Much of Dylan's best known work is from the 1960s, when he became an informal documentarian and reluctant figurehead of American unrest. Some of his songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", He formed several bands while at high school: the first, The Shadow Blasters, was short-lived; the second, The Golden Chords, lasted longer. They played covers including "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" at their high-school talent show.Shelton, No Direction Home, 40â€"43. In 1959 Dylan performed two dates under the name of Elston Gunn with Bobby Vee, playing piano and providing handclaps.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, 26-27.
Robert Zimmerman enrolled at the University of Minnesota in September 1959 and moved to Minneapolis. His musical focus on rock and roll gave way to an interest in subtler, Gaelic-inflected American folk music, typically performed with an acoustic guitar. He soon became actively involved in the local Dinkytownfolk music circuit, fraternizing with local folk enthusiasts and occasionally "borrowing" many of their albums.Shelton, No Direction Home, 65â€"82No Direction Home. Paramount Pictures. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Released July 212005. During his Dinkytown days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as "Bob Dylan". In his autobiography, Chronicles (2005), Dylan wrote: "What I was going to do as soon as I left home was just call myself Robert Allen.... It sounded like a Scottish king and I liked it." However, by reading Downbeat magazine, he discovered that there was already a saxophonist called David Allyn. A little later he became acquainted with the work of writer Dylan Thomas and made a choice between Robert Allyn and Robert Dylan: "I couldn't decideâ€"the letter D came on stronger" he explained. He decided on "Bob" because there were several Bobbies in popular music at the time.Dylan, Chronicles, Vol. 1, 78â€"79.
Dylan quit college at the end of his freshman year, but stayed in Minneapolis, working the folk circuit there with temporary sojourns in Denver, Colorado, and Chicago, Illinois. In January 1961, he headed for New York City to perform and to visit his ailing musical idol Woody Guthrie in a New Jersey hospital. Initially playing mostly in small "basket" clubs for little pay, he gained some public recognition after a positive review
His most famous songs of the time included "Blowin' in the Wind", its melody partially derived from the traditional slave song "No More Auction Block", coupled with Dylan's original lyrics challenging the social and political status quo. "Blowin' in the Wind" itself was widely recorded and was an international hit for Peter, Paul and Mary, setting an enduring precedent for other artists. While Dylan's topical songs solidified his early reputation, Freewheelin also included a mixture of love songs and jokey, frequently surreal talking blues. Humor was a large part of Dylan's persona.
The Freewheelin song "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", built melodically from a loose adaptation of the stanza tune of the folk balladLord Randall, with its veiled references to nuclearapocalypse, gained even more resonance as the Cuban missile crisis developed only a few weeks after Dylan began performing it.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, 101-103 Like "Blowin' in the Wind", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" marked an important new direction in modern songwriting, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with traditional folk progressions to create a sound and sense that struck listeners as somehow new and ancient simultaneously.Ricks, Dylan's Visions of Sin, 329-44. Soon after the release of Freewheelin, Dylan emerged as a dominant figure of the so-called "new folk movement" headquartered in Lower Manhattan's Greenwich Village. The Beatles, amongst others, listened to this album and 1964's The Times They Are a-Changin' and believed that entire albums of boy-meets-girl songs were now outmoded.
While an interpreter of traditional songs, Dylan's singing voice was unusual and untrained and his phrasing as a vocalist was eccentric. He sang his songs in a style that hearkened back to the folk-singers of the 1920s and 30s, which was almost unheard-of in the music industry of the time. Many of his most famous early songs first reached the public through versions by other performing musicians who were more immediately palatable. Joan Baez, considerably famous and regarded at the time as the reigning queen of folk, became Dylan's advocate as well as his lover. In addition to jumpstarting Dylan's performance career by inviting him onstage during her concerts, she chose to record several of his early songs. Her recordings of Dylan's songs were influential in bringing Dylan to national and international prominence.
Others who recorded and released his songs around this time included The Byrds, Sonny and Cher, The Hollies, Manfred Mann, The Brothers Four, Judy Collins and Herman's Hermits, most attempting to impart more of a pop feel and rhythm to the songs where Dylan and Baez performed them mostly as sparse folk pieces keying rhythmically off the vocals. These covers were so ubiquitous by the mid-1960s that CBS started to promote him with the tag "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan". Many new artists sprang up at this time with singing styles suspiciously similar to Dylan's, typically using his inflections and tone while dispensing with the 'mumbly' and gruff qualities (see Donovan Leitch).
