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Bob Dylan
Dylan at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
Background information
Birth name	Robert Allen Zimmerman
Also known as	Elston Gunn[1], Blind Boy Grunt, Lucky Wilbury/Boo Wilbury, Elmer Johnson, Sergei Petrov, Jack Frost, Jack Fate, Willow Scarlet, Robert Milkwood Thomas.
Born	May 24, 1941 (1941-05-24) (age 67) Duluth, Minnesota, U.S.
Genre(s)	Folk, folk rock, rock, country, blues
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter, author, poet, screenwriter, disc jockey
Instrument(s)	Vocals, guitar, harmonica, keyboards, piano, bass
Years active	1959–present
Label(s)	Columbia, Asylum
Associated acts	The Band, Traveling Wilburys, Grateful Dead, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers,
Website	www.bobdylan.com

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota) is an American singer-songwriter, author, poet, and painter, who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of Dylan's most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal chronicler and a reluctant figurehead of American unrest. A number of his songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'",^[2] became anthems of the civil rights movements. His most recent studio album, Modern Times, released on August 29, 2006, entered the U.S. album chart at number one, and that same year was named Album of the Year by Rolling Stone magazine.^[3]

Dylan's early lyrics incorporated politics, social commentary, philosophy, Historical and literary influences, defying existing pop music conventions and appealing widely to the counterculture. While expanding and personalizing musical styles, he has shown steadfast devotion to many traditions of American song, from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll and rockabilly to English, Scottish and Irish folk music, and even jazz and swing.^[4][5]

Dylan performs with the guitar, piano and harmonica. Backed by a changing line-up of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the "Never Ending Tour." Although his accomplishments as performer and recording artist have been central to his career, his songwriting is generally regarded as his greatest contribution.^[6]

During his career, Dylan has won many awards for his songwriting, performing, and recording. His records have earned Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy Awards, and he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1999, Dylan was included in the Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century, and in 2004, he was ranked number two in Rolling Stone magazine's list of "Greatest Artists of All Time."^[7] He has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[8][9][10]

In 2008, Dylan was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."^[11]

Life and career

Origins and musical beginnings

Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew name Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham)^[12][13][14] was born in St. Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota,^[15] and raised there and in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range west of Lake Superior. Research by Dylan’s biographers has shown that his paternal grandparents, Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States after the antisemitic pogroms of 1905.^[16] Dylan himself wrote in his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. 1 (2004), that his paternal grandmother's maiden name was Kyrgyz and her family originated from Istanbul, although she grew up in the Kağızman district of Kars in Eastern Turkey. He also wrote that his paternal grandfather was from Trabzon on the Black Sea coast of Turkey.^[17] His mother’s grandparents, Benjamin and Lybba Edelstein, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in America in 1902.^[16]

His parents, Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone, were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community. Zimmerman lived in Duluth until age seven. When his father was stricken with polio, the family returned to nearby Hibbing, where Zimmerman spent the rest of his childhood.^[18] Abram was recalled by one of Bob's childhood friends as strict and unwelcoming, whereas his mother was remembered as warm and friendly.^[19]

Zimmerman spent much of his youth listening to the radio — first to the powerful blues and country stations broadcasting from Shreveport, Louisiana and, later, to early rock and roll.^[20] He formed several bands in high school: the first, The Shadow Blasters, was short-lived; but his next band, The Golden Chords, lasted longer playing covers of popular songs. Their performance of Danny and the Juniors' "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone off.^[21] In his 1959 school yearbook, Robert Zimmerman listed as his ambition "To join Little Richard."^[22] The same year, using the name Elston Gunn,^[23][24] he performed two dates with Bobby Vee, playing piano and providing handclaps.^[25]

Zimmerman enrolled at the University of Minnesota in September 1959, moving to Minneapolis. His early focus on rock and roll gave way to an interest in American folk music, typically performed with an acoustic guitar. He has recalled, "The first thing that turned me onto folk singing was Odetta. I heard a record of hers in a record store. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson."^[26] In the sleeve notes to his album Biograph, Dylan explained the attraction folk music exerted: "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."^[27] He soon began to perform at the 10 O'clock Scholar, a coffee house a few blocks from campus, and became actively involved in the local Dinkytown folk music circuit, fraternizing with local folk enthusiasts and occasionally "borrowing" many of their albums.^[28][29]

