda (December 31, 2006)."The Great Sound of Radio Bob".The Observer. UK.Archived from the original on September 30, 2013. RetrievedSeptember 7, 2008.
^Petridis, Alex (August 28, 2006)."Bob Dylan'sModern Times".The Guardian. UK.Archived from the original on December 19, 2018. RetrievedSeptember 5, 2006.
^"Modern Times".Metacritic.Archived from the original on August 30, 2010. RetrievedSeptember 7, 2008.
^"Dylan, Cadillac". XM Radio. October 22, 2007. Archived fromthe original on March 12, 2008. RetrievedSeptember 16, 2008.
^Dylan also devoted an hour of hisTheme 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. RetrievedJune 20, 2011.
^McCormick, Neil (April 27, 2009)."Bob Dylan – live review".The Telegraph. London.Archived from the original on January 10, 2022. RetrievedMay 2, 2009.
^According to Robert Shelton, Dylan's teacher was "Rabbi Reuben Maier of the only synagogue on theIron 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. RetrievedSeptember 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. RetrievedAugust 25, 2015.
^Richardson, P. (2015).No Simple Highway. St. Martin's Press. p. 150.ISBN978-1-250-01062-9. RetrievedMay 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. RetrievedAugust 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 fromthe original on December 10, 2005. RetrievedSeptember 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 albumHunky 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 fromthe original on May 15, 2013. RetrievedSeptember 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. RetrievedOctober 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'sSlow 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 inUSA 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."
^Hoberman, J. (November 20, 2007)."Like A Complete Unknown".The Village Voice. Archived fromthe original on September 21, 2008. RetrievedOctober 5, 2008.
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.
_(52246124397)_(cropped).jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
