Bob Dylan

Background

Bob Dylan is one of the most influential artists in American popular music, renowned for his poetic lyrics and adventurous career. He’s considered a major figure in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, credited with bringing a literary sensibility to the genre. As a result, he is currently the second songwriter to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Despite never recording a chart-topping song, Dylan has sold over 100 million records. His works have also been widely recorded, with hundreds of artists—including Jimi Hendrix, the Byrds, and Adele—releasing their own versions of his songs.

Generational Figurehead

Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in Minnesota and moved to New York at age 19, where he changed his name to Bob Dylan, began performing in the city’s folk revival scene, and swore he’d spent the previous six years working for a carnival.

At the time, he was playing a style largely indebted to Pete Seeger’s protest songs and Woody Guthrie’s primitive Americana. Songs like “Masters of War” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” followed his influences’ socially-conscious approaches.

Dylan’s early music soundtracked the country’s growing protest movement, with songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” used as a rallying cry for the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, Dylan and collaborator Joan Baez performed several songs at the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Dylan’s popularity, coupled with his political sympathies, led some media outlets to call him “the voice of a generation.” It was a label he would later say made him deeply uncomfortable.

Reaction to Fame

By 1964, Dylan’s songwriting began turning away from explicit social commentary. The break was evident on 1965’s “Bringing It All Back Home,” which featured several loud, blues-inflected rock songs and abstract, Beat-inspired poetry.

The shift came to a breaking point with Dylan’s appearance at that year’s Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan was backed by a blues band and played a not-yet-released “Like a Rolling Stone.” The audience allegedly responded with boos, which some media outlets interpreted as a reaction to Dylan’s rejection of more political folk music. While that narrative has been repeated in popular culture, including in the film “A Complete Unknown,” its accuracy has been disputed.

Following the Newport episode, Dylan embraced his role as an iconoclast, pushing back against antagonistic crowds and what he considered to be an absurd, celebrity-obsessed media. In 1966, he was involved in a motorcycle accident, an incident that was initially believed to be life-threatening but was later revealed to be an exaggeration.

Iconoclastic Artist

The motorcycle accident–if it happened at all–freed Dylan from the unending press cycle so he could focus on multiple projects, including a documentary film, a book of poetry, and a new album. It would also be an instructive career lesson for Dylan: The media’s eagerness for a story could be easily exploited, allowing him to continue building the mythology he’d been constructing since first arriving in New York.

In the decades that followed, Dylan continued constructing elaborate personas and challenging his audience, even if it meant confounding or alienating them. There was a country phase, a raucous ensemble revue, a Christian trilogy, a perplexing Victoria’s Secret ad, sober reflections on old age, and numerous other unexpected diversions.

Lasting Influence

Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 alongside other titanic artists including the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and the Supremes. In his induction speech, Bruce Springsteen said, “Where great rock music is being made, there is the shadow of Bob Dylan.”

Dylan’s constant reinventions and commitment to his artistic vision helped define the rock star archetype. To this day, his songbook continues to influence new generations of artists.