In the early 1960s Dylan had adopted a sort of Huckleberry Finn persona and told picaresque tales of knocking around, hopping freights, and working at folksy jobs. In that bohemian phase, lasting a few years, he sang and wrote somewhat like the Woody Guthrie of 25 or 30 years earlier. However, as he "brought it all back home" Dylan's point of view as a writer became at once more thoroughly contemporary and more surrealistic.
The second side of the album was a different matter, including four lengthy acoustic songs whose undogmatic political, social and personal concerns are illuminated with the rich poetic imagery that would become another trademark. One of these songs, "Mr. Tambourine Man" had already been a hit for The Byrds, albeit in a truncated form, and would remain one of Dylan's most enduring compositions, while "Gates of Eden", "It's All over Now Baby Blue", and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" have been fixtures in Dylan's live performances for most of his career.
That summer Bob Dylan made history by performing his first electric set (since his high school days) with a pickup group drawn mostly from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, i.e. Mike Bloomfield, guitar, Sam Lay, drums, Jerome Arnold, bass, plus Al Kooper, organ and Barry Goldberg, piano, at the Newport Folk Festival.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, 208-216 Dylan had appeared at Newport twice before in 1963 and 1964. Two wildly divergent accounts of the crowd's response in 1965 survive to this day. The settled fact is that Dylan, met with a mix of cheering and booing, left the stage after only three songs. As one version of the legend has it, the boos were from the outraged folk fans Dylan alienated with his electric guitar. An alternative account has it that audience members were upset by poor sound quality and a surprisingly short set. Whatever sparked the crowd's disfavor, Dylan soon reemerged and sang two much better received solo acoustic numbers, "It's All over Now, Baby Blue" and "Mr. Tambourine Man".
The significance of Dylan's 1965 Newport performance was that he outraged the folk music establishment.Shelton, No Direction Home, 305-314Ewan MacColl wrote in Sing Out!: "Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside traditions formulated over time… But what of Bobby Dylan?... Only a non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel." Dylan's own outlook may be inferred from the sleeve notes he wrote for Bringing It All Back Home: "i accept chaos. i am not sure whether it accepts me."
Creative height, motorcycle crash
The single "Like a Rolling Stone" was a U.S. and UK hit, cementing his reputation as a lyricist; at over six minutes, devoid of a bridge, the song also helped to expand the limits of hit radio. In 2004, Rolling Stone Columbia belatedly released selections from them in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Later in 1967, the Hawks (soon to be rechristened as The Band) independently recorded the album Music from Big Pink, thus beginning a long and successful recording and performing career of their own.
In December 1967 Dylan released John Wesley Harding, his first album since the motorcycle crash. It was a quiet, contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape which drew on both the American West and the Old Testament. The sparse structure and instrumentation, coupled with lyrics which took the Judeo-Christian tradition seriously, marked a departure not only from Dylan's own work but from the escalating psychedelic fervor of the 1960s musical culture. Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, 282-288 It included "All Along the Watchtower", with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5â€"9). The song was later immortalized by Jimi Hendrix in a version that Dylan himself has acknowledged as definitive in his notes to accompany Biograph (1985). Dylan has always performed his song the "Hendrix way" since.
Woody Guthrie died in October 1967, and Dylan made his first public appearances in 18 months at a pair of Guthrie memorial concerts the following January.
Dylan's next release, Nashville Skyline (1969), was virtually a mainstream country record featuring instrumental backing by Nashville musicians, a mellow-voiced, contented Dylan, a duet with Johnny Cash, and the hit single "Lay Lady Lay". In 1969 Dylan appeared on the first episode of Cash's new television show and then gave a high-profile performance at the Isle of Wight rock festival (after rejecting overtures to appear at the Woodstock event far closer to his home).Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, 248-253
The 1970s
In the early 1970s critics charged Dylan's output was of varied and unpredictable quality. "What is this shit?" Rolling Stone magazine writer and Dylan loyalist Greil Marcus notoriously asked, upon first listening to 1970's Self Portrait. In general, Self Portrait, a double LP including few original songs, was poorly received. Later that year, Dylan released New Morning, considered by some as a return to form. His unannounced appearance at George Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh was widely praised, but reports of a new album, a television special, and a return to touring came to nothing.
