Bob Dylan
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Bob Dylan Biography
Bob Dylan's influence on popular music is incalculable. As a
songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting,
from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory,
stream-of-conscious narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the
notions that in order to perform, a singer had to have a conventionally
good voice, thereby redefining the role of vocalist in popular music.
As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music, including
electrified folk-rock and country-rock. And that just touches on the
tip of his achievements. Dylan's force was evident during his height of
popularity in the '60s -- the Beatles' shift toward introspective
songwriting in the mid-'60s never would have happened without him --
but his influence echoed throughout several subsequent generations.
Many of his songs became popular standards, and his best albums were
undisputed classics of the rock & roll canon. Dylan's influence
throughout folk music was equally powerful, and he marks a pivotal
turning point in its 20th century evolution, signifying when the genre
moved away from traditional songs and toward personal songwriting. Even
when his sales declined in the '80s and '90s, Dylan's presence was
calculable.
For a figure of such substantial influence, Dylan came from humble
beginnings. Born in Duluth, MN, Bob Dylan (b. Robert Allen Zimmerman,
May 24, 1941) was raised in Hibbing, MN, from the age of six. As a
child he learned how to play guitar and harmonica, forming a rock &
roll band called the Golden Chords when he was in high school.
Following his graduation in 1959, he began studying art at the
University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. While at college, he began
performing folk songs at coffeehouses under the name Bob Dylan, taking
his last name from the poet Dylan Thomas. Already inspired by Hank
Williams and Woody Guthrie, Dylan began listening to blues while at
college, and the genre weaved its way into his music. Dylan spent the
summer of 1960 in Denver, where he met bluesman Jesse Fuller, the
inspiration behind the songwriter's signature harmonica rack and
guitar. By the time he returned to Minneapolis in the fall, he had
grown substantially as a performer and was determined to become a
professional musician.
Dylan made his way to New York City in January of 1961, immediately
making a substantial impression on the folk community of Greenwich
Village. He began visiting his idol Guthrie in the hospital, where he
was slowly dying from Huntington's chorea. Dylan also began performing
in coffeehouses, and his rough charisma won him a significant
following. In April, he opened for John Lee Hooker at Gerde's Folk
City. Five months later, Dylan performed another concert at the venue,
which was reviewed positively by Robert Shelton in the New York Times.
Columbia A&R man John Hammond sought out Dylan on the strength of
the review, and signed the songwriter in the fall of 1961. Hammond
produced Dylan's eponymous debut album (released in March 1962), a
collection of folk and blues standards that boasted only two original
songs. Over the course of 1962, Dylan began to write a large batch of
original songs, many of which were political protest songs in the vein
of his Greenwich contemporaries. These songs were showcased on his
second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Before its release,
Freewheelin' went through several incarnations. Dylan had recorded a
rock & roll single, Mixed Up Confusion, at the end of 1962, but
his manager, Albert Grossman, made sure the record was deleted because
he wanted to present Dylan as an acoustic folky. Similarly, several
tracks with a full backing band that were recorded for Freewheelin'
were scrapped before the album's release. Furthermore, several tracks
recorded for the album -- including Talking John Birch Society Blues
-- were eliminated from the album before its release.
Comprised entirely of original songs, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan made a
huge impact in the U.S. folk community, and many performers began
covering songs from the album. Of these, the most significant were
Peter, Paul & Mary, who made Blowin' in the Wind into a huge pop
hit in the summer of 1963 and thereby made Bob Dylan into a
recognizable household name. On the strength of Peter, Paul &
Mary's cover and his opening gigs for popular folky Joan Baez,
Freewheelin' became a hit in the fall of 1963, climbing to number 23 on
the charts. By that point, Baez and Dylan had become romantically
involved, and she was beginning to record his songs frequently. Dylan
was writing just as fast.
By the time The Times They Are A-Changin' was released in early 1964,
Dylan's songwriting had developed far beyond that of his New York
peers. Heavily inspired by poets like Arthur Rimbaud and John Keats,
his writing took on a more literate and evocative quality. Around the
same time, he began to expand his musical boundaries, adding more blues
and R&B influences to his songs. Released in the summer of 1964,
Another Side of Bob Dylan made these changes evident. However, Dylan
was moving faster than his records could indicate. By the end of 1964,
he had ended his romantic relationship with Baez and had begun dating a
former model named Sara Lowndes, whom he subsequently married.