During his Dinkytown days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as "Bob Dylan." In his autobiography, Chronicles (2004), he 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, in reading Down Beat magazine, he discovered there was a saxophonist named David Allyn. Dylan adds, "I'd seen some poems by Dylan Thomas. Dylan and Allyn sounded similar. Robert Dylan. Robert Allyn. The letter D came on stronger."^[30]

Relocation to New York and record deal

Dylan dropped out of college at the end of his freshman year. He stayed in Minneapolis, working the local folk circuit and making temporary journeys to Denver, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; and Chicago, Illinois. In January 1961, he moved to New York City, hoping to perform there and visit his ailing musical idol Woody Guthrie, who was then dying in a New Jersey hospital. Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and was the biggest influence on his early performances. Dylan would later say of Guthrie's work, "You could listen to his songs and actually learn how to live."^[29] In the hospital room, Dylan met Woody's old road-buddy Ramblin' Jack Elliott, who was visiting Guthrie the day after returning from a trip to Europe. Dylan and Elliott became friends, and much of Guthrie's repertoire was actually channeled through Elliott. Dylan paid tribute to Elliott in Chronicles (2004).^[31].

From April to September 1961, Dylan played at various clubs around Greenwich Village.Dylan gained some public recognition after a positive review^[32] in The New York Times by critic Robert Shelton of a show he played at Gerde's Folk City in September. Also in September, Dylan was invited to play harmonica by folk singer Carolyn Hester on her eponymous third album. This brought Dylan's talents to the attention of John Hammond, who was producing Hester's album^[33] for Columbia Records. Hammond signed Dylan to Columbia that October. The performances on his first Columbia album, Bob Dylan (1962), consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel material combined with two of his own songs. The album made little impact, selling only 5,000 copies in its first year, just enough to break even. Within Columbia Records some referred to the singer as "Hammond's Folly" and suggested dropping his contract. Hammond defended Dylan vigorously, and Johnny Cash was also a powerful ally of Dylan at Columbia.^[34] While Dylan continued to work for Columbia, he also recorded more than a dozen songs, under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt, for Broadside Magazine, a folk music magazine and record label.

Dylan made two important career moves in August 1962. He went to the Supreme Court building in New York and changed his name to Robert Dylan. In the same month, he also signed a management contract with Albert Grossman. Grossman remained Dylan's manager until 1970, and was notable both for his sometimes confrontational personality, and for the fiercely protective loyalty he displayed towards his principal client.^[35] In the documentary No Direction Home, Dylan described Grossman thus: "He was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker figure...you could smell him coming." Tensions between Grossman and John Hammond led to Hammond being replaced as the producer of Dylan's second album by the young African American jazz producer Tom Wilson.^[36]

By the time Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, was released in May 1963, he had begun making his name as both a singer and a songwriter. Many of the songs on this album were labelled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger's passion for topical songs.^[37] "Oxford Town", for example, was a sardonic account of James Meredith's ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi.^[38]

His most famous song of the time, "Blowin' in the Wind", partially derived its melody from the traditional slave song "No More Auction Block", while its lyrics questioned the social and political status quo. The song was widely recorded and became an international hit for Peter, Paul and Mary, setting a precedent for many other artists who would have hits with Dylan's songs. While Dylan's topical songs solidified his early reputation, Freewheelin' also included a mixture of love songs and jokey, surreal talking blues. Humor was a large part of Dylan's persona,^[39] and the range of material on the album impressed many listeners, including The 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."^[40]

With Joan Baez during the Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963

The Freewheelin' song "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", built melodically from a loose adaptation of the folk ballad "Lord Randall", with its veiled references to nuclear apocalypse, gained even more resonance when the Cuban missile crisis developed only a few weeks after Dylan began performing it.^[41] 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.^[42]

The Freewheelin' album presented Dylan as a singer accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. But other tracks recorded at these sessions, with a backing band, showed a willingness to experiment with a rockabilly sound. "Mixed Up Confusion" was released as a single and then quickly withdrawn. Cameron Crowe described it as "a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards Elvis Presley and Sun Records."^[43]

