Bob Dylan (Duluth, Minnesota, United States;) (May 24, 1941), born Robert Allen Zimmerman, is a musician, singer and poet American. It has been for five decades, one of the greatest figures in popular music, being considered one of most influential and prolific 20th century musicians and composers.
Many of Dylan’s most famous work date from the 1960s, in which he became an informal chronicler of American conflicts. Some of his songs, like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin'”, became anti-war anthems and civil movements of the time. One recent study of Modern Times, published in 2006, Dylan albums entered directly into the top spot on the Billboard 200 and was named album of the year by Rolling Stone magazine.
The first letters of Dylan addressing social and philosophical topics and incorporated influenced literary, challenging the existing conventional pop and usually appealing to the counterculture of the time. While expanding and personalizing musical styles, showed a strong devotion by many traditions of American music from folk, country, blues, gospel, rock and roll and rockabilly up folk music English, Scottish and Irish, passing through the jazz and swing.
In his career, Dylan has been recognized and honoured by his compositions, performances and recordings. Their albums have earned him several Grammy Awards, Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, and his name is undergoing Of the fame of the rock and Roll Hall, the Nashville Songwriters Fame Hall and the Songwriters Hall of Fame of the. In January 1990, was awarded Knight of the order of Arts and letters by the Minister of culture Jack Lang France. In 1999, was included in time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people of the 20th century. In 2000, he won the Polar Music Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of music, and in 2004 reached second place in list of the 100 greatest artists of all time by Rolling Stone magazine of The Beatles. On 13 June 2007 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for arts, and received an honorary recognition of the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power”. In this context, since 1996 several authors and academics have nominated Dylan the candidacy of the Nobel Prize in literature.
Biography
1941-1960: origin and early musical
Robert Allen Zimmerman (in Hebrew: Zisel Sabbatai ben Avraham) was born in St. Mary of Duluth, Minnesota, on 24 may 1941 hospital and grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, Mesabi Iron Range West of Lake Superior. Studies by several of his biographers have demonstrated that his paternal grandparents, Zigman, and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa (current Ukraine) to the United States because of an anti-Semitic pogrom in 1905. Lybba Edelstein, Benjamin, and his maternal grandparents were Jewish Lithuanian who arrived in America in 1902. In his autobiography, Chronicles, vol. 1, Dylan wrote that the surname of his maternal grandmother was Kyrgyz and his family came from Istanbul.
His parents, Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice Beatty Stone, were part of a small but very United Jewish community. Robert Zimmerman lived in Duluth-six years old when his father he contracted polio and his family returned to the birthplace of his mother, Hibbing, Minnesota, where he spent the rest of his childhood. Robert lived much of his youth listening to the radio: in a first moment, listening to radio stations which transmitted music blues and country music from Shreveport, Louisiana, and later rock and roll. During your stay in school, he formed several bands as The Shadow Blasters, short-lived, or The Golden Chords, with those who would play in the talent search program rock and Roll Is Here to Stay. In the school Yearbook of 1959, Robert Zimmerman marked as their main ambition “join Little Richard”. The same year, using the pseudonym of Elston Gunn, played two concerts with Bobby Vee, accompanied at the piano and improvising palms.
Zimmerman was moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in September 1959 for enrolling in the University. During the season, his initial interest in the rock and roll gave way to an approach to music American folk. In 1985, Dylan explained their attraction towards folk music: “what happened with rock ‘n’ roll is for me, anyway, wasn’t enough…” Had very good catchy phrases and a contagious rhythm, but the songs were not serious or not reflected life realistically. Knew that when I got in folk music, was a more serious thing. Songs were full of sorrow, triumph of faith in the supernatural, and had deep feelings. Soon began to play at 10 o’clock Scholar, a cafe a few blocks of the University campus, and became involved in Dinkytown folk circuit.
During his days in Dinkytown, Zimmerman was renamed same “Bob Dylan”. In a 2004 interview, Dylan said: “aisles, you know, with wrong name, wrong parents.” I mean, that happens. You can call as you want. “This is the country of freedom”. In his autobiography, Chronicles, vol. 1, Dylan wrote about the name change.
“I had seen some poems by Dylan Thomas.” The pronunciation of Dylann and Allyn was similar. Robert Dylan. Robert Allyn. Letter D had more strength. However, the name Robert Dylan was not so attractive as Robert Allyn. People had always I called Robert or Bobby, Bobby Dylan seem corny but also were already Bobby Darin, Bobby Vee, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Neely and many other Bobbies. The first time I was asked my name in Saint Paul, instinctive and automatically solté: “Bob Dylan”
1960-1963: transfer to New York and contract with Columbia
Dylan left University after his first year. In January 1961, moved to New York in hopes of seeing his musical idol, Woody Guthrie, who was seriously ill from the Huntington’s disease at the psychiatric hospital of Greystone Park. About Guthrie, Dylan came to say: “You can listen to their songs and learn to live”.
In February 1961, Dylan played at several clubs in Greenwich Village. In September, began to gain a reputation thanks to a review of Robert Shelton in The New York Times during a concert at Gerde’s Folk City. The same month, Dylan played the harmonica for Carolyn Hester during the recording of their third album, coinciding with producer John H. Hammond. Hammond hired Dylan for Columbia Records in October.