Dylan signed with David Geffen's new Asylum label when his contract with Columbia Records expired in 1973. He recorded Planet Waves with The Band while rehearsing for an upcoming tour. The album included two versions of "Forever Young", which has proven to be one of Dylan's most lasting songs. Columbia Records almost simultaneously released Dylan, a haphazard collection of studio outtakes (almost exclusively cover songs). Critics debate whether this was a "revenge release" against Dylan for leaving the company or a move to capitalize on the publicity generated by Planet Waves. In early 1974 Dylan and The Band staged a high-profile, coast-to-coast tour of North America; promoter Bill Graham claimed he received more ticket purchase requests than for any prior tour by any artist. The tour was documented on the album Before the Flood, but Dylan refused to allow a tour film to be produced.
After the tour, Dylan and his wife became publicly estranged. He filled a small red notebook with songs about his marital problems, and quickly recorded a new album entitled Blood on the Tracks in September 1974.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, 368-383
Word of Dylan's efforts soon leaked out, and expectations were high. But Dylan delayed the album's release, and then re-recorded half of the songs in Minneapolis by year's end. Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks was critically acclaimed and commercially successful, and is considered his finest album by many fans. The songs are among his most intimate and direct.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, 368-387Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, 59
That summer, Dylan wrote his first successful "protest" song in twelve years, championing the cause of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter who he believed had been wrongfully imprisoned for a triple homicide in Paterson, New Jersey (an eponymous 1971 tribute to George Jackson, a Black Panther who was killed in prison, sank almost unnoticed). After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote "Hurricane", presenting the case for Carter's innocence. Despite its 8 1/2 minute length, the song was released as a single, peaking at number thirty-one on the Billboard Chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. The tour was something different: a varied evening of entertainment featuring many performers drawn mostly from the resurgent Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone Burnett; Allen Ginsberg; Steven Soles; David Mansfield; former Byrds frontman Roger McGuinn; Scarlet Rivera, a violin player Dylan discovered while she was walking down the street to a rehearsal, her violin case hanging on her back;Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, 579 and a reunion with Joan Baez (the tour marked Baez and Dylan's first joint performance in more than a decade). Joni Mitchell added herself to the Revue in November, and poet Allen Ginsberg accompanied the troupe, staging scenes for the film Dylan was simultaneously shooting. Sam Shepard was initially hired as the writer for this film, but ended up accompanying the tour as informal chronicler.Shepard, Rolling Thunder Logbook, 2-49
Running through the fall of 1975 and again through the spring of 1976, the tour also encompassed the release of the album Desire (1976), with many of Dylan's new songs featuring an almost travelogue-like narrative style, showing the influence of his new collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, 386-401Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, 408 The spring 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special, Hard Rain, and the LP Hard Rain; no concert album from the better-received and better-known opening half of the tour would be released until 2002, when Live 1975 appeared as the fifth volume in Dylan's official Bootleg Series.
The fall 1975 tour with the Revue also provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara, a sprawling, improvised, and frequently baffling narrative mixed with striking concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received generally poor, sometimes scathing, reviews
Dylan's religious conversion was met with distrust by some fans and fellow artists.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, 334-6 Shortly before his December 1980 shooting, John Lennon, for example, recorded "Serve Yourself", a parody of Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody".
Hard-working elder statesman
1980s
In the fall of 1980 Dylan briefly resumed touring, restoring several of his most popular 1960s songs to his repertoire, for a series of concerts billed as "A Musical Retrospective." Shot of Love, recorded the next spring, featured Dylan's first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with explicitly Christian songs and material that resisted pigeonholing.
In the 1980s the quality of Dylan's recorded work varied, from the well-regarded Infidels in 1983 to the panned Down in the Groove in 1988. In addition, beginning with Infidels, Dylan's recordings would no longer be dominated by openly Christian lyrics, as they had been on his previous three albums. Of course, one need not look far to find religious themes in his work, but these themes would no longer be so explicit, and certainly not so evangelistic. Naturally, there is much debate among Dylan fans over his current personal beliefs. Such debates are fueled by Dylan's own elusiveness on the subject over the past two decades. Virtually all would agree that he no longer records songs comparable in evangelistic fervor to those of his gospel period, such as "I Believe in You", "Saving Grace", or "Property of Jesus". However, most would also admit that Christianityis still a major theme in Dylan's work; for example, he has written and recorded songs such as "Death Is Not the End", "Ring Them Bells", and "Trying to Get to Heaven", the lyrics of which reveal religious concerns even at a cursory glance. Complicating this picture somewhat are reports in the mid-80s that Dylan had affiliated himself informally with the Chabad or Lubavitch branch of Hasidic Judaism. Although it is unclear to what extent he has been involved with this movement, he has appeared on fundraising telethons supporting the organization, and reports continue to be published indicating that he sometimes attends services at Chabad synagogues on major Jewish holidays. Dylan's son, Jakobhas also stated that he was raised with both Jewish and Christian traditions.