Soon after the release of Freewheelin', Dylan emerged as a dominant figure of the so-called "new folk movement" centered in Greenwich Village. Dylan's singing voice was untrained and had an unusual edge to it, yet it was suited to the interpretation of traditional songs. Robert Shelton described Dylan's vocal style as "a rusty voice suggesting Guthrie's old performances, etched in gravel like Dave Van Ronk's"^[44] Many of his most famous early songs first reached the public through other performers' versions that were more immediately palatable. Joan Baez became Dylan's advocate, as well as his lover. Baez was influential in bringing Dylan to national and international prominence, jumpstarting his performance career by inviting him onstage during her own concerts, and recording several of his early songs.^[45]

Others who recorded and had hits with Dylan's songs in the early and mid-1960s included The Byrds, Sonny and Cher, The Hollies, Peter, Paul and Mary, Manfred Mann, and The Turtles. Most attempted to impart a pop feel and rhythm to the songs, while Dylan and Baez performed them mostly as sparse folk pieces, keying rhythmically off the vocals. The covers became so ubiquitous that CBS started to promote him with the tag "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan."

Protest and Another Side

Bob Dylan performing at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, 1963.

By 1963, Dylan and Baez were both prominent in the civil rights movement, singing together at rallies including the March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech.^[46] In January, Dylan appeared on British television in the BBC play Madhouse on Castle Street, playing the part of a "hobo guitar-player."^[47] On May 12, 1963, Dylan sparked a controversy when he walked out of the rehearsal for an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Dylan wanted to perform "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" but was informed by CBS Television's "head of program practices" that the song was potentially libellous to the John Birch Society. Rather than comply with the censorship, he refused to appear on the program. ^[48]

His next album, The Times They Are a-Changin', reflected a more sophisticated, politicized and cynical Dylan. This bleak material, addressing such subjects as the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers and the despair engendered by the breakdown of farming and mining communities ("Ballad of Hollis Brown", "North Country Blues"), was accompanied by two love songs, "Boots of Spanish Leather" and "One Too Many Mornings", and the renunciation of "Restless Farewell". The Brechtian "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" describes the true story of a young socialite's (William Zantzinger) killing of a hotel maid (Hattie Carroll). Though never explicitly mentioning their respective races, the song leaves no doubt that the killer is white and the victim black.^[49]

By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements. Accepting the "Tom Paine Award" from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee at a ceremony shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a drunken, rambling Dylan questioned the role of the committee, insulted its members as old and balding, and claimed to see something of himself (and of every man) in Kennedy's alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.^[50]

Dylan's next album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded on a single June evening in 1964, had a lighter mood than its predecessor. The surreal Dylan reemerged on "I Shall Be Free #10" and "Motorpsycho Nightmare", accompanied by a sense of humor that has often reappeared over the years. "Spanish Harlem Incident" and "To Ramona" are romantic and passionate love songs, while "Black Crow Blues" and "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" suggest the rock and roll soon to dominate Dylan's music. "It Ain't Me Babe", on the surface a song about spurned love, has been described as a thinly disguised rejection of the role his reputation had thrust at him. His newest direction was signaled by two lengthy songs: the impressionistic "Chimes of Freedom", which sets elements of social commentary against a denser metaphorical landscape in a style later characterized by Allen Ginsberg as "chains of flashing images"; and "My Back Pages", which attacks the simplistic and arch seriousness of his own earlier topical songs and seems to predict the backlash he was about to encounter from his former champions as he took a new direction.^[51]

In the latter half of 1964 and 1965, Dylan’s appearance and musical style changed rapidly, as he made his move from leading contemporary songwriter of the folk scene to Folk-Rock pop-music star. His scruffy jeans and work shirts were replaced by a Carnaby Street wardrobe, sunglasses day or night, and pointy "Beatle boots." His naturally-curly hair grew longer and somewhat unruly (and by 1966 would fully evolve into another Dylan trademark: the so-called "Dylan 'Fro"). A London reporter wrote: “Hair that would set the teeth of a comb on edge. A loud shirt that would dim the neon lights of Leicester Square. He looks like an undernourished cockatoo.”^[52] Dylan also began to play with frequently hapless interviewers in increasingly cruel and surreal ways. Appearing on the Les Crane TV show and asked about a movie he was planning to make, he told Crane it would be a cowboy horror movie. Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied, “No, I play my mother.”^[53]

Going electric

Main article: Electric Dylan controversy

His March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home was yet another stylistic leap.^[54] The album featured his first recordings made with electric instruments. The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", owed much to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" and was provided with an early music video courtesy of D. A. Pennebaker's cinéma vérité presentation of Dylan's 1965 tour of England, Dont Look Back.^[55] Its free association lyrics both harked back to the manic energy of Beat poetry and were a forerunner of rap and hip-hop.^[56] In 1969, the militant Weatherman group took their name from a line in "Subterranean Homesick Blues." ("You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.")

