Dylan, Bob

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Bob Dylan

Born May 24, 1941
Duluth, Minnesota

Singer, songwriter

One of the most influential songwriters of the twentieth century, Bob Dylan is a unique blend of musician, poet, rebel, and social critic. He rose to fame during the 1960s, when his music was favored by college students and those involved in the anti-war movement. With his scruffy looks, his raspy nasal voice, and the stinging political edge of his lyrics, he became an important figurehead for these social movements. He came to represent their attitude of rebellion. However, Dylan resisted the role of star and remained a very private and independent artist. He frustrated his fans over and over by refusing to stick with any one musical style or personal philosophy. However, he continued to win respect and praise again and again. In the early twenty-first century, Dylan continued to create and perform his sharp, perceptive songs to audiences that included several generations.

"It's not me. It's the songs. I'm just the postman. I deliver the songs."

—Bob Dylan.

Growing up in the north country

On May 24, 1941, Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman. His middle-class Jewish family lived in the Lake Superior port city of Duluth, Minnesota. His grandparents, Jews from Russia and Lithuania, had left their homes to escape anti-Jewish violence. They settled in Minnesota, where Dylan's parents, Abe Zimmerman and Beatrice (Stone) Zimmerman, were born, grew up, and married. In 1946, Abe contracted polio, a disabling disease. The family decided to move closer to relatives in the small town of Hibbing, in the northern Iron Mountain region of Minnesota. Abe worked with other family members there, running an electrical supply store.

The Zimmermans both came from musical families. Abe played violin and Beatrice played piano; family entertainments were common. Young Bobby was only four or five when he first sang at a family gathering. By the age of ten, he began to teach himself to play piano and, soon after, the guitar, autoharp, and harmonica. He was impatient with traditional ways of learning music, such as private lessons or music classes. As a result, he developed his own ways of playing without learning to read music.

Bobby Zimmerman also began to listen to the radio and heard the music that would influence him for the rest of his life. He loved simple, emotional country music best, like the sad songs of Hank Williams Sr. (1923–1953). As Bobby grew older, he began to listen to a new kind of music called rock and roll. He began to imitate early rockers such as Little Richard (1932–) and Elvis Presley (1935–1977). Rock and roll was a rebellious music with roots in African American jazz and blues. Northern Minnesota, a conservative area, had few Jews or blacks. As Bobby Zimmerman grew to be a teenager there, he found much to rebel against. In imitation of his rock heroes, he grew his hair long and combed it back in a high wave called a pompadour. He rode a motorcycle and played in several bands. Once, during a high school talent show, the principal was so angered by the loud performance of Bobby's band that he pulled the plug on their instruments.

A little college and a lot of education

While playing music with bands in high school, Bobby Zimmerman began to use the name Bob Dylan. He preferred not to say exactly why he chose the name. However, he seemed to have first picked Dillon as his stage name, at least partly because he admired Matt Dillon, the tough but sympathetic sheriff on the popular 1950s television western Gunsmoke. Always a lover of poetry, Bob Dylan may have changed the spelling as a tribute to the twentieth-century Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

In 1959, Dylan left Hibbing to attend college at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He did not really like school and thus did not stay in college long. Yet he did continue his musical education in Minneapolis. He became part of a community of young poets, artists, and musicians called "Beatniks." They rejected the views, values, and behaviors of the majority. In addition, they were interested in the revival of folk music.

Folk music had been around for a long time. In fact, folk music was the name given to the traditional songs that had been sung for decades or even centuries in rural North America and Britain. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, some rebellious intellectuals had become interested in folk music. They considered it to be more authentic and honest than the popular music of the 1950s, which they thought was bland and artificial. To Dylan and his circle, folk music seemed fresh and meaningful. Dylan was especially drawn to the simple arrangements and heart-felt sentiments of singer/songwriters such as Woody Guthrie (1912–1967). An American folksinger, Guthrie had traveled around the country as a hobo during the Great Depression (1929–41). Guthrie's uncomplicated musical style reminded Dylan of the down-to-earth qualities he had loved in the music of Hank Williams Sr. and the young Elvis Presley. Moreover, Guthrie was a poet of the people because he told the stories of hard lives and pointed out the unfair treatment that poor people often received. Dylan started to see himself as a social rebel like Hank Williams, a rambling poet who would sing the truth.