The interpretations included in his first work for Columbia, entitled Bob Dylan and published in 1962, consisted of music material folk, blues and gospel combined with two compositions “Song to Woody” and “Talkin’ New York”. The album received little commercial success, selling 5,000 copies in its first year, which was sufficient to terminate the contract. Of Columbia, Dylan began to strike as”Hammond” and suggested finish his contract. In spite of this, Hammond strongly defended Dylan, and at the same time found a good Defender Johnny Cash, who had joined Columbia months earlier. During his work for Columbia, Dylan also recorded several songs under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt magazine of Broadside Magazine folk music.
In August 1962, Dylan gave two important steps in his career changed his name legally by Robert Dylan in the Supreme Court of New York and sign a contract for rendering with Albert Grossman. Grossman was Dylan’s representative until 1970, and was characterized by occasionally troubled personality and extreme protection over their customer image. Dylan would later describe as “a kind of Colonel Tom Parker you couldn’t… smell arrival” Grossman. Tensions between Grossman and John Hammond forced the latter to abandon the second Studio album of Dylan, recording sessions being replaced by producer Tom Wilson.
At the same time, their second album, Freewheelin’ ‘ Bob Dylan, published in May 1963, served to Dylan to grow as a singer and especially as a composer. Most of the songs on the album were labeled as protest songs, inspired partly by Woody Guthrie, and influenced by passion for traditional songs of Pete Seeger. “Oxford Town”, for example, ironically reflects enrolment of James Meredith as the first black to enter the University of Mississippi.
One of his most famous songs, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, derives partly in its melody of the traditional song “No More Auction Block”, while his letter questioning the social and political status quo of the time. The song was widely covered and became an international hit the hand of Peter, Paul and Mary, setting a precedent for other artists that rise with successes of Dylan’s compositions. For its part, the song “A Hard rain’s a-Gonna Fall” is based on the “Lord Randall” folk ballad. With its references to the nuclear apocalypse, the song won resonance during the development of the Cuban missile crisis. Similar to “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “A Hard rain’s a-Gonna Fall” marked an important direction in the composition of new songs, mixing the use of the inner monologue and imaginative lyricism with traditional forms of folk.
Although Dylan’s early songs solidified his early reputation Freewheelin’ ‘ Bob Dylan also includes love songs mixed with a tongue-in-cheek lyrics and even sometimes prankster. Humor became one of the pillars of the personality of Dylan, impressing listeners such as The Beatles. Regard, George Harrison commented: “what’d and we shifted.” “The content of his songs and his attitude was incredibly wonderful and original”.
Rough voice of Dylan was an impediment for many listeners alongside that an attractive to others. Describing the impact that Dylan had caused her husband and herself, Joyce Carol Oates wrote: “When you first heard his young and raw vocals, frankly, nasal and this, as if the role of sandpaper could sing, the effect was dramatic and electrifying”. Many of his early songs reached public in general through updates performed by other performers, such as Joan Baez, who became the Dylan protective as well as his later lover. Baez was crucial in raising Dylan nationally and internationally with numerous versions of his songs popularity and invite you often to their own concerts.
In May 1963, the political profile of Dylan grew when he left the Ed Sullivan Show. During rehearsals, the CBS executives reported that Dylan song that had been tested, “Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues”, was potentially a defamation of the John Birch Society. Rather than pleasing to censorship, Dylan refused to appear on the program.
During the time Dylan and Báez had become prominent figures in the movement for civil, singing together in March for jobs and freedom in Washington on August 28, 1963, in which Dylan played “Only a Pawn in Their Game” and “When the Ship Comes In”. The third album of Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin’, reflected a character more politicized, sophisticated and ironic of his songs. These songs were often based stories reales, the assassination of civil rights Medgar Evers “Only a Pawn In Their Game” wrestler, or the death of Hattie Carroll black waitress at the hands of William Zantzinger, a young socialite, the song “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”. In a more generic level, “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “North Country Blues” summarizing the desperation of farming communities and mining of the crisis of the time. Even so, political material album was accompanied by two songs of love, “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “One Too Many Mornings”.
Late in 1963, Dylan was manipulated and limited by the protest movements. These tensions are reported publicly when, during the Tom Paine Award from the hands of the National Committee on Civil Liberties, emergency shortly after the assassination of John f. Kennedy, a sluggish and drunk Dylan questioned the role of the Committee members as old and encalvecidos insulting and claiming to see something of himself and all men in the killer assumption of Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded in a single night of June 1964 included a lighter mood in comparison with its predecessor. Reemergió humorous and surreal part of Dylan in “I Shall Be Free # 10” and “Motorpsycho Nightmare”. “Spanish Harlem Incident” and “To Ramona” are passionate and romantic love songs, while “Black Crow Blues” and “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” suggest a future dominant factor of rock and roll in Dylan’s music. “It ain’t me, Babe” superficially may be interpreted as a love song, has been described as a rejection of the role that his reputation had pushed you represent. New sound address was mentioned in two songs long-term: “chimes of Freedom”, which mixes social comments with a dense metaphoric landscape in a style that Allen Ginsberg termed “flashes chains”, and “My Back Pages”, in which attacks the simplicity and the seriousness of his first compositions.
Between the second half of 1964 and 1965, the image and the musical style of Dylan changed rapidly, to become of prominent musician of the contemporary folk pop star folk rock scene. This transition was supported by a stylistic change, where Dylan spent using best suits the style of Carnaby Street, Rayban Wayfarer sunglasses and boots The Beatles-style instead of their usual jeans and shirts. Also, Dylan began to treat without decorum press during interviews. In this regard, during an interview in the television Les Crane, asked about a movie that was planning to do, Dylan replied to Crane which would be a Cowboys horror film. Asked if would interpret the cowboy, Dylan replied: “No, I interpret my mother”.