Simultaneously, he gave the Byrds Mr. Tambourine Man to record for
their debut album. The Byrds gave the song a ringing, electric
arrangement, but by the time the single became a hit, Dylan was already
exploring his own brand of folk-rock. Inspired by the British Invasion,
particularly the Animals' version of House of the Rising Sun, Dylan
recorded a set of original songs backed by a loud rock & roll band
for his next album. While Bringing It All Back Home (March 1965) still
had a side of acoustic material, it made clear that Dylan had turned
his back on folk music. For the folk audience, the true breaking point
arrived a few months after the album's release, when he played the
Newport Folk Festival supported by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The
audience greeted him with vicious derision, but he had already been
accepted by the growing rock & roll community. Dylan's spring tour
of Britain was the basis for D.A. Pennebaker's documentary Don't Look
Back, a film that captures the songwriter's edgy charisma and charm.
Dylan made his breakthrough to the pop audience in the summer of 1965,
when Like a Rolling Stone became a number two hit. Driven by a
circular organ riff and a steady beat, the six-minute single broke the
barrier of the three-minute pop single. Dylan became the subject of
innumerable articles, and his lyrics became the subject of literary
analyses across the U.S. and U.K. Well over 100 artists covered his
songs between 1964 and 1966; the Byrds and the Turtles, in particular,
had big hits with his compositions. Highway 61 Revisited, his first
full-fledged rock & roll album, became a Top Ten hit shortly after
its summer 1965 release. Positively 4th Street and Rainy Day Women
#12 & 35 became Top Ten hits in the fall of 1965 and spring of
1966, respectively. Following the May 1966 release of the double-album
Blonde on Blonde, he had sold over ten million records around the world.
During the fall of 1965, Dylan hired the Hawks, formerly Ronnie
Hawkins' backing group, as his touring band. The Hawks, who changed
their name to the Band in 1968, would become Dylan's most famous
backing band, primarily because of their intuitive chemistry and wild,
thin mercury sound, but also because of their British tour in the
spring of 1966. The tour was the first time Britain had heard the
electric Dylan, and their reaction was disagreeable and violent. At the
Manchester concert (long mistakenly identified as the show from
London's Royal Albert Hall), an audience member called Dylan Judas,
inspiring a positively vicious version of Like a Rolling Stone from
Dylan and the band. The performance was immortalized on countless
bootleg albums (an official release finally surfaced in 1998), and it
indicates the intensity of Dylan in the middle of 1966. He had assumed
control of Pennebaker's second Dylan documentary, Eat the Document, and
was under deadline to complete his book Tarantula, as well as record a
new record. Following the British tour, he returned to America.
On July 29, 1966, he was injured in a motorcycle accident outside of
his home in Woodstock, NY, suffering injuries to his neck vertebrae and
a concussion. Details of the accident remain elusive -- he was
reportedly in critical condition for a week and had amnesia -- and some
biographers have questioned its severity, but the event was a pivotal
turning point in his career. After the accident, Dylan became a
recluse, disappearing into his home in Woodstock and raising his family
with his wife, Sara. After a few months, he retreated with the Band to
a rented house, subsequently dubbed Big Pink, in West Saugerties to
record a number of demos. For several months, Dylan and the Band
recorded an enormous amount of material, ranging from old folk,
country, and blues songs to newly written originals. The songs
indicated that Dylan's songwriting had undergone a metamorphosis,
becoming streamlined and more direct. Similarly, his music had changed,
owing less to traditional rock & roll, and demonstrating heavy
country, blues, and traditional folk influences. None of the Big Pink
recordings were intended to be released, but tapes from the sessions
were circulated by Dylan's music publisher with the intent of
generating cover versions. Copies of these tapes, as well as other
songs, were available on illegal bootleg albums by the end of the '60s;
it was the first time that bootleg copies of unreleased recordings
became widely circulated. Portions of the tapes were officially
released in 1975 as the double-album The Basement Tapes.
While Dylan was in seclusion, rock & roll had become heavier and
artier in the wake of the psychedelic revolution. When Dylan returned
with John Wesley Harding in December of 1967, its quiet, country
ambience was a surprise to the general public, but it was a significant
hit, peaking at number two in the U.S. and number one in the U.K.
Furthermore, the record arguably became the first significant
country-rock record to be released, setting the stage for efforts by
the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers later in 1969. Dylan followed
his country inclinations on his next album, 1969's Nashville Skyline,
which was recorded in Nashville with several of the country industry's
top session men. While the album was a hit, spawning the Top Ten single
Lay Lady Lay, it was criticized in some quarters for uneven material.
The mixed reception was the beginning of a full-blown backlash that
arrived with the double-album Self Portrait. Released early in June of
1970, the album was a hodgepodge of covers, live tracks,
re-interpretations, and new songs greeted with negative reviews from
all quarters of the press. Dylan followed the album quickly with New
Morning, which was hailed as a comeback.
Following the release of New Morning, Dylan began to wander restlessly.