Dylan began to perform in Minneapolis coffeehouses, singing his own variations of traditional folk songs as well as songs he wrote. He had transformed himself from the pompadoured rocker to the vagabond poet. Soon he left on travels of his own, heading for the center of Beatnik culture, New York City. He might have seen himself as a poet of the people, but Bob Dylan also wanted to be famous. New York was the place for an artist who wanted to be discovered.

Greenwich Village: A Community of Rebels

When Bob Dylan left the Midwest to seek other musicians in New York City, he went to a section of the city famous for its community of artists and free thinkers. Located at the southern end of Manhattan Island, the neighborhood of Greenwich (pronounced Gren'ich) Village has been associated with creative and offbeat intellectuals for most of the twentieth century.

Greenwich Village became known as an artistic and unconventional neighborhood during the early 1900s. As New York City grew outward from its beginnings at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, the wealthy citizens who had populated the Village of Greenwich moved farther north. This left many apartments and houses empty. Rents dropped and these low rents attracted both poor immigrants and poor artists. Painters, writers, musicians, opera singers, and dancers all moved into the inexpensive apartments of Greenwich Village. These artists were usually independent, creative people who did not live by the traditional rules of society. Soon the Village got the reputation of being a tolerant and creative community.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, many young people began to rebel against a society that they found artificial and repressive. Many of these young rebels embraced the "Beat" lifestyle. It was an untraditional way of living that valued art, poetry, and the hip rhythms of jazz music more than the traditions of marriage, family, and the conventional work career. Greenwich Village became home to many of the "Beatniks."

Many Beats were also drawn to the true stories and deep emotions they found in traditional folk music. During the early 1960s, the Village became a gathering place for such influential folksingers as Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, and the group Peter, Paul, and Mary. Many young "folkies," such as Bob Dylan, arrived in New York looking for kindred spirits. The newcomers could go to clubs such as the Gaslight, the Blue Angel, and Folk City, where they could hear folk music and jam with some of the best folk musicians in the world.

Dylan was nineteen years old when he arrived in New York at the end of 1960. He headed for the artistic center of the city, Greenwich Village, where he met many other folk musicians. He began to perform in local coffeehouses such as Gerde's Folk City and the Gaslight. Greenwich Village was home to many young folk musicians during the early 1960s. The folk music scene was exploding with excitement. Bob Dylan's songs, with their driving guitar and harshly poetic words, fit right in.

The rise and fall of the folksinger

It did not take long for record company executives to recognize Dylan's talent. During the first year he was in New York, he was offered a five-year record contract with Columbia Records. His first album, Bob Dylan (1962), contained traditional folk songs. By the second, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), all of the songs were original. He wrote about love ("Girl of the North Country"), and he wrote about his heroes ("Song for Woody"). But his most famous and powerful songs were his protest songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind." An anti-war, anti-racism song, "Blowin' in the Wind" became an anthem for the American 1960s civil rights movement. Other songs, such as "The Times They Are a'Changing," captured the rebellious spirit of the decade. As a result, Dylan seemed to be the spokesperson for those who felt that they were living in a time of great cultural change.

Dylan was a productive songwriter. Many popular singers, such as singer/songwriter Joan Baez (1941–) as well as the folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary sang his songs. Many people preferred to hear others sing Dylan songs because they considered his voice grating, whiny, and unpleasant. However, Dylan fans found his singing both emotional and authentic, especially in his long storytelling songs such as "The Death of Emmett Till" and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." Both songs are about African Americans killed by racist whites.