The B side of the album was a different matter. It included four lengthy acoustic songs whose undogmatic political, social, and personal concerns are illuminated with the semi-mystical imagery that became another Dylan trademark. One of these tracks, "Mr. Tambourine Man", which would become one of his best known songs, had already been a hit for The Byrds; 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. During April - May, Dylan made a very successful tour in England (see Bob Dylan UK Tour 1965).

That summer 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, featuring Mike Bloomfield (guitar), Sam Lay (drums) and Jerome Arnold (bass), plus Al Kooper (organ) and Barry Goldberg (piano), while headlining at the Newport Folk Festival (see The electric Dylan controversy).^[57] Dylan had appeared at Newport twice before, in 1963 and 1964, but in 1965 two wildly divergent accounts of the crowd's response emerged. 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 whom Dylan had alienated by appearing, unexpectedly, with an electric guitar. An alternative account claims audience members were merely upset by poor sound quality and a surprisingly short set.

Dylan's 1965 Newport performance provoked an outraged response from the folk music establishment.^[58] Ewan 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." On July 29, just four days after his controversial performance at Newport, Dylan was back into the studio in New York and recorded "Positively 4th Street." The song teemed with images of paranoia and revenge. ("I know the reason/That you talk behind my back/I used to be among the crowd/You're in with.") It was widely interpreted as Dylan's put-down of former friends from the folk community — friends he had known in the clubs along West 4th Street.^[59]

Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde

In July 1965, Dylan released the single "Like a Rolling Stone", which peaked at #2 in the U.S. and at #4 in the UK charts. At over six minutes in length, this song has been widely credited with altering attitudes about what a pop single could convey. Bruce Springsteen said that on first hearing this single, “that snare shot sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind… I knew that I was listening to the toughest voice that I had ever heard.“^[60] In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine listed it at number one on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.^[61] Its signature sound — with a full, jangling band and an organ riff — also characterized his next album, Highway 61 Revisited, titled after the road that led from Dylan's native Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans. The songs passed stylistically through the birthplace of blues, the Mississippi Delta, and referenced a number of blues songs, including Mississippi Fred McDowell's "61 Highway". The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, with surreal litanies of the grotesque flavored by Mike Bloomfield's blues guitar, a rhythm section, and Dylan's obvious enjoyment of the sessions. The closing song, "Desolation Row", is an apocalyptic vision with references to many figures of Western culture.

A mix of folk music, rock and roll and Dylan's own brand of surrealism, Blonde on Blonde (1966)^[62] is often considered one of the finest recordings of American popular music.

In support of the record, Dylan was booked for two U.S. concerts and set about assembling a band. Mike Bloomfield was unwilling to leave the Butterfield Band, so Dylan mixed Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks from his studio crew with bar-band stalwarts Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, best known at the time for backing Ronnie Hawkins. On August 28 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the group was heckled by an audience who, Newport notwithstanding, still demanded the acoustic troubadour of previous years. The band's reception on September 3 at the Hollywood Bowl was more uniformly favorable.^[63]

While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences on tour, their studio efforts floundered. Producer Bob Johnston had been trying to persuade Dylan to record in Nashville for some time. In February 1966 Dylan agreed and Johnston surrounded him with a cadre of top-notch session men. At Dylan's insistence, Robertson and Kooper came down from New York City to play on the sessions.^[64] The Nashville sessions produced the album Blonde on Blonde (1966), featuring what Dylan later called "that thin wild mercury sound." Al Kooper said the record was a masterpiece because it was "taking two cultures and smashing them together with a huge explosion": the musical world of Nashville and the world of the "quintessential New York hipster" Bob Dylan.^[65]

For many critics, Dylan's mid-'60s trilogy of albums — Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde — represents one of the great cultural achievements of the 20th century. In Mike Marqusee's words: "Between late 1964 and the summer 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 and Beat poetry, surrealism and Dada, advertising jargon and social commentary, Fellini and Mad magazine, he forged a coherent and original artistic voice and vision. The beauty of these albums retains the power to shock and console."^[66]