The publication in March 1965 in Bringing It All Back Home was a stylistic leap essential career to include the first recordings with electric instruments. The first single, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, influenced largely by the theme “Too Much Monkey Business” of Chuck Berry, was presented with a music video courtesy of D. a. Pennebaker documentary ahead Don’t Look Back, containing the British tour 1965. Free association of letters and the influence of the beat movement make a forerunner of rap and hip hop.
In contrast, many of his followers folk line interpreted the b-side of Bringing It All Back Home as a gesture conciliator: four long songs cut folk in Dylan made use of guitar and harmonica. “Mr. Tambourine Man” became soon a success of The Byrds, as well as one of their best-known songs, while “it’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “it’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” would be acclaimed as one of Dylan’s most important compositions.
During the summer of 1965, as a headliner at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed its first electric set from his time at school together with a group predominantly composed of components of Paul Butterfield Blues Band and formed by Mike Bloomfield (guitar), Sam Lay (drums), Jerome Arnold (bass), Al Kooper (organ) and Barry Goldberg (piano). Dylan had previously appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and 1964, but on this occasion met with a mix of cheering and booing, and left the stage after only three songs. Different interpretations of the facts suggest that the booing came purist folk, who did not receive either Dylan entry with an electric guitar music sector. An alternative interpretation alludes to the poor quality of the sound and the short set of songs as a reason for the boos.
The concert of Dylan at Newport provoked outrage in some quarters of folk music. Regard, Ewan MacColl wrote in the journal Sing Out!: “our traditional songs and ballads are creations of artists with an extraordinary talent working inside of traditions made for a long time.” But what about Bobby Dylan?, a young man of mediocre talent. “Only a public not critic, fed by the watered-down pop music could have fallen in such a way”. July 29, four days after his controversial performance at Newport, Dylan returned to the recording studio in New York to record “Positively 4th Street”. The lyrics of the song is mixed with retributive images in verses as “You got a lotta nerve / To say you are my friend / When I was down / You just stood there grinning” (which can be translated to the Spanish as: “you have many face / to say that you are my friend. / when I was depressed / you were there cachondeando te”) and is widely interpreted as a pulse to old friends community folk of the West 4th Street.
In July 1965, Dylan released the single “Like a Rolling Stone”, reached number 2 on the United States and 4 in United Kingdom. With more than six minutes duration, the song has been widely praised for previous attitudes of what a simple pop is able to transmit. Bruce Springsteen commented for the first time he heard the song: “the blow box at the beginning of the song sounded as if someone kicked open the door of your mind”. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Like a Rolling Stone” as the best song of all time. Its characteristic, sound with an organ riff and a full band, also characterized the next job study, Highway 61 Revisited, entitled as homage to the road moved to Dylan from Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans. The songs on the album remained the same simple with surreal litanies favoured by Mike Bloomfield blues guitar, rhythm section and the characteristic Al Kooper organ sound stele. The only exception is provided by “Desolation Row”, song of the album, with an apocalyptic vision which Dylan is transmit surreal references to numerous figures of Western culture for its eleven minutes and a half duration. Andy Gill wrote: “‘Desolation Row’ is an epic poem of eleven minutes of entropy that takes the form of a parade felliniano grotesque and extravagant, image showing a huge cast of iconic characters, some of them historical (Einstein, Nero), some biblical (Noah, Cain and Abel), some fictitious (Ophelia, Romeo, Cinderella), some literary T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound) and others that do not fit any of the above categories, in particular Dr. Filth [“Dr. stain”] and his dubious nurse”.
As a promotion for the album, Dylan planned to perform two concerts in United States and tried to form a band. Mike Bloomfield was unwilling to abandon Butterfield Band, so Dylan chose Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks worked on Highway 61 Revisited session musicians and musicians from direct as Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, known as the backing band for Ronnie Hawkins on The Hawks. August 28, still annoying audiences with electric Dylan sound interrupted group in Forest Hills. The band reception on September 2 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles was more favourable.
Dylan and The Hawks were increasingly receptive audiences during the tour, their efforts in the study were not entirely positive. In February 1966, producer Bob Johnston persuaded Dylan for recording in Nashville, Tennessee, looking for a base of that recording session musicians. At the insistence of Dylan, Robertson and Kooper went to Nashville to participate in the sessions. These meetings resulted in the double album Blonde on Blonde, which included what Dylan himself later described as “that sound thin and wild Mercury”. Al Kooper described the album by saying that “takes two cultures and makes them collide to produce an enormous explosion”: the music of Nashville and the “hipster quintessentially New York”, Bob Dylan world.
November 22, 1965, Dylan married secretly 25 years Sara Lownds model. Several of the friends of Dylan, including Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, commented that, even minutes after the wedding, Dylan denied that he was married. Nora Ephron journalist was the first to publicize news in February 1966 New York Post article with the headline: “silence!” “Dylan is married”.
Dylan embarked on a world tour by Australia and Europe during the spring of 1966. Each concert was divided into two parts. First, Dylan played on solo material from its first stage, accompanied by guitar and harmonica. In the second half, seconded by The Hawks played electric music. Contrast drew the ire of many followers, who showed their anger through slow and desacompasados applause. The tour culminated with a famous confrontation between Dylan and the public of the Free Trade Hall Manchester in England. At the end of the concert, a follower, angry with the electric sound of Dylan, shouted: “Judas!” to which Dylan replied: “Don’t you think.” “You are a liar”, return to the band and sort out of MIC: “tocad so high, dammit!”, and then zambulleron happy on the last song of the night, “Like a Rolling Stone”.
