Robert Zimmerman , known by his stage name Bob Dylan ( Minnesota , May 24 , 1941 ) is an American folk and rock singer, songwriter and poet , one of the great figures of contemporary popular music. [1]In 2016 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Biographical summary
He was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota , where his father worked for an oil company. In 1947 the family moved to a small town. There, Bob Dylan began reading poems and became interested in music, learning to play the piano and guitar.
In 1959, Bob Dylan entered the University of Minnesota . The move to the big city opened up new opportunities for him, allowing him to experience a wide range of musical styles, from country music to rock .
Losing interest in his studies, Bob Dylan began his career as a solo artist, playing in nightclubs. His only accompaniment was his guitar and harmonica, as well as his unmistakable voice. It was at this time that he decided to adopt the stage name Bob Dylan, in honor of the poet Dylan Thomas .
Bob Dylan finally drops out of school and moves to New York . There he meets several folk legends whom he admires and begins to write his own songs, including “Song to Woody.”
Record work
Following a review published in the New York Times , an executive at Columbia Records offered Dylan a contract to record his first album, which would be titled Bob Dylan . It included only two original songs and the rest were covers of traditional folk and blues songs .
In 1963 he released his second album, The Free Wheelin’ Bob Dylan . This work contains two of the songs that later became the symbol of the sixties, such as “Blowin’ in the wind” and “A hard rain’s a-gonna fall”, and ballads such as “Girls from the North Country” and “Don’t think twice, it’s all right”.
His song “Blowin’ in the Wind” on the lips of other folk artists contributed to his success, getting the single to number two on the charts.
The third album, The times they are a changin , followed the path of the previous ones. It was during this same period that Dylan led the protest movements and as a sign of this impulse he composed Restless farewell . Shortly after he published Another side of Bob Dylan .
In early 1965, he began recording his new album Bringing It All Back Home , half electric and half acoustic, which shows a more complex image of Dylan from a musical composition point of view.
After breaking off his relationship with singer Joan Baez , Dylan married Sara Lowndes . At the same time, he released the album Highway 61 Revisited , which contained the single “Like a Rolling Stone”. This album was followed by “Blonde on Blonde”, recorded in Nashville in early 1966.
After a successful tour of England , Bob Dylan became the most important voice of his generation. But his unstoppable career was interrupted when a motorcycle accident forced him to stay at home for a long time with his family.
After his recovery, Bob Dylan released John Wesley Harding . This album was considered the counterpoint to his music. Surprisingly, the album reached the top of the American charts, achieving one of the greatest commercial successes. In addition, it earned him recognition as one of the great poets of music.
His next album, Nashville Skyline, exceeded his fans’ expectations, being an album with a strong country content. This success was followed by a resounding failure, Self Portrait , a double album released in 1970, during his convalescence. To compensate, Dylan released the album New Morning in just four months , but the results were very discreet.
Her performance at the Concert for Bangladesh , organized by George Harrison , marked her first live appearance on an American stage since the accident in five years, and was also her first solo performance since 1966.
During this time Bob Dylan participated in the filming of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid , starring one of Dylan’s great friends, Kris Kristofferson . The film was not a great success when it was released, but the soundtrack was by Bob Dylan himself and was something to highlight.
With his next work, Planet Waves , Bob Dylan achieved his first number one hit on the charts. After separating from his wife Sara, Dylan released the album Blood on the Track , which reflects his personal situation.
The album Desire became another number one for the master Dylan. This album contained the song “Hurricane” in tribute to the boxer Rubin Hurricane Carter . Desire means the return of the authentic Dylan, a return to the origins.
Dylan achieved new success with the album Slow Train Coming , with which he won his first Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Singer .
This album was followed by Saved and Infidels , co-produced by Mark Knopfler , leader of Dire Straits , who accentuated Dylan’s guitar work, achieving the best sound the musician’s albums had had up to that point.
Later came Empire Burlesque , produced by Dylan himself, with a better result than Infidels . In 1990 he released Under the Red Sky , followed by two works dedicated to traditional folk and blues: “Good as I Been to You” and “World Gone Wrong”.
In September 1997, Time Out of Mind was released , including the 17-minute track “Highlands.” This was Dylan’s first Gold Record of the decade.
In May of that same year, Bob Dylan had to be hospitalized with a heart condition from which he fortunately recovered.
Bob Dylan in the 21st Century
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In 2000, the song “Things Have Changed,” written for the film Wonder Boys , won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Song. At some of Dylan’s concerts, the Oscar can be seen dominating the stage on an amplifier.
The follow-up to Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, was released on September 11, 2001. Recorded with his regular touring band, the album was produced by Dylan under the pseudonym Jack Frost and includes songs that broaden Dylan’s range of recordings into rockabilly , jazz , ballads and swing . Love and Theft received positive reviews from critics and was nominated for a Grammy Award.
