Bob Dylan
On the 24th of May 1941, Robert Allen Zimmerman entered the world at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. His parents ran a furniture and appliance store in Hibbing, where he spent his childhood years. The young boy listened to Hank Williams on the Grand Ole Opry radio show and felt the singer's voice go through him like an electric rod. He formed bands while attending Hibbing High School, performing covers of songs by Little Richard and Elvis Presley. In September 1959, Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota and began performing at the Ten O'Clock Scholar coffeehouse near campus.
During this period, he started introducing himself as Bob Dylan. Biographer Robert Shelton noted that Dylan first confided his name change to his high school girlfriend, Echo Helstrom, in 1958. He told her he had found a great name, Bob Dillon. Shelton surmised that the surname came from two sources: Marshal Matt Dillon was the hero of the TV western Gunsmoke, and Dillon was also the name of one of Hibbing's principal families. Dylan later claimed to friends that Dillon was his mother's maiden name, which was untrue. He only spelled his name Dylan after reaching New York in 1961, when he became acquainted with the life and work of poet Dylan Thomas.
In January 1961, Dylan traveled to New York City to perform and visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey. Guthrie had been a revelation to him and influenced his early performances. From February 1961, Dylan played at clubs around Greenwich Village, befriending folk singers like Dave Van Ronk and Fred Neil. In September, the New York Times critic Robert Shelton boosted his career with an enthusiastic review of his performance at Gerde's Folk City.
That month, Dylan played harmonica on folk singer Carolyn Hester's third album, bringing him to the attention of producer John Hammond. Hammond signed Dylan to Columbia Records. His debut album, Bob Dylan, released the 19th of March 1962, consisted of traditional folk, blues, and gospel material with just two original compositions. The album sold 5,000 copies in its first year, just breaking even. On the 9th of August 1962, Dylan legally changed his name to Robert Dylan in the St. Louis County Court, Hibbing. His father, Abraham Zimmerman, was the witness.
His second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, arrived in May 1963. It included protest songs inspired by Guthrie and Pete Seeger's passion for topical songs. Blowin' in the Wind partly derived its melody from the traditional slave song No More Auction Block. A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall gained resonance when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred a month after Dylan began performing it. By the end of 1963, Dylan felt manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements.
Dylan's late March 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home, featured his first recordings with electric instruments under producer Tom Wilson's guidance. The first single, Subterranean Homesick Blues, owed much to Chuck Berry's Too Much Monkey Business. Its free-association lyrics described as harking back to the energy of beat poetry were a forerunner of rap and hip-hop. From April 30 to the 10th of May 1965, Dylan played an eight-concert tour in England that would be memorialized in Dont Look Back, D. A. Pennebaker's 1967 cinéma vérité presentation.
On the 25th of July 1965, headlining the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed his first electric set since high school with a pickup group featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar and Al Kooper on organ. He was met with cheering and booing and left the stage after three songs. One version has it that the boos were from folk fans whom Dylan had alienated by appearing unexpectedly with an electric guitar. An alternative account claims audience members were upset by poor sound and a short set. His performance provoked a hostile response from the folk music establishment.
A year earlier, Irwin Silber, editor of Sing Out!, had published an Open Letter to Bob Dylan criticizing his stepping away from political songwriting. In the September issue of Sing Out!, Ewan MacColl wrote that only a completely non-critical audience could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel. On July 29, four days after Newport, Dylan was back in the studio recording Positively 4th Street. The lyrics contained images of vengeance and paranoia.
Dylan toured Australia and Europe in April and May 1966. Each show was split in two. He performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second, backed by the Hawks, he played electrically amplified music. This contrast provoked many fans who jeered and slow clapped. The tour culminated in a raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England on the 17th of May 1966. A recording of this concert was released in 1998: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966.
On the 29th of July 1966, Dylan crashed his motorcycle, a Triumph Tiger 100, near his home in Woodstock, New York. He said he broke several vertebrae in his neck. The circumstances of the accident are unclear since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized. His biographers have written that the crash offered him the chance to escape the pressures around him. He made very few public appearances and did not tour again for almost eight years.
Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began editing D. A. Pennebaker's film of his 1966 tour. Secluded from public gaze, Dylan recorded over 100 songs during 1967 at his Woodstock home and in the basement of the Hawks' nearby house, Big Pink. These songs were initially offered as demos for other artists to record and became hits for Julie Driscoll, the Byrds, and Manfred Mann. Columbia released a Basement selection in 1975 as The Basement Tapes.