After the European tour, Dylan returned to New York, although pressures on him were still increasing. The ABC television network had paid an advance for a script for a television that Dylan had writing program. Macmillan Publishing still demanding a manuscript novel Tarantula, end at the same time as your representative, Albert Grossman, had organized a new tour for the summer and fall.
July 29, 1966, his Triumph 500 motorcycle brakes were blocked on a road near his home in Woodstock, New York, throwing him to land. Although the extent of his injuries was never revealed, Dylan said that several cervical vertebrae had fractured. The mystery round even the circumstances of the accident while not no ambulance was called and Dylan was not hospitalized. Regarding the relevance of his accident, Dylan expressed some bitterness in the manner in which had been tried: “when I had that accident Moto… I woke up and capturé my senses, I realized that she was working for all these leeches.” And didn’t want to do that. In addition, had a family and wanted to see my children. Biography of Howard Sounes, Down The Highway, concluded that the accident offered to Dylan need to escape the pressures which built surrounding himself. Result of his accident, Dylan withdrew from the public, and with the exception of some appearances, did not go out on tour until eight years later.
Once Dylan was recovered enough to resume their work, began to edit material recorded during his tour in 1966 for Eat the Document, a sequel of Don’t Look Back. A first segment was shown to the ABC and rejected by their presumed incomprehensibility for a general audience. In 1967, he began recording music with The Hawks at home and in the basement of the home The Hawks had rented in Woodstock, called “Big Pink” for the color of its façade. Songs, initially compiled as demos for the recorded them other artists, served as singles success for Julie Driscoll (“This wheel’s on Fire”), The Byrds (“You Ain ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, “Nothing Was Delivered”) and Manfred Mann (“Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)”). In 1975, Columbia compiled a selection of songs to publish them in The Basement Tapes. However, during the course of the years, a greater number of recordings between Dylan and The Hawks were published in bootlegs, culminating in a five-disc compilation entitled The Genuine Basement Tapes with 107 songs and alternate takes. During the following months, The Hawks went to call The Band and recorded the album Music from Big Pink making use of several songs that initially had been registered in his basement of Woodstock.
In October and November, 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville, Tennessee. Back in the Studio after a 19-month hiatus, Dylan was accompanied exclusively by Charlie McCoy on bass, drummer Kenny Buttrey and Pete Drake on the steel guitar. The result was John Wesley Harding, an album of quiet and contemplative songs based on a landscape that evoke the culture of the American West and the Bible. Sparse instrumentation, and its structure, along with letters that took seriously the Judeo-Christian tradition, marked a departure not only for the work of Dylan, but also to increasing psychedelic fervor in the mid-1960s musical culture. John Wesley Harding includes “All Along the Watchtower”, whose letter derives from the Book of Isaiah (21: 5-9) and was subsequently recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose version later Chief Dylan himself as the final version.
Because of the death of Woody Guthrie, on October 3, 1967 Dylan made his first public appearance after twenty months in the memorial tribute concert to Guthrie organized at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968.
Following work Studio, Nashville Skyline, was virtually an album of music commercial country that Dylan was backed by musicians from Nashville, Tennessee, and characteristic by the use of a voice soft and inappropriate in Dylan. The album includes a Duet with Johnny Cash in “Girl from the North Country” and the single “Lay Lady Lay”, which had been composed originally for the soundtrack of Midnight Cowboy, but not recorded in time to include in it. In May 1969, Dylan appeared in the first episode of the Johnny Cash TV show singing Duo “Girl from the North Country”, “It ain’t me, Babe” and “living the Blues”. The following public appearance of Dylan took place at the Isle of Wight Festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting their participation at the Woodstock festival near your home.
At the beginning of the 1970s, critics charged against the production of diverse and unpredictable quality of Dylan. In particular, the columnist of the magazine Rolling Stone Greil Marcus asked: “What is this shit?” after listening to 1970 album Self Portrait. In general, Self Portrait, a double album, with little original compositions, was poorly received by critics and the public. At year-end, Dylan released New Morning, which many regarded as a return to the good way. The same year, Dylan co-wrote “I d Have You Anytime”, “Nowhere to Go” and “If Not for You” alongside George Harrison. “I’d Have You Anytime” and “If Not for You” were included in the triple album All Things Must Pass, Harrison featuring Dylan’s participation in the second item. On the other hand, Dylan also participated alongside Harrison at the benefit concert The Concert for Bangladesh, attracting a special coverage of rare appearances in public that Dylan offered lately.
From 16 to 19 May 1971, Dylan went to the small Blue Rock Studios in Greenwich Village to record a single “Watching the River Flow”, and a new song, “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. November 4, 1971, Dylan recorded the single “George Jackson” considered a return to the protest song to echo the assassination of the Black Panther activist George Jackson in the prison of Saint-Quentin the previous summer.
In 1972, Dylan signed with Sam Peckinpah recording the soundtrack to the film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, as well as their participation as secondary in the film, playing “Alias”, a member of the Billy gang with some historical basis. In spite of the failure of the movie at the box office, the song “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, included in the soundtrack has demonstrated its durability as one of Dylan’s most covered songs.
Bob Dylan and The Band (from left to right, Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm) in Chicago, Illinois during the Planet Waves tour in 1974.