On November 22, 1965, Bob Dylan married Sara Lownds. Some of Dylan’s friends (including Ramblin' Jack Elliott) claim that, in conversation immediately after the event, Dylan denied that he was married.^[67] Journalist Nora Ephron first made the news public in the New York Post in February 1966 with the headline “Hush! Bob Dylan is wed.”^[68]

Dylan undertook a "world tour" (see also Bob Dylan World Tour 1966) of Australia and Europe in the spring of 1966. Each show was split into two parts. Dylan performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second half, backed by the Hawks, he played high voltage electric music. This contrast provoked many fans, who jeered and Slow handclapped.

The tour culminated in a famously raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England (officially released on CD in 1998 as The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert). At the climax of the concert, one fan, angry with Dylan's electric sound, shouted: "Judas!" to which Dylan responded, "I don't believe you... You're a liar!" However, there was also some conversation in the audience to which this may have been aimed. He then turned to the band and, just within earshot of the microphone, said "Play it fucking loud!"^[69] They then launched into the last song of the night with gusto — "Like a Rolling Stone".

Motorcycle accident and reclusion

After his European tour, Dylan returned to New York, but the pressures on him continued to increase. ABC Television had paid an advance for a TV show they could screen.^[70] His publisher, Macmillan, was demanding a finished manuscript of the poem/novel Tarantula. Manager Albert Grossman had already scheduled an extensive concert tour for that summer and fall. On July 29, 1966, while Dylan rode his Triumph 500 motorcycle in Woodstock, New York, its brakes locked, throwing him to the ground. Though the extent of his injuries was never fully disclosed, Dylan said that he broke several vertebrae in his neck.^[71] In commenting on the significance of the crash, Dylan made it plain that he had felt exploited at that time: “When I had that motorcycle accident ... I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was just workin' for all these leeches. And I didn't want to do that. Plus, I had a family and I just wanted to see my kids. "^[72]

A sense of mystery still surrounds the circumstances of the accident.^[73] Howard Sounes's biography, Down the Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, points out that no ambulance was called to the scene of the accident and that Dylan was not taken to a hospital.^[74] Sounes concludes that the crash offered Dylan the much-needed chance to escape from the pressures that had built up around him. Whatever his reasons, in the wake of the accident, Dylan withdrew from the public gaze and except for a few select appearances, did not tour again for eight years.

Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began editing film footage of his 1966 tour for Eat the Document, a rarely exhibited follow-up to Dont Look Back. A rough-cut was shown to ABC Television and was promptly rejected as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience.^[75] In 1967 he began recording music with the Hawks at his home and in the basement of the Hawks' nearby house, called "Big Pink." The relaxed atmosphere yielded renditions of many of Dylan's favored old and new songs and some newly written pieces.^[76] These songs, initially compiled as demos for other artists to record, provided hit singles for Julie Driscoll ("This Wheel's on Fire"), The Byrds ("You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Nothing Was Delivered"), and Manfred Mann ("Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)"). Columbia belatedly released selections from them in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Over the years, more and more of the songs recorded by Dylan and his band in 1967 appeared on various bootleg recordings, culminating in a five-CD bootleg set titled The Genuine Basement Tapes, containing 107 songs and alternate takes.^[77] Later in 1967, the Hawks re-named themselves The Band, and independently recorded the album Music from Big Pink, thus beginning a long and successful recording and performing career of their own.

In October and November 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville. Back in the recording studio after a 19-month break, he was accompanied only by Charlie McCoy on bass, Kenny Buttrey on drums, and Pete Drake on steel guitar.^[78] At the end of the year, 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 that drew on both the American West and the Bible. The sparse structure and instrumentation, coupled with lyrics that 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.^[79] It included "All Along the Watchtower", with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9). The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose celebrated version Dylan himself acknowledged as definitive in the liner notes to Biograph. As proof, since 1974 Dylan and his bands have performed arrangements much closer to Hendrix's than to the John Wesley Harding version.^[27]

Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, and Dylan made his first live appearance in twenty months at a Guthrie memorial concert held at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968.

