Information AboutBob Dylan |
Dylan's early lyrics incorporated Politics , Social Commentary , Philosophy and Literary influences, defying existing Pop Music conventions and appealing widely to the Counterculture of the time. While expanding and personalizing musical styles, he has shown steadfast devotion to many traditions of American song, from Folk and Country / Blues to Rock And Roll and Rockabilly , to English , Scottish and Irish folk music, even Jazz , Swing , Broadway , Hard Rock and Gospel . LIFE AND CAREER Origins and musical beginnings Robert Allen Zimmerman (Jewish name: Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham)Sounes, ''Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan'', p.14 was born on '', Dylan wrote 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 .6) 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.Shelton, ''No Direction Home'', 25–33 Abram was recalled by one of Bob's childhood friends as strict and unwelcoming, whereas his mother was remembered as warm and friendly.7 Zimmerman enrolled at the Folk Music circuit, fraternizing with local folk enthusiasts and occasionally "borrowing" many of their albums.Shelton, ''No Direction Home'', 65–82'' No Direction Home ''. Paramount Pictures . Directed by Martin Scorsese . Released July 21 2005 . 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, by reading ''Downbeat'' magazine, he discovered that there was already a saxophonist called David Allyn. Around the same time, he became acquainted with the poetry of Dylan Thomas . Robert Zimmerman felt he had to choose between Robert Allyn and Robert Dylan: "I couldn't decide — the letter D came on stronger" he explained. He decided on "Bob" because there were several Bobbies in popular music at the time.Dylan, ''Chronicles, Vol. 1'', 78–79. Relocation to New York and record deal Dylan quit college at the end of his freshman year. He stayed in Minneapolis, working the folk circuit there with temporary journeys in Denver, Colorado ; Madison, Wisconsin ; and Chicago, Illinois . In January 1961, he headed for New York City to perform and to visit his ailing musical idol Woody Guthrie in a New Jersey Hospital . 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." In the hospital room, Dylan also met Woody's old road-buddy Ramblin' Jack Elliott visiting Guthrie the day after returning from his trip to Europe. He and Elliott became friends, and much of Guthrie's repertoire was actually channeled through Elliott. Dylan paid tribute to Elliott in '' Chronicles '' (2004).Dylan, ''Chronicles, Vol. 1'', 250–252. By the time Dylan's next record, '' The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan '', was released in 1963, he had begun to make his name as both a singer and a songwriter. Many of the songs on this album were labelled Protest Song s, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger 's passion for topical songs.Shelton, ''No Direction Home'', 138–142 "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 .Shelton, ''No Direction Home'', 156 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 other artists. 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, Scaduto , ''Bob Dylan'', 35 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."''Mojo'' magazine, December 1993 The ''Freewheelin''' song ", Imagist lyrical attack with traditional folk progressions.Ricks, ''Dylan's Visions of Sin'', 329–44. during the Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C. , 1963]] Soon after the release of ''Freewheelin'', Dylan emerged as a dominant figure of the so-called "''new folk movement''" headquartered in Greenwich Village . As an interpreter of traditional songs, Dylan's singing voice was untrained and had an unusual edge to it. Robert Shelton described Dylan's vocal style as "a rusty voice suggesting Guthrie's old performances, etched in gravel like Dave Van Ronk 's"Shelton, ''No Direction Home'', 108–111 Many of his most famous early songs first reached the public through versions by other performers who were more immediately palatable. Joan Baez became Dylan's advocate, as well as his lover. Baez jumpstarted Dylan's performance career by inviting him onstage during her concerts, and recorded several of his early songs; she was influential in bringing Dylan to national and international prominence.Joan Baez entry, Gray, ''The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia'', 28–31 Others who recorded and had hits with Dylan's songs in the mid 1960s included The Byrds , Sonny And Cher , The Hollies , Peter, Paul And Mary , Manfred Mann , and The Turtles . Most attempted to impart more of a pop feel and rhythm to the songs where Dylan and Baez performed them mostly as sparse folk pieces keying rhythmically off the vocals. These covers became so ubiquitous that CBS started to promote him with the tag "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan". Protest and Another Side By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk-protest movement. 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 assassin Lee Harvey Oswald .Shelton, ''No Direction Home'', 200–205 His next album, '' sang harmony on the Another Side Of Bob Dylan version of Mr. Tambourine Man . In 1964–65 Dylan’s appearance changed rapidly, as he made his move from leading contemporary song-writer of the folk scene to rock’n’roll star. His scruffy jeans and work shirts were replaced by a 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.”Heylin, ''Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited'', 178–181 "Going electric" His March 1965 album ''", 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 ''.Gill, ''My Back Pages'', 68–69 Its free association lyrics both harked back to the manic energy of Beat poetry and were a forerunner of rap and hip-hop.Marqusee, ''Wicked Messenger'', 144 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, including four lengthy acoustic songs whose undogmatic political, social and personal concerns are illuminated with the semi-mystical imagery that became another trademark. One of these tracks, " Mr. Tambourine Man " - which would eventually 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. 