In the late 1970s, Dylan converted to Evangelical Christianity, undertaking a three-month discipleship course run by the Association of Vineyard Churches. He released three albums of contemporary gospel music. Slow Train Coming (1979) featured Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler and was produced by veteran R&B producer Jerry Wexler. Wexler said that Dylan had tried to evangelize him during the recording. He replied: Bob, you're dealing with a 62-year-old Jewish atheist. Let's just make an album.
Dylan won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the song Gotta Serve Somebody. When touring in late 1979 and early 1980, Dylan would not play his older secular works and delivered declarations of his faith from the stage. His Christianity was unpopular with some fans and musicians. John Lennon, shortly before being murdered, recorded Serve Yourself in response to Gotta Serve Somebody.
His second Christian album, Saved (1980), received mixed reviews described by Michael Gray as the nearest thing to a follow-up album Dylan has ever made, Slow Train Coming II and inferior. His third Christian album was Shot of Love (1981). The album featured his first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with Christian songs. The lyrics of Every Grain of Sand recall William Blake's Auguries of Innocence.
Dylan initiated what came to be called the Never Ending Tour on the 7th of June 1988, performing with a back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. He would continue to tour with a small changing band for the next 30 years. In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. He also toured with the Grateful Dead in 1987 resulting in the live album Dylan & The Dead which received negative reviews.
In 1985 he appeared at the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium Philadelphia. Backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, he performed a ragged version of Ballad of Hollis Brown then said to the worldwide audience: 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 criticized as inappropriate but inspired Willie Nelson to organize a concert Farm Aid to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.
By 1986 such uneven records weren't entirely unexpected by Dylan but that didn't make them any less frustrating. It was the first Dylan album since his 1962 debut to fail to make the Top 50. Down in the Groove (1988) sold even more poorly than Knocked Out Loaded. Gray wrote: The very title undercuts any idea that inspired work may lie within. Here was a further devaluing of the notion of a new Bob Dylan album as something significant.
In 2004, Dylan published the first part of his memoir Chronicles: Volume One. Confounding expectations, Dylan devoted three chapters to his first year in New York City in 1961, 1962 virtually ignoring the mid-1960s when his fame was at its height while devoting chapters to the albums New Morning (1970) and Oh Mercy (1989). The book reached number two on The New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction bestseller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award.
Biographer Clinton Heylin queried the veracity of Dylan's autobiography noting Not a single checkable story held water; not one anecdote couldn't be shot full of holes by any half-decent researcher. Martin Scorsese's Dylan documentary No Direction Home was broadcast on the 26th of September 27, 2005 on BBC Two in the UK and as part of American Masters on PBS in the US. It covers the period from Dylan's arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle crash in 1966 featuring interviews with Suze Rotolo Liam Clancy Joan Baez Allen Ginsberg Pete Seeger Mavis Staples and Dylan himself.
In 2016 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. He had been awarded a Pulitzer Prize special citation in 2008. His accolades include an Academy Award and ten Grammy Awards. He was honored with Kennedy Center Honors in 1997 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
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Common questions
When and where was Bob Dylan born?
Robert Allen Zimmerman entered the world on the 24th of May 1941 at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota.
Why did Bob Dylan change his name from Robert Zimmerman to Bob Dylan?
Biographer Robert Shelton noted that Dylan first confided his name change to his high school girlfriend Echo Helstrom in 1958 after finding the name Bob Dillon. He later claimed to friends that Dillon was his mother's maiden name which was untrue before spelling it Dylan after reaching New York in 1961 when he became acquainted with poet Dylan Thomas.
What happened during Bob Dylan's performance at the Newport Folk Festival on the 25th of July 1965?
Bob Dylan performed his first electric set since high school with a pickup group featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar and Al Kooper on organ. He was met with cheering and booing and left the stage after three songs while provoking a hostile response from the folk music establishment.
How did Bob Dylan spend time after crashing his motorcycle on the 29th of July 1966?
Dylan broke several vertebrae in his neck but was not hospitalized so no ambulance was called to the scene near his home in Woodstock New York. He made very few public appearances and did not tour again for almost eight years while recording over 100 songs during 1967 at his Woodstock home and in the basement of Big Pink.
When did Bob Dylan initiate the Never Ending Tour and how long did it last?
Bob Dylan initiated what came to be called the Never Ending Tour on the 7th of June 1988 performing with a back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. He continued to tour with a small changing band for the next 30 years.