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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, Minnesota, Bob
Dylan (b. Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) was raised in Hibbing, Minnesota
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 folkie. 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 US 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 folkie 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, and was performing hundreds of concerts a year.
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 fall 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 1965, he had ended his
romantic relationship with Baez and had begun dating a former model named Sara
Lowndes. 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, as
well as the mainstream press, who were fascinated by his witty, surreal and
caustic press confences. 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 literay analyzations
across the US and UK. 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 upon its fall 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 10 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 tour's penultimate date — usually referred to as the Royal
Albert Hall concert, but generally acknowledged to have occurred in Manchester —
an audience member called Dylan "Judas," inspiring a positively vicious version
of "Like a Rolling Stone" from 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,
New York home, 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 Bearsville 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 US and number one in the UK. 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 1968. 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 10 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 1970, the album was a hodge-podge
of covers, live tracks, re-interpretations and new songs greeted with vicious
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. In 1971, he moved back to Greenwich
Village, published Tarantula for the first time, and performed at the Concert
for Bangladesh; it would be his only live performance in the first half of the
decade. 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 one album, 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 travelling
medicine shows. Lining up an extensive list of supporting musicians — including
Joan Baez, Jonie 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 1979, Dylan announced that
he was a born-again Christain, and he launched a series of Christian albums that
fall 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
souvenier 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 10. Its success sparked a revival of interest in Dylan — he appeared on
the cover of Newsweek to promote the album 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. — Stephen Thomas
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