The Infidels recording sessions produced several notable outtakes, and some critics have questioned Dylan's judgment in leaving these off the album. Most well-regarded of these outtakes were "Blind Willie McTell", "Foot of Pride", "Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart" and "Lord Protect My Child",Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, 354-6 which were later released on the boxed set The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991. An earlier version of Infidels, prepared by producer/guitarist Mark Knopfler, contained different arrangements and song selections than what appeared on the final product.
In June 1986 Dylan married his longtime backup singer Carolyn Dennis (often professionally known as Carol Dennis).Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, 372-3 Their daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, was born on January 31, 1986. The couple divorced in October 1992.Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, 174-5
In 1987 Dylan starred in Richard Marquand's movie Hearts of Fire, in which he played a washed-up-rock-star-turned-chicken farmer called "Billy Parker", whose teenage lover (Fiona) leaves him for a jaded English synth-pop sensation (Rupert Everett). The film was a critical and commercial flop.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, 599-604 In fact, when asked in a press conference if he had anything to do with writing the movie, Dylan chuckled "I couldn't have possibly written anything like that."
Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with the Daniel Lanois-produced Oh Mercy (1989). Lanois's influence is audible throughout Oh Mercy.Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, 515Dylan, Chronicles, Vol. 1, 145-221 "Ring Them Bells" seems to call for Christians to maintain a visible presence in the world, perhaps adding fuel to the debate over Dylan's religious orientation. The track "Most of the Time", a ruminative lost love composition, was later prominently featured in the film High Fidelity while "What Was It You Wanted?" was a dry comment on the expectations of critics and fans.
Dylan made a number of music videos during this period, but only "Political World" found any regular airtime on MTV.
1990s
Dylan performs at a 1996 concert in Stockholm.
Dylan's 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990), an odd about-face from the serious Oh Mercy. The album was dedicated to "Gabby Goo Goo", and contained several apparently simple songs, including "Under the Red Sky" and "Wiggle Wiggle". "Handy Dandy" is a catchy tune with clever lyrics, and "TV Talkin' Song" is an earnest try for "relevance", but neither created much of a stir. The "Gabby Goo Goo" dedication was later explained as a nickname for Dylan's four-year-old daughter. However, the story that the album's songs were written for her entertainment is questionable. Sidemen on the album included George Harrison, Slash from Guns N' Roses, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Elton John. Despite the stellar line-up, most fans and critics did not receive the album well and it was generally thought of as a missed opportunity to build on the promise of "Oh, Mercy".
Perhaps as a result, the next few years saw Dylan returning to his roots with two albums covering old folk and blues numbers: Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), featuring nuanced interpretations and ragged but highly original acoustic guitar work. Many critics and fans commented on the quiet beauty of the song "Lone Pilgrim", Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, 423 penned by a 19th century teacher and sung by Dylan with a haunting reverence. An exception to this rootsy mood came in Dylan's 1991 songwriting collaboration with Michael Bolton; the resulting song "Steel Bars", was released on Bolton's album Time, Love & Tenderness. Dylan's 1995 concert on MTV Unplugged, and the album culled from it, marked his only newly recorded output during the mid-1990s. Essentially a greatest hits collection, it also included "John Brown", an unreleased 1963 song detailing the ravages of both war and jingoism.
With a sheaf of songs reportedly written while snowed-in on his Minnesota ranch,Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, 693 Dylan returned to the recording studio with Lanois in January 1997. Late that spring, before the album's release, Dylan was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart infection, pericarditis, brought on by histoplasmosis. His scheduled European tour was cancelled, but Dylan made a speedy recovery and left the hospital saying, "I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon."Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, 420 He was back on the road by midsummer, and in early fall performed before Pope John Paul II at the World Eucharistic Conference in Bologna, Italy. The Pope treated the audience of 200,000 people to a sermon based on Dylan's lyric Blowin' in the Wind.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, 426
September saw the release of the new Lanois-produced album, Dylan's first collection of original songs in seven years. Time Out of Mind, with its bitter assessment of love and morbid ruminations, was highly acclaimed and achieved an unforeseen popularity among young listeners, particularly the song "Love Sick".Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, 426-9 This collection of complex songs won him his first solo Album of the Year Grammy Award (he was one of numerous performers on The Concert for Bangladesh, the 1972 winner). The love song "Make You Feel My Love", covered by both Garth Brooks and Billy Joel, generated more royalties than any song he had written since the 1960s.