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), Jerome Arnold (bass), plus Al Kooper (organ) and Barry Goldberg (piano), while Headlining at the Newport Folk Festival (see '' The Electric Dylan Controversy '').Heylin, ''Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited'', 208–216 Dylan had appeared at Newport twice before, in 1963 and 1964, and two wildly divergent accounts of the crowd's response in 1965 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 his electric guitar. An alternative account claims audience members were merely upset by poor sound quality and a surprisingly short set. Whatever sparked the crowd's disfavor, Dylan soon reemerged and sang two much better received solo acoustic numbers, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Mr. Tambourine Man", although his choice of the former has often been described as a carefully selected death knell for the kind of consciously sociopolitical, purely acoustic music that the cat-callers were demanding of him, with "New Folk" in the role of "Baby Blue". Dylan's 1965 Newport performance provoked an outraged response from the folk music establishment.Shelton, ''No Direction Home'', 305–314 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 29th, just four days after his controversial performance at Newport, Dylan was back in the studio in New York recording "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"), and 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.Sounes, ''Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan'', 186 Many in the folk revival had embraced the idea that life equaled art, that a certain kind of life defined by suffering and social exclusion in fact replaced art.Georgina Boyes: The Imagined Village: Culture, ideology and the English Folk Revival Folksong collectors and singers often presented folk music as an innocent characteristic of lives lived without reflection or the false consciousness of capitalism. Greil Marcus: The Old, Weird America, 28 This philosophy, both genteel and paternalistic, was ultimately what Dylan had run afoul of by 1965. But at an Austin press conference in September of that year, on the day of his first performance with : “What folk music is... is based on myths and the Bible and plague and famine and all kinds of things like that which are nothing but mystery and you can see it in all the songs….All these songs about roses growing out of people’s brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels…and seven years of this and eight years of that and it’s all really something that nobody can touch.... (the songs) are not going to die.” Nat Hentoff, quoted in The Playboy Interview, March 1966; quoted in the Ralph J. Gleason interview, Ramparts, March 1966 It was this mystical, living tradition of songs that served as the palette for ''Bringing It All Back Home'', but in a nod to changing times first openly displayed at Newport, electrically amplified instruments would now become part of the mix. ''Highway 61 Revisited'' and ''Blonde on Blonde'' , Rock And Roll and Dylan's own brand of surrealism, '' Blonde On Blonde '' (1966)Gill, ''My Back Pages'', 93–95 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 for backing Ronnie Hawkins . In August 1965 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.Sounes, ''Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan'', 189–90 Neither Kooper nor Brooks wanted to tour with Dylan, and he was unable to lure his preferred band, a crew of west coast musicians best known for backing Johnny Rivers , featuring guitarist James Burton and drummer Mickey Jones , away from their regular commitments. Dylan then hired Robertson and Helm's full band, The Hawks , for his tour group, and began a string of studio sessions with them in an effort to record the follow-up to ''Highway 61 Revisited''. While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences on tour, their studio efforts floundered. Producer '' (1966). 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.Gill, ''My Back Pages'', 95 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."Marqusee, ''Wicked Messenger'', 139 Dylan undertook a "world tour" 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 slowly handclapped. The tour culminated in a famously raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester !" and Dylan responded, "I don't believe you... You're a liar!" He turned to the band and, just within earshot of the microphone, said "Play it fucking loud!"Dylan's dialogue with the Manchester audience is recorded (with subtitles) in Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home . They then launched into the last song of the night with gusto — "Like a Rolling Stone." Crash and the late 1960s Nevertheless, questions lingered about the accident and the extent of Dylan's injuries. At the time, Dylan was said to be particularly unhappy with his management and the demands upon him. According to Howard Sounes ' biography, ''Down the Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan'', Dylan's treatment pattern in the immediate aftermath of the accident, as well as his treatment thereafter, severely call into question the notion that Dylan's injuries were truly life threatening. Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began editing film footage of his 1966 tour in '' (" 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 ''. Later in 1967, the Hawks (soon to be rechristened as The Band ) independently recorded the album '' Music From Big Pink '', thus beginning a long and successful recording and performing career of their own. In December 1967 Dylan released '', 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. Biograph (album) , 1985, Liner notes & text by Cameron Crowe . Woody Guthrie died on October 3rd 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 ". 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 " and "Living the Blues". Dylan next travelled 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.Sounes, ''Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan'', 248–253 1970s 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. His unannounced appearance at George Harrison's 1971 '' Concert For Bangladesh '' was widely praised, particularly a snarling version of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall". However, reports of a new album, a television special, and a return to touring came to nothing. Between March 16th and 19th, 1971, Dylan reserved three days at Blue Rock Studios, a small studio in New York's Greenwich Village . The sessions resulted in three singles ("''Watching The River Flow''", "''When I Paint My Masterpiece''" and "''George Jackson''"), but no album. The only long-player released by Dylan in either '71 or '72 was his second greatest hits compilation, "'' Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II ''", which included a number of re-workings of as-then unreleased Basement Tapes tracks, such as "''I Shall Be Released''" and "''You Ain't Goin' Nowhere''" with Happy Traum on backup. In November of 1971 Dylan recorded a series of as-yet-unreleased sessions with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg at the Record Plant in New York , intended for Ginsberg's "Holy Soul Jelly Roll" album. The sessions resulted in tracks such as the Dylan/Ginsberg compositions "Vomit Express", "September On Jessore Road" and "Jimmy Berman", as well as a number of Ginsberg originals and William Blake poems set to music. Ginsberg sang lead on most songs, with Dylan playing guitar and harmonica and providing backing vocals 13.14 It is unknown at this time if the sessions will ever be released officially, however there are a number of bootlegs in circulation. 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 (album) ) 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.15 ]] Dylan started 1973 by contributing his own composition, "Wallflower", to embarked on their high-profile, coast-to-coast Bob Dylan And The Band 1974 Tour of North America ; promoter Bill Graham claimed he received more ticket purchase requests than for any prior tour by any artist. 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 '' 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, '' on her Songs For The New Depression album. When Dylan was initially approached to do a duet with Midler, he wanted to record a version of "Friends." While they rehearsed this song, it was the "Blood on the Tracks" closer which was eventually released.[http://www.betteontheboards.com/boards/album-03.htm That summer Dylan wrote his first successful "protest" song in twelve years, championing the cause of boxer , and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue .18 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;Gray, ''The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia'', 579 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.Shepard, ''Rolling Thunder Logbook'', 2–49 Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour encompassed the release of the album '''' appeared as the fifth volume in Dylan's official ''Bootleg Series''. The fall 1975 tour with the Revue also provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film '' Renaldo And Clara '', a sprawling and improvised narrative mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received generally poor, sometimes scathing, reviews19Sounes, ''Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan'', 313 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 acclaimed20 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;Gray, ''The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia'', 643 it suffered, however, from a poor sound mix (attributed to his studio recording practices),Heylin, ''Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited'', 480–1 submerging much of its instrumentation in the sonic equivalent of cotton wadding until its remastered CD release nearly a quarter century later. Born Again In the late 1970s, Dylan became a '' (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 album, '' Saved '' (1980), was not as well-received. 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: Robert Hilburn interviewed Dylan about the new direction in his music for the '' Los Angeles Times ''. Hilburn’s article, published November 23, 1980, began: Dylan's embrace of recorded "Serve Yourself" in response to Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody".24 By 1981, while Dylan's Christian faith was obvious, his "iconoclastic temperament" had not changed, as Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times: ''Rolling Stone'' editor Jann Wenner , writing in his review for '' Slow Train Coming '', commented: Since the early 1980s Dylan's personal religious beliefs have been the subject of debate27 among fans and critics. He has seemingly supported the Chabad Lubavitch movementFishkoff, ''The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch'', 167 and participated in many Jewish rituals. More recently, it has been reported that Dylan has "shown up" a few times at various High Holiday services at various Chabad synagogues including Woodbury NY in 2005.28 In 1997 he told David Gates of Newsweek : | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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