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", which had been originally written for the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack, but was not submitted in time to make the final cut.^[80] It was during these sessions that Dylan met Carl Perkins, and co-wrote the song "Champaign, Illinois" with him, which would appear on Perkin's album "On Top" released the following year.^[81][82] In May 1969, Dylan appeared on the first episode of Johnny Cash's new television show, duetting with Cash on "Girl from the North Country", "It Ain't Me Babe" and "Living the Blues". Dylan next traveled to England to top the bill at the Isle of Wight rock festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at the Woodstock Festival far closer to his home.^[83]

In the early 1970s critics charged Dylan's output was of varied and unpredictable quality. Rolling Stone magazine writer and Dylan loyalist Greil Marcus notoriously asked "What is this shit?" 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, which some considered a return to form. In the same year Dylan co-wrote "I'd Have You Anytime" with George Harrison, which appeared as the opening track on the ex-Beatle's album All Things Must Pass (which also included a cover of Dylan's "If Not For You"). His unannounced appearance at Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh was widely praised. Dylan's only other studio activity in 1970 consisted of two songs ("East Virginia Blues" and "Nashville Skyline Rag") recorded in December with banjo-player Earl Scruggs and his sons Randy and Gary, which would eventually appear on Scruggs' 1971 album Earl Scruggs Performing With His Family And Friends.^[84]

Between March 16 and 19, 1971, Dylan reserved three days at Blue Rock Studios, a small studio in New York's Greenwich Village. These sessions resulted in one single, "Watching The River Flow," and a new recording of "When I Paint My Masterpiece".^[85] On November 4, 1971 Dylan recorded the single "George Jackson" which he released a week later.^[86]. For many, this single was a surprising return to 'protest' material, mourning the killing of George Jackson in San Quentin Prison that summer.^[87]

In 1972 Dylan signed onto Sam Peckinpah's film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providing the songs (see Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) and taking a role as "Alias", a minor member of Billy's gang. Despite the film's failure at the box office, the song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" has proven its durability, having been covered by over 150 recording artists.^[88]

Return to touring

Portrait of Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg by Elsa Dorfman, 1975.

Dylan started 1973 by signing with a new record label, David Geffen's Asylum Records, when his contract with Columbia Records expired. He recorded his next album, Planet Waves, using The Band as his backing group, while rehearsing for a major tour. The album included two versions of "Forever Young". Christopher Ricks has connected the chorus of this song with John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn,"^[89] ("For ever panting, and for ever young"), and Dylan has recalled writing the song for one of his own children: “I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental”.^[90] It has remained one of the most frequently performed of his songs;^[91] one critic describing it as "something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke of the father in Dylan."^[92]

Columbia Records simultaneously released Dylan, a haphazard collection of studio outtakes (almost exclusively cover songs), which was widely interpreted as a churlish response to Dylan's signing with a rival record label.^[93] In January 1974 Dylan and The Band embarked on their high-profile, coast-to-coast Bob Dylan and The Band 1974 Tour of North America. A live double album of the tour, Before the Flood which included Dylan with The Band, was released on Asylum Records. Later in the mid 70s Before the Flood was released by Columbia records.

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.^[94] Word of Dylan's efforts soon leaked out, and expectations were high. But Dylan delayed the album's release, and then, by years end he had re-recorded half of the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production assistance from his brother David Zimmerman. During this time, Dylan returned to Columbia Records which eventually reissued his Asylum albums.

Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. In the NME, Nick Kent described "the accompaniments [as] often so trashy they sound like mere practise takes." In Rolling Stone, reviewer Jon Landau wrote that "the record has been made with typical shoddiness." However, over the years critics have come to see it as one of Dylan's greatest achievements, perhaps the only serious rival to his great mid 60s trilogy of albums. In Salon.com, 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-'60s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years."^[95] The songs have been described as Dylan's most intimate and direct.^[96][97]

That summer Dylan wrote his first successful "protest" song in twelve years, championing the cause of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter whom he believed had been wrongfully imprisoned for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey. After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote "Hurricane", presenting the case for Carter's innocence. Despite its 8:32 minute length, the song was released as a single, peaking at #33 on the U.S. Billboard Chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue.^[98] The tour was a varied evening of entertainment featuring many performers drawn mostly from the resurgent Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone Burnett; Allen Ginsberg; Ramblin' Jack Elliott; Steven Soles; David Mansfield; former Byrds frontman Roger McGuinn; British guitarist Mick Ronson; Scarlet Rivera, a violin player Dylan discovered while she was walking down the street to a rehearsal, her violin case hanging on her back;^[99] and 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.^[100]

Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour 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.^[101][102] 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 was released until 2002, when Live 1975 appeared as the fifth volume in Dylan's official Bootleg Series. The single "Rita May", an outtake from the Desire sessions, backed with the Hard Rain version of "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again" was also released in promotion of both releases.^[103]

The fall 1975 tour with the Revue also provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara, a sprawling and improvised narrative mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received generally poor, sometimes scathing, reviews^[104][105] and had a very brief theatrical run. Later in that year, Dylan allowed a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, to be more widely released.