"Love and Theft", an album that explores diverse styles of American music and revisits Dylan's own creative roots, was released on September 11, 2001. Dylan produced the album himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost, and its distinctive sound owes much to the accompanists. Tony Garnier, bassist and bandleader, had played with Dylan for 12 years, longer than any other musician. Larry Campbell, one of the most accomplished American guitarists of the last two decades, played on the road with Dylan from 1997 through 2004. Guitarist Charlie Sexton and drummer David Kemper had also toured with Dylan for years. Keyboard player Augie Meyers, the only musician not part of Dylan's touring band, had also played on Time out of Mind. The album was critically well-received, Dylan's publicist had no comment.
* Bob Dylan (since August 1962, his full legal name has been "Robert Dylan") * Elston Gunnn (the spelling is an eccentricity of his adolescence) * Bob Dillon (according to some biographers, an early spelling based on an affection for the character Marshal Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke) * Blind Boy Grunt (album credit) * Bob Landy (album credit) * Tedham Porterhouse (album credit) * Robert Milkwood Thomas (a reference to Dylan Thomas's radio play Under Milk Wood) * Lucky Wilbury (Traveling Wilburys) * Boo Wilbury (Traveling Wilburys) * Jack Frost (producer of "Love and Theft" and co-producer of Under the Red Sky and Time Out of Mind) * Sergei Petrov (co-writer of Masked & Anonymous) * Justin Case (occasionally used while on the road in the 1980s/1990s) * Elmer Johnson (Mississippi River Festival in Edwardsville, Il on 7/14/69; guest appearance with The Band)
* * Michael Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. Continuum International, 2006, hardcover, 832 pages. ISBN 0826469337 * * Robert Shelton, No Direction Home, Da Capo Press, 2003 reprint of 1986 original, 576 pages. ISBN 0306812878 * Sam Shepard, Rolling Thunder Logbook, Da Capo, 2004 reissue, 176 pages. ISBN 0306813718 *
* Michael J. Gilmour, "Tangled Up in the Bible: Bob Dylan and Scripture". Continuum, 2004, 160 pages. ISBN 0826416020 * Michael Gray, Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan. Continuum International, 2000, paperback, 944 pages. ISBN 0826463827 * David Hajdu, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina Farrar Straus Giroux, 2001, 328 pages. ISBN 0374281998 * Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: A Life In Stolen Moments, Schirmer Books, 1986, 403 pages. ISBN 0825671566. Also known as Bob Dylan: Day By Day * John Hinchey. Like a Complete Unknown: The Poetry of Bob Dylan's Songs, 1961-1966. Stealing Home Press, 2002. 277 pages. ISBN 0972359206 *Greil Marcus, The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, Picador, 2001. ISBN 0312420439 (also published as "Invisible Republic") *Greil Marcus, Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, PublicAffairs, 2005. ISBN 1586482548 * Mike Marqusee, Chimes of Freedom : The Politics of Bob Dylan's Art The New Press, NY, 2003, 327 pages. ISBN 1-56584-825-X * Wilfrid Mellers, A Darker Shade Of Pale: A Backdrop To Bob Dylan Oxford University Press, 1985, 255 pages. ISBN 0-19-503622-0 * Tim Riley, Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary, Vintage, 1992, 356 pages. ISBN 0-679-74527-0 * Anthony Scaduto, Bob Dylan, Helter Skelter, 2001 reprint of 1972 original, 312 pages. ISBN 1900924234 * Anthony Varesi, "The Bob Dylan Albums", Guernica Editions, 2002, 264 pages. ISBN 1550711393 * Carl Porter and Peter Vernezze (editors), "Bob Dylan and Philosophy" Open Court Books, 2005, 225 pages. ISBN 0-8126-9592-5
= * BobDylan.com â€" official website, including lyrics * Expecting Rain - Longtime favorite fan site, updated daily. * BobLinks - A fansite with a comprehensive categorized link collection. *
=Chords and lyrics
= * Dylan Chords - A collection of chords and lyrics for Dylan songs * Lyrics Directory - A collection of lyrics to songs Dylan performed live and alternate versions.
