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