Dylan began 1973 by signing a new contract with the stamp of David Geffen Asylum Records, at the end of his contract with Columbia Records. In his next Studio album, Planet Waves, used as backing group The Band. The album includes two versions of “Forever Young”, which became one of his best-known songs. In 2003, Christopher Ricks involved the chorus of the song with the poem by John Keats “Ode on to Grecian Urn”, which contains the verse: “For ever panting, and for ever young”. As one critic described it, Forever Young projected “something Borlänge and sincere which comes from the father in Dylan”. Dylan commented about the song: “Wrote La one of my children and without wanting to be too sentimental thinking”.
In spite of his departure, Columbia Records released Dylan, a collection of discards and other artists was interpreted as a churlish response seal Asylum by its contract with the rival company versions simultaneously. In January, 1974, Dylan and The Band embarked on a North American tour from coast to coast. Demand for tickets for their concerts overflowed all forecasts, with more than 12 million requests by mail. A double live album tour, Before the Flood, was subsequently published by Asylum Records. In May 1974, Dylan participated in Salvador Allende organized by Phil Ochs tribute concert, which was also attended by musicians such as Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie (son of Woody Guthrie). Dylan had agreed to participate at the last minute when he learned that the concert had been sold so few entries that ran the risk of cancellation. Once his presence was announced, all entries were quickly sold.
After touring with The Band, Dylan and his wife formally declared its rupture. Subsequently, Dylan filled a small red notebook with new songs on relations couple and ruptures and quickly recorded new material for the album Blood on the Tracks in September 1974. After recording, however, Dylan postponed the release of the album and re-recorded the half of the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with assistance in the production of his brother David Zimmerman. During this time, Dylan signed a new contract with Columbia Records, which ultimately reeditaría Asylum albums.
Published in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. Britain’s NME, critic Nick Kent said that “the accompaniments are so quaint sound mere tests at the local”. In Rolling Stone, Jon Landau wrote in his review “the disk is made with the typical low quality”. Even so, over the years critics pointed to Blood on the Tracks as one of the greatest musical achievements of Dylan, placing it at the height of the trilogy of albums in the mid-1960s. Salon.com, Bill Wyman wrote: “Blood on the Tracks is impeccable album and best produced;” songs, each one of them, are built in a disciplined manner. “It is your album more friendly and more appalled, and seems to have achieved a sublime balance between the excesses of verbiage in the mid-1960s and intentionally simple compositions in the years after his accident littered with albums”.
During the summer, Dylan wrote his first song successful protest over twelve years in favour of the struggle for the liberation of the Boxer Rubin Carter, who had been imprisoned accused of triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey. After visiting Carter in prison, Dylan wrote “Hurricane”, presenting the cause by the innocence of Carter. In spite of its 8: 32 minutes long, the song was taken from the album as a single Desire, peaked at # 33 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was performed in all concerts of Dylan, named as Rolling Thunder Revue next tour. Tour offered a varied evening entertainment with many performers of folk like T-Bone Burnett, Greenwich Village scene Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, David Mansfield, Mick Ronson, Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, violinist Scarlet Rivera. Allen Ginsberg joined the cast of artists and appeared on scenes from the movie Dylan recorded simultaneously. Sam Shepard was initially hired to write the screenplay for the film, but ended up accompanying the tour as an informal chronicler.
Between late 1975 and 1976 early, tour served as promotion of the album Desire, which included several of his new songs with a near Chronicles travel narrative style and the influence of his new partner Jacques Levy. In the middle of the tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue was documented for a special television under the title of Hard Rain, which coincided with the release of the live album Hard Rain. The first part of the tour, generally better received by critics, not found an official publication until the edition of Live 1975 in 2002.
The fall of 1975 with the Rolling Thunder Revue tour also served as background for the film four hours Renaldo and Clara, an improvised and extensive story mixed with footage from concerts and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the film received generally poor reviews, sometimes vitriolic, and stayed shortly in theaters. At year-end, Dylan allowed the film editing to summarize in two hours dominated by live performances.
In November 1976, Dylan appeared at the concert of The Band, farewell to other guests as Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, Neil Young, organized in San Francisco, California. The Chronicle of the concert, recorded by Martin Scorsese and titled the last Waltz, and included approximately half of the work of Dylan, released in 1978 and was praised by critics as an epic moment in the history of rock. In 1976, Dylan also composed the song “Sign Language” with Eric Clapton and participated in their album No Reason to Cry. In the same year, Dylan recorded a version of “Buckets of Rain” with Bette Midler for her album Songs for the New Depression.
The 1978 album Street Legal, recorded with a wide band of pop-rock and backed by a female choir, is one of their albums more complex and cohesive lyrical perspective. However, Street Legal received reviews ambiguous base, mainly poor audio, Dylan was in the studio recording practices. Wide instrumentation used not was properly mixed up nearly a quarter of a century later, when the album was remastered.
Article principal: Conversion to Christianity
At the end of the 1970s, Dylan is spiritually reborn: Converts to Christianity, and publishes two albums of Christian gospel music. Slow Train Coming includes the accompaniment to Mark Knopfler on guitar and the production of veteran producer R & B Jerry Wexler. Wexler stressed that when Dylan was trying to evangelize you during recording, he answered: “Bob, you’re dealing with a Jewish atheist sixty-two years.” “We are going to make an album”. Slow Train Coming won the Grammy Award for the best male vocals for the song “Gotta Serve Somebody”. The second gospel album, Saved, published in 1980, received mixed, reviews though Kurt Loder declared in Rolling Stone magazine that the album was much higher from the musical point of view to his predecessor.