He moved back to Greenwich Village, he finally published Tarantula in
November of 1970, and he performed at the Concert for Bangladesh in
August 1971. During 1972, he began his acting career by playing Alias
in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which was released in
1973. He also wrote the soundtrack for the film, which featured
Knockin' on Heaven's Door, his biggest hit since Lay Lady Lay. The
Pat Garrett soundtrack was the final record released under his Columbia
contract before he moved to David Geffen's fledgling Asylum Records. As
retaliation, Columbia assembled Dylan, a collection of Self Portrait
outtakes, for release at the end of 1973. Dylan only recorded two
albums -- including 1974's Planet Waves, coincidentally his first
number one album -- before he moved back to Columbia. The Band
supported Dylan on Planet Waves and its accompanying tour, which became
the most successful tour in rock & roll history; it was captured on
1974's double-live album Before the Flood.
Dylan's 1974 tour was the beginning of a comeback culminated by 1975's
Blood on the Tracks. Largely inspired by the disintegration of his
marriage, Blood on the Tracks was hailed as a return to form by critics
and it became his second number one album. After jamming with folkies
in Greenwich Village, Dylan decided to launch a gigantic tour, loosely
based on traveling medicine shows. Lining up an extensive list of
supporting musicians -- including Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Rambling
Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Mick Ronson, Roger McGuinn, and poet Allen
Ginsberg -- Dylan dubbed the tour the Rolling Thunder Revue and set out
on the road in the fall of 1975. For the next year, the Rolling Thunder
Revue toured on and off, with Dylan filming many of the concerts for a
future film. During the tour, Desire was released to considerable
acclaim and success, spending five weeks on the top of the charts.
Throughout the Rolling Thunder Revue, Dylan showcased Hurricane, a
protest song he had written about boxer Rubin Carter, who had been
unjustly imprisoned for murder. The live album Hard Rain was released
at the end of the tour. Dylan released Renaldo and Clara, a four-hour
film based on the Rolling Thunder tour, to poor reviews in early 1978.
Early in 1978, Dylan set out on another extensive tour, this time
backed by a band that resembled a Las Vegas lounge band. The group was
featured on the 1978 album Street Legal and the 1979 live album At
Budokan. At the conclusion of the tour in late 1978, Dylan announced
that he was a born-again Christian, and he launched a series of
Christian albums that following summer with Slow Train Coming. Though
the reviews were mixed, the album was a success, peaking at number
three and going platinum. His supporting tour for Slow Train Coming
featured only his new religious material, much to the bafflement of his
long-term fans. Two other religious albums -- Saved (1980) and Shot of
Love (1981) -- followed, both to poor reviews. In 1982, Dylan traveled
to Israel, sparking rumors that his conversion to Christianity was
short-lived. He returned to secular recording with 1983's Infidels,
which was greeted with favorable reviews.
Dylan returned to performing in 1984, releasing the live album Real
Live at the end of the year. Empire Burlesque followed in 1985, but its
odd mix of dance tracks and rock & roll won few fans. However, the
five-album/triple-disc retrospective box set Biograph appeared that
same year to great acclaim. In 1986, Dylan hit the road with Tom Petty
& the Heartbreakers for a successful and acclaimed tour, but his
album that year, Knocked Out Loaded, was received poorly. The following
year, he toured with the Grateful Dead as his backing band; two years
later, the souvenir album Dylan & the Dead appeared.
In 1988, Dylan embarked on what became known as The Never-Ending Tour
-- a constant stream of shows that ran on and off into the late '90s.
That same year, he released Down in the Groove, an album largely
comprised of covers. The Never-Ending Tour received far stronger
reviews than Down in the Groove, but 1989's Oh Mercy was his most
acclaimed album since 1974's Blood on the Tracks. However, his 1990
follow-up, Under the Red Sky, was received poorly, especially when
compared to the enthusiastic reception for the 1991 box set The Bootleg
Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased), a collection of previously
unreleased outtakes and rarities.
For the remainder of the '90s, Dylan divided his time between live
concerts and painting. In 1992, he returned to recording with Good As I
Been to You, an acoustic collection of traditional folk songs. It was
followed in 1993 by another folk album, World Gone Wrong, which won the
Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. After the release of World Gone
Wrong, Dylan released a greatest-hits album and a live record.
Dylan released Time Out of Mind, his first album of original material
in seven years, in the fall of 1997. Time Out of Mind received his
strongest reviews in years and unexpectedly debuted in the Top Ten. Its
success sparked a revival of interest in Dylan -- he appeared on the
cover of Newsweek and his concerts became sell-outs. Early in 1998,
Time Out of Mind received three Grammy Awards -- Album of the Year,
Best Contemporary Folk Album and Best Male Rock Vocal. Another album of
original material, Love and Theft, followed in 2001. Soon after its
release, Dylan announced that he was making his own film, to star Jeff
Bridges, Penelope Cruz, John Goodman, Val Kilmer, and many more. The
accompanying soundtrack, Masked and Anonymous, was released in July
2003. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Written by Stephen Thomas Erlewine