In November 1976 Dylan appeared at The Band's "farewell" concert, along with other guests including Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison and Neil Young. Martin Scorsese's acclaimed^[106] cinematic chronicle of this show, The Last Waltz, was released in 1978 and included about half of Dylan's set. In this year Dylan also wrote and duetted on the song "Sign Language" for Eric Clapton's No Reason To Cry album - no other versions of the song apart from the one which appears on this album have ever been released. In 1977 he also contributed backing vocals to Leonard Cohen's Phil Spector-produced album Death of a Ladies' Man.

Dylan's 1978 album Street Legal was lyrically one of his more complex and cohesive;^[107] it suffered, however, from a poor sound mix (attributed to his studio recording practices),^[108] submerging much of its instrumentation in the sonic equivalent of cotton wadding until its remastered CD release nearly a quarter century later.

Born-again period

Further information: Slow Train Coming

In the late 1970s, Dylan became a born-again Christian.^{[109][110][111]} From January to April 1979, Dylan participated in Bible study classes at the Vineyard School of Discipleship in Reseda, Southern California. Pastor Kenn Gulliksen has 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.”^[112][113] Dylan released two albums of Christian gospel music. Slow Train Coming (1979) is generally regarded as the more accomplished of these albums, winning him the Grammy Award as "Best Male Vocalist" for the song "Gotta Serve Somebody". The second evangelical album, Saved (1980), received mixed reviews, although Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone declared the album was far superior, musically, to its predecessor.^[114] When touring from the fall of 1979 through the spring of 1980, Dylan would not play any of his older, secular works, and he delivered declarations of his faith from the stage, such as:

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.^[115]

Robert Hilburn interviewed Dylan about the new direction in his music for the Los Angeles Times. Hilburn’s article, published November 23, 1980, began:

Bob Dylan has finally confirmed in an interview what he’s been saying in his music for 18 months: He’s a born-again Christian. Dylan said he accepted Jesus Christ in his heart in 1978 after “a vision and feeling” during which the room moved: “There was a presence in the room that couldn’t have been anybody but Jesus.”^[116]

Dylan's embrace of Christianity was unpopular with some of his fans and fellow musicians.^[117] Shortly before the death of John Lennon in the infamous December 1980 shooting, Lennon recorded "Serve Yourself" in response to Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody".^[118] By 1981, while Dylan's Christian faith was obvious, his "iconoclastic temperament" had not changed, as Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times:

Mr. Dylan showed that neither age (he's now 40) nor his much-publicized conversion to born-again Christianity has altered his essentially iconoclastic temperament.^[119]

Since the early 1980s Dylan's personal religious beliefs have been the subject of debate^{citation needed} among fans and critics. Since his trilogy of Christian albums, Dylan has been described as a supporter of the Chabad Lubavitch movement^[120] and has publicly and privately participated in Jewish religious events, including the bar mitzvahs of his sons. More recently, it has been reported that Dylan has "shown up" a few times at various High Holiday services at various Chabad synagogues. For example, he attended Congregation Beth Tefillah, in Atlanta, Georgia on September 22, 2007 (Yom Kippur), where he was called to the Torah for the sixth aliyah.^[121]

In 1997 he told David Gates of Newsweek:

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."^[122]

In an interview published in The New York Times on September 28, 1997, journalist Jon Pareles reported that "Dylan says he now subscribes to no organized religion."^[123]

Dylan's evangelical songs from his "born again" period would resurface when he participated in the 2003 Gospel CD project, Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan.