During the tours carried out between 1980 spring and autumn of 1979, Dylan stopped their songs known, secular, and began performing on stage statements about their faith, such as the following:
“Years ago they said that it was a prophet.” I said: “No, am not a prophet”, and they say: “Yes, you are, you are a prophet”. And I answered: “No, I am not”. They say: “Insurance that you are a prophet”. Me crazy that it was a prophet. Now I come and I say that Jesus is the answer. And they say: “Bob Dylan is not a prophet”. “Simply cannot handle it”.
The fact that Dylan embrace Christianity was rejection of several of his followers and profession colleagues. Shortly before his assassination, John Lennon recorded “Serve Yourself” as a response to the song “Gotta Serve Somebody”. In 1981, when the faith of Dylan was more than known, Stephen Holden wrote New York Times that “neither the old (now has 40) nor its most publicized conversion to Christianity has altered his essential iconoclastic temper”.
In the autumn of 1980, Dylan returned to leave tour in a series of concerts labelled as “a musical retrospective” to rehabilitate several of his older compositions in the repertoire. Shot of Love, recorded the following spring, Ronnie Wood and Ringo Starr participation in the “Heart of Mine” theme and includes first Dylan secular compositions mixed with other songs marked Christian nature more than two years. The evocative piece “Every Grain of Sand” remembered, according to some critics, the poems of William Blake.
During the 1980s, the quality of the recordings of Dylan varied widely, from Infidels, published in 1983 and acclaimed by critics, until the panned Down in the Groove, published in 1988. Critics such as Michael Gray both condemned Dylan albums by discarding their best songs and show an extraordinary oversight at work in the study. The Infidels, recording sessions for example, produced notable songs that Dylan ruled out of the final configuration of the album; among them, the most applauded were “Blind Willie McTell” (tribute to deceased evocation of African-American history and blues singer), “Foot of Pride” and “Lord Protect My Child”. These songs were finally released in 1991 on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991.
From July 1984 to March 1985, Dylan recorded their next album, Empire Burlesque. Arthur Baker, who had worked for Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper, It was hired as a recording engineer. Baker said that he had the feeling that hired you to make the sound “a little more contemporary” album. The album was accompanied by recording a video clip, under the direction of Paul Schrader, for the song “Tight Connection to My Heart”.
Social commitment in the world of music Anglo-Saxon found its maximum expression in 1985 with the single We Are the World, Dylan participated in the recording. July 13, 1985, Dylan participated at the end of the Live Aid concert organized at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. Backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, Dylan played an irregular version of “The Ballad of Hollis Brown”, his ballad to rural poverty, and spoke to a global audience that exceeded the billion people, saying: “I hope that some of this money… perhaps can take a little of him, maybe. one or two million, perhaps… and use it to pay the mortgages some farms and farmers, who belong to the banks”. Much criticized as inappropriate words, but at the same time inspired Willie Nelson to organize a series of events under the title of Farm Aid in order to raise funds for the farmers.
To celebrate its 25 years of recording activity, Columbia released quintuple Biograph, with outtakes and tomas alternatives interspersed with the great successes of the musician. In July 1986, Dylan published Knocked Out Loaded, an album with three versions (little Junior Parker, Kris Kristofferson and the anthem traditional gospel “Precious Memories”), three collaborations with other composers (Tom Petty, Sam Shepard and Carole Bayer Sager) and two compositions. Knocked Out Loaded received negative reviews since its publication, being described by Rolling Stone as “depressing adventure,” and became the first album from Freewheelin’ ‘ cannot enter the 50 top lists. Subsequently, several critics have qualified the Brownsville Girl, eleven minutes, Dylan composed together with Sam Shepard as a brilliant work by song. In 1986 and 1987, Dylan played concerts along with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, sharing voice with Petty in several songs every night. Dylan also shared stage in 1987 with The Grateful Dead during concerts recorded and subsequently collected for Dylan and The Dead live album. The album received particularly negative reviews: Allmusic, Stephen Thomas wrote: “possibly the worst album of Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead”. After playing together with these artists, Dylan began the known as the Never Ending Tour (“endless tour”) on June 7, 1988 with a band which included guitarist E. Smith. During the next twenty years, Dylan would continue offering concerts with a small band but evolving continuously.
In 1987, Dylan participated in the movie from Richard Marquand hearts of fire, in which he played Billy Parker, a converted poultry farmer rock star whose teenage lover (Fiona) abandons him by hastiada English star of the synth pop (played by Rupert Everett). Dylan contributed to the soundtrack of the film, which was a commercial failure and never upcoming United States, with the songs “Night After Night” and “I Had a Dream About You, baby”, as well as a version of “The Usual” of John Hiatt.
Dylan was admitted into the Hall of the fame of the rock and Roll in January 1988. Bruce Springsteen, responsible for speech, declared: “Bob released the same way that Elvis liberated our body our minds.” “Taught us that the mere fact that the music was of course physical did not mean to be anti-intellectual”. Dylan then released the album Down in the Groove, got even worse critical and lower sales compared to their previous work. Only the “Silvio” song gained some success as a single.
In spring, Dylan founded together with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty group Traveling Wilburys, returning to the charts with the Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 album. In spite of Roy Orbison’s death in December 1988, the rest of the Group recorded a second album in May 1990, published under the unexpected title of Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.