In 2003, Dylan revisited his gospel-era compositions and contributed to the CD Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan . The same year saw the release of the film Anonymous , a collaboration with television producer Larry Charles in which Dylan appeared playing a retired musician alongside actors such as Jeff Bridges , Penélope Cruz and John Goodman .
The film received mixed reviews, with some critics calling the footage an “incoherent mess,” while others treated the 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 in 1961–62, as well as two chapters to the recording of New Morning and Oh, Mercy. The book reached number one on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list and was nominated for a National Book Award.
The documentary No Direction Home , directed by Martin Scorsese , was released in September 2005. No Direction Home focuses on the period from Dylan’s arrival in New York City 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. To mark its release, Columbia released The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7 , which includes the film’s soundtrack and previously unreleased songs.
On May 3, 2006, Dylan made his debut as a radio host on XM Satellite Radio’s weekly “Theme Time Radio Hour,” featuring songs related to a weekly theme. On the show, Dylan selects classic songs from the 1930s to the present, combining contemporary artists as diverse as Blur , Prince , LL Cool J , and The Streets with musical legends such as Randy Newman , Aretha Franklin , and Pete Seeger .
The show was praised by critics and fans as a great radio show, featuring a familiar dynamic of stories told by Dylan himself and references to his sardonic humor and musical knowledge.
On August 29, 2006, Dylan released the album Modern Times . In an interview with Rolling Stones , Dylan criticized the quality of modern recordings, noting that his new songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio than when they were recorded.
In August 2007, the biopic I’m Not There was released , written and directed by Todd Haynes and subtitled “Inspired by the Music and Many Lives of Bob Dylan.” The film uses six different Dylan characters to represent different aspects of his life.
An unreleased 1967 recording from which the film takes its name was included for the first time on the film’s soundtrack; the other songs include covers by other artists such as Eddie Vedder , Stephen Malkmus , Jeff Tweedy and Willie Nelson . In October he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in Oviedo , without the musician being present as it coincided with a concert in Omaha , Nebraska .
In an attempt to compile a definitive anthology, a triple album under the title Dylan was released on October 1 , 2007 by Columbia Records . As part of the promotional campaign, Mark Ronson produced a remix of the 1966 song “Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)”, released as a maxi single . It was the first time Dylan had authorized a remix of one of his classic recordings.
A decade after Random House published Drawn Blank (1994), his first book of paintings, The Drawn Blank Series exhibition opened in Chemnitz , Germany , in October 2007. The exhibit included 170 prints and gouaches made by Dylan.
In October 2008, Columbia released the eighth volume in the popular official bootleg series, Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006, featuring outtakes, alternate takes, and live versions of songs ranging from Oh, Mercy (1989) to Modern Times (2006).
In August 2009, Rolling Stones magazine confirmed that Dylan had recorded a Christmas album, titled Christmas in the Heart , released on October 13. The album includes traditional Christmas songs such as “Must Be Santa”, “Little Drummer Boy”, “Winter Wonderland” and “Here Comes Santa Claus”.
All proceeds from the album in the US will go to Feeding America , the country’s largest charitable organization, while all proceeds from the album in the rest of the world will go to the UN ‘s World Food Programme .
In August 2010, Variety magazine reported that Sony Legacy would release on October 19 of that year a box-set titled Bob Dylan: the original mono recordings , which includes Dylan’s first eight albums, from Bob Dylan (1962) to John Wesley Harding (1967), published for the first time on CD with their original monaural sound .
In May 2012, US President Barack Obama awarded Dylan the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In November 2013, Dylan was awarded the Legion of Honour by French Minister of Education Aurélie Filippetti.
In 2015, Dylan accepted the MusiCares Person of the Year Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, in recognition of his artistic and philanthropic contributions to society.
Nobel Prize
On October 13, 2016 , the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature for having created a new poetic expression within the great tradition of American song.
The New York Times reported that “Dylan, at 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection Thursday is probably the most radical in the history of the awards since 1901.”
In 2020, American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature , recently told the New York Times – in what is supposed to be his first interview in four years – that the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer on May 25, 2020 , caused him endless nausea.
It was extremely ugly. Let’s hope that justice comes quickly for Floyd’s family and for the country. This event and the social protest movement unleashed in the United States reminded me of the years when I demonstrated against the Vietnam War and supported the fight for civil rights, more than 50 years ago.
Bob Dylan [3]
Regarding the coronavirus pandemic, I point out:
It is an indicator of what will happen in the future. We may be on the threshold of destruction, because extreme arrogance can bring disastrous results. Far from thinking about my own death, I think more about the death of the human race. I don’t want to treat it lightly, but everyone’s life is so ephemeral. Every human being, no matter how strong or powerful, is fragile when it comes to death. I think about it in general terms, not in a personal way.