1980s: Trust Yourself

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. The haunting "Every Grain of Sand" reminded some critics of William Blake’s verses.^[124]

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. Critics such as Michael Gray condemned Dylan's 1980s albums both for showing an extraordinary carelessness in the studio and for failing to release his best songs.^[125]

The Infidels recording sessions produced several notable outtakes, and many have questioned Dylan's judgment in leaving them off the album. Most well-regarded of these were "Blind Willie McTell" (which was both a tribute to the dead blues singer and an extraordinary evocation of African American history reaching back to "the ghosts of slavery ships"^[126]), "Foot of Pride" and "Lord Protect My Child";^[127] these songs 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.

Dylan contributed vocals to USA for Africa's famine relief fundraising single "We Are the World". On July 13, 1985, he climaxed at the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. Backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, Dylan performed a ragged version of "Hollis Brown", his ballad of rural poverty, and then said to a worldwide audience exceeding one billion people: "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." His remarks were widely criticised as inappropriate, but they did inspire Willie Nelson to organise a series of events, Farm Aid, to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.^[128]

In July 1986 Dylan released Knocked Out Loaded, an album which consisted of three cover songs (by Little Junior Parker, Kris Kristofferson and the traditional gospel hymn "Precious Memories"), three collaborations with other songwriters (Tom Petty, Sam Shepard and Carole Bayer Sager), and two solo compositions by Dylan himself. The album received mainly negative reviews; Rolling Stone called it "a depressing affair",^[129] and it was the first Dylan album since Freewheelin' (1963) to fail to make the Top 50.^[130] Since then, some critics have called the eleven minute epic that Dylan co-wrote with Sam Shepard, 'Brownsville Girl', a work of genius,^[131] and some websites have even tried to claim that the entire album has been vastly underrated.^[132]

In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured extensively with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers on True confessions tour, sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. The tour was filmed for the documentary Hard to Handle,^{citation needed} directed by Gillian Armstrong. Dylan also toured with The Grateful Dead in 1987, resulting in a live album Dylan & The Dead. This album received some negative reviews.^[133] After performing with these different musical permutations, Dylan initiated what came to be called The Never Ending Tour on June 7, 1988, performing with a tight back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. Dylan would keep on touring with this small but constantly evolving band for the next 20 years.

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). Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack - "Night After Night", and "I Had a Dream About You, Baby" - as well as a cover of John Hiatt's "The Usual". The film was a critical and commercial flop.^[134]

Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1988. Bruce Springsteen made the induction speech, declaring: "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."^[135] Later that spring, Dylan joined Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and George Harrison to create a lighthearted, well-selling album as the Traveling Wilburys. Despite Orbison's death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990, which they released with the unexpected title Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3. Among Wilburys songs is the well known "Handle with Care".

Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with the Daniel Lanois-produced Oh Mercy (1989).^[136] Lanois's influence is audible throughout Oh Mercy.^[137][138] The track "Most of the Time", a lost love composition, was later prominently featured in the film High Fidelity, while "What Was It You Wanted?" has been interpreted both as a catechism and a wry comment on the expectations of critics and fans.^[139] The dense religious imagery of 'Ring Them Bells' struck some critics as a re-affirmation of faith. 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."^[140] Dylan also made a number of music videos during this period, but only "Political World" found any regular airtime on MTV.

1990s: Not Dark Yet

Dylan performs at a 1996 concert in Stockholm.

Dylan's 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990), an 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". The "Gabby Goo Goo" dedication was later explained as a nickname for the daughter of Dylan and Carolyn Dennis, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, who was four at that time^[141] 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, the record received bad reviews and sold poorly. Dylan would not make another studio album of new songs for seven years.^[142]

In 1991 Bob Dylan was inducted into the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame and in 1993 Dylan performed a brief tour with Santana.^[143]

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 interpretations and acoustic guitar work. Many critics and fans commented on the quiet beauty of the song "Lone Pilgrim",^[144] 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. Twenty-five years after famously failing to perform at the Woodstock Festival, Dylan appeared at the commemorative event entitled Woodstock 94.^[145] In November 1994 Dylan recorded two live shows for MTV Unplugged. He claimed his wish to perform a set of traditional songs for the show was overruled by Sony executives who insisted on a greatest hits package.^[146] The album produced from it, MTV Unplugged, included "John Brown", an unreleased 1963 song detailing the ravages of both war and jingoism. The same year Dylan provided vocals and guitar on Mike Seeger's cover of "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" on Seeger's Rounder Records album Third Annual Farewell Reunion.^[147]

With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed-in on his Minnesota ranch,^[148] Dylan booked recording time with Daniel Lanois at Miami's