Dylan ended the decade with an upturn in career thanks to the Oh Mercy, album produced by Daniel Lanois. Rolling Stone magazine defined the album as “satisfying and challenging”. The topic “Most of the time” was incorporated into the movie High Fidelity, while the song “What Was It You Wanted?” was interpreted as a catechism and sour comments on expectations of fans and critics.[ 158 ] On the other hand, the religious imagery of “Ring Them Bells” served to confirm his followers the reaffirmation of their faith.
Dylan began the 1990s with the release of Under the Red Sky, which included songs apparently more lyrical simplicity as “Wiggle Wiggle” and counted with the collaboration of George Harrison, Slash, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Elton John. In spite of the alignment of musical stars, the album received negative reviews, and poor sales. For seven years, Dylan did not again make an album with new songs.
In 1991, was awarded by the recording industry with an Grammy Award for his entire career. The event coincided with the beginning of the Gulf war against Saddam Hussein, and Dylan performed the song “Masters of War”, after which gave a brief speech scandalized the public part. That same year, released The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991, triple album containing discards and rarities recorded by Dylan between 1961 and 1989. Published in response to strong demand for pirated discs by Dylan’s music fans, would be the first in a series of albums with Dylan (The Bootleg Series) (bootlegs) pirate material then officially by their record company.
The following years accounted for Dylan’s return to his musical roots with two albums of marked character folk and blues: Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong, that included traditional songs with acoustic guitar. As an exception to its folk return, Dylan composed in 1991 to Michael Bolton song “Steel Bars” on the album Time Love & Indescretion Bolton. In November 1994, Dylan recorded two concerts for the MTV Unplugged program. His desire to play a list of traditional songs was scrapped by Sony executives who insisted to include his greatest hits. A subsequent album, MTV Unplugged, includes previously unreleased song from 1963 “John Brown”, which deals with the ravages of war and jingoism (warmongering patriotism). The same year she participated in the festival Woodstock 94.
A new collection of songs written during a snowstorm at his ranch in Minnesota, Dylan reserved Criteria Studios in Miami along with Daniel Lanois in January 1997. The sessions they gave as fruit Time Out of Mind were stated the own Lanois, loaded with tension. At the end of spring, before the publication of Time Out of Mind, Dylan was hospitalized because of a turn of a fungal infection caused by a derived, histoplasmosis pericarditis. European tour scheduled in advance was cancelled, but Dylan quickly recovered from infection; When he left the hospital, said: “the truth is that you thought me that he would soon see Elvis”. Midsummer returned to the road, and in autumn performed for Pope John Paul II in the International Eucharistic Congress held in Bologna in Italy. Previously, the Pope read a sermon before an audience of 200,000 people based on the Dylan song “Blowin’ in the Wind”.
The album produced by Lanois Time Out of Mind was held in September. With its bitter assessment of love and death in songs like “Not Dark Yet” and “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven”, the first collection, after seven years of Dylan songs was very critically acclaimed. Time Out of Mind won the Grammy Award for album of the year.
In 2000, the song “Things Have Changed”, composed for the prodigious young film won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for best song. Some Dylan concerts can be observed Academy Chair on an amplifier stage.
The successor of Time Out of Mind, entitled “Love and Theft”, was released on September 11, 2001. Recorded with his usual band tours, the album was produced by Dylan under the pseudonym Jack Frost and includes songs that extend the palette of Dylan records rockabilly, jazz, ballad and swing. “Love and Theft” received positive reviews from critics and was nominated for two Grammy Awards.
In 2003, Dylan revised his compositions Evangelical period and participated in the CD Gotta Serve Somebody: Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan. The same year saw the light film anonymous, a collaboration with producer Larry Charles television that Dylan appeared playing a musician retired along with actors of the stature of Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz and John Goodman. The film received mixed reviews: some critics accusing footage from “incoherent mess” while others tried to film as a serious work of art.
In October 2004, Dylan published the first part of his autobiography, Chronicles, vol. 1. Dylan devoted three chapters to his first stay in New York between 1961 and 1962, as well as two other recording New Morning and Oh Mercy. The book reached first best-selling non-fiction books in The New York Times lists and was nominated for the National Book Award.
Bob Dylan concert in the Air Canada Centre in Toronto on November 7, 2006.
The documentary film No Direction Home, directed by Martin Scorsese, premiered in September 2005. No Direction Home focuses on the period that goes from Dylan’s arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle accident in 1966, and includes interviews with Suze Rotolo, Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples and Dylan himself. Its premiere, Columbia released The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7, including the soundtrack for the film and unreleased songs.
Dylan as a radio broadcaster Premiere took place in the weekly programme for XM Satellite Radio, integrated a weekly theme-related songs Theme Time Radio Hour on May 3, 2006. In the program, Dylan selects classic songs that go since the 1930s to the present day, combining contemporary artists as varied as Blur, Prince, L.L. Cool J, or The Streets with musical like Randy Newman, Aretha Franklin, or Pete Seeger legends. The show was praised by critics and fans as a “great radio show” to include a common dynamic stories told by Dylan himself and his sardonic humour and his musical knowledge references. Regard, Peter Guralnick commented: “with this program, Dylan misses his deep love – hand and I would say that their faith – a musical world without borders.” “I feel that comments often reflect the same surreal consideration of human comedy that exudes his music”.
August 29, 2006, Dylan released Modern Times. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan criticized the quality of modern recordings and noted that his new songs “probably sounded ten times better in the Studio as when recorded”. In spite of a worsening of Dylan’s voice (The Guardian critic compared his way of singing on the disc as “death rattle” cold), most critics praised the album and placed him as final establishment of a trilogy of successes that began with Time Out of Mind and continued with “Love and Theft”. Modern Times debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, winning the first number 1 for Dylan since 1976 album Desire. 65, Dylan became the lead singer more veteran history that could be number 1 in United States surpassed in 2008 by Neil Diamond album Home Before Dark.
The biopic I m Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes and wore the subtitle of “inspired by the music” and the many lives of Bob Dylan was published in August 2007. The film makes use of six different characters Dylan to represent different aspects of his life, played by Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw. A previously unreleased recording of 1967 that the film takes the name was first included in the soundtrack of the film; other tracks include versions of other artists such as Eddie Vedder, Stephen Malkmus, Jeff Tweedy, Willie Nelson, Cat Power, Richie Havens and Tom Verlaine. In October he was awarded the Prince Asturias prize of the arts in Oviedo, without the presence of the musician to coincide with a concert in Omaha, Nebraska.
In an attempt to collect a definitive anthology, October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released a triple album under the title of Dylan. As part of the promotional campaign, Mark Ronson produced a remix of the song from 1966 “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)”, released as a maxi single. It was the first time that Dylan authorizing a re-mix of a classic recordings.
A decade after Random House published Drawn Blank (1994), his first book of paintings, The Drawn Blank Series exhibition opened its doors in Chemnitz, Germany, in October 2007. The exhibition included 170 prints and painting made by Dylan.
Bob Dylan at the musicians Festival in nature held in the Spanish town of Hoyos del Espino (Ávila) on June 28, 2008.
In October 2008, Columbia released the eighth volume of known Official Bootleg Series Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006, outtakes, alternative outlets and live versions of songs that are moved from Oh Mercy (1989) until Modern Times (2006). The publication was acclaimed by critics. The plethora of alternative outlets and unpublished material moved to Allan Jones, author of the review magazine Uncut, writing: “Tell Tale Signs is evidence of the amazing vivacity of Dylan, its obvious determination repeated least possible himself in the study”.
Barely three years after the publication of Modern Times, Rolling Stone magazine published the news that Dylan had recorded a new album. In the interview, the magazine rumored Dylan was accompanied on the recordings by his usual touring band and David Hidalgo, Los Lobos. The album, entitled Together Through Life, was released on 28 April. In an interview with the journalist Bill Flanagan, Dylan revealed that the new album was heavily influenced by the sound of Chess Records and Sun Records. It also noted that Genesis album took place Olivier Dahan film director asked to compose a song for his film My Own Love Song, following the disk then “its own way”. In its first week, the album peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 United States and the United Kingdom, becoming the first number 1 Dylan since 1970 album New Morning.
In August 2009, Rolling Stone magazine confirmed that Dylan had recorded a Christmas album, entitled finally Christmas In The Heart, published on 13 October. The album includes traditional songs like “Must Be Santa,” Christmas “Little Drummer Boy”, “Winter Wonderland” and “Here Comes Santa Claus”. The profits from the album in the United States shall intended in its entirety to the NGO Feeding America, the largest charitable organization in the country, while the benefits of the album in the rest of the world will be allocated to the UN World Food Programme.
Variety magazine reported in August 2010, Sony Legacy published 19 October this year a box set entitled Bob Dylan: The Original Mono Recordings, which includes the first eight Dylan albums from Bob Dylan (1962) John Wesley Harding (1967), first published on CD with its original mono sound. The albums are accompanied with music critic Greil Marcus texts. For its part, Rolling Stone magazine announced that, in October, Dylan would publish the ninth volume of the Bootleg Series, entitled The Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964. It comprises 47 Studio versions of songs recorded between 1962 and 1964, known by collectors of Dylan as Witmark and Leeds Demos, by the name of the music companies to which the singer recorded these demos.
Graffiti Dylan in Austin, Texas, imitating the videoclip shot for the song “Subterranean Homesick Blues”.
Bob Dylan as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century was described from musical and cultural point of view. It was included in the special time 100: The Most Important People of the Century, where it was defined as “master poet, critical social Dylan e fearless spirit guide counterculture generation”. In 2004, he rose to the second position in the list of the greatest artists of all time in Rolling Stone magazine.
A stylish initially modeled from the songs of Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson, Dylan provided lyrical increasingly sophisticated techniques to the early 1960s, folk music infusing “intellectualism of classical literature and poetry”. Paul Simon suggests that with his first compositions, Dylan became virtually with the domain of the folk genre: “the first songs were very rich with: strong melodies.”Blowin’ in the Wind “has a very strong real melody.” Broadened debut himself by the background folk incorporated for a while. “For a time, defined the genre”.
When Dylan went from acoustic music to folk rock, the mix was even more complex. For many critics, Dylan’s greatest achievement was the cultural synthesis that exemplifies his trilogy of albums in the mid-1960s: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. According to Mike Marqusee: “Between end of 1964 and the summer of 1966, Dylan created a work that is still unique.” On the basis of folk, blues, country, R & b, rock ‘n’ roll, Gospel, English beat, poetry Symbolist, modernist and beat, Dadaism, and surrealism and recommending the jargon and the social commentary, Fellini and Mad Magazine, forged a coherent and original voice and artistic vision. “The beauty of these albums retains the power of impact and comfort”.
A legacy of the verbal sophistication of Dylan was growing attention which obtained from literary critics. Professor Christopher Ricks released an analysis of 500 pages about the work of Dylan, placing it in the context of authors such as Eliot, Keats and Alfred Lord Tennyson. The poet laureate Andrew Motion UK also suggested that Bob Dylan’s lyrics should be studied in school. In this same context, Dylan was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in literature.