The popular folksinger Joan Baez helped push Dylan into the public eye. She and Dylan were just beginning a two-year romantic relationship when she invited him on stage to sing with her at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island. Although the crowd showed little interest in the skinny, unkempt newcomer, Baez's introduction convinced them to listen. Dylan's popularity began to rise.

By the mid-1960s, Bob Dylan had become a star. His songs were popular and his albums were successful. He was performing at festivals and in famous concert halls around the world. Never one to get too comfortable with his success, Dylan began to change his music. In the summer of 1965, he played at the Newport Folk Festival again, this time as a major performer. At a time when most folk musicians believed in keeping the music pure by using only traditional instruments, Dylan put together an all-electric band for the concert. He played the electric guitar. Although some of the audience was thrilled by the new sound, most fans and other folk musicians were horrified as Dylan and his amplified band pounded out several songs. Some were upset because of the loud, electric sound, which they did not consider as folk. Others were angered because the songs Dylan played were personal, and they wanted to hear political protest songs.

Newport was the first of a series of concerts in which Dylan seemed to be almost mocking the fans who had loved his early music. He continued to use electric instruments and acted strangely on stage. He treated many of his old folksinger friends unkindly, including snubbing his old friend Joan Baez. Audiences began to boo him at his concerts.

Retreats, comebacks, and rebirths

In 1966, Dylan had a motorcycle accident and retired from public life for several years. There were stories that he had broken his neck and nearly died. However, much evidence suggests that his injuries were slight and that the accident merely became his excuse for getting away from criticism of his music in order to rethink his career. Dylan had married Sara Lownds in 1965, and he spent the next several years living a quiet domestic life.

Joan Baez

For many, singer Joan Baez was the perfect symbol of 1960s folk music. With her long dark hair, bare feet, and clear soprano voice, Baez seemed as simple and authentic as the traditional folk ballads she sang. Some of her fans were delighted and others felt betrayed when Baez later mixed political protest songs with her folk music. Yet she always delivered her music with a direct and heartfelt sincerity that earned the respect of both audiences and critics.

Baez began her career singing in the coffeehouses of Boston, Massachusetts, and Greenwich Village. She was only eighteen when she drew national attention at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island. A year later, she released her first album, a collection of enduring folk classics, including "House of the Rising Sun," "John Riley," and "Silver Dagger."

In 1963, Baez began a relationship with Bob Dylan, who was just starting his musical career. Already a respected folksinger, Baez shared her fame with Dylan by inviting him to share the stage with her. They performed together first at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, then on her concert tour. Though their relationship was over by 1965, it was an important one for both of them. Baez immortalized it in one of her best-known songs, "Diamonds and Rust" (1975). She continued to sing and record Dylan's music into the 2000s.

Joan Baez was never content with being simply a singer who sang pretty songs. Early in her career, she began to use the stage as a place from which to speak out about social issues. She frequently sang at political events to support particular causes of the 1960s and 1970s, including the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and immigration and prison reform. She promoted boycotts in support of farmworkers, did not pay taxes that would go to support war, and often donated money from her concerts to activist organizations. In 1965, she founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence to explore alternatives to war.

In 1969 Dylan released an album which, while it contained a major hit, also marked another big change in musical style. Nashville Skyline left behind the hard-driving music of Dylan's rock period and headed in the direction of country music. The best-known track from the album, "Lay, Lady, Lay," was a Top 40 hit for eleven weeks. However, Dylan did not revive his former popularity. His next album, Self Portrait (1970), was so unpopular and so musically strange that many thought it had been made as a joke. During this period, Dylan expanded his writing and published two books, an autobiography, Bob Dylan, Self-Portrait (1970), and a novel, Tarantula (1971).

In 1975, Dylan made still another comeback. He separated from his wife and turned the pain of that troubled relationship into a new album. Blood on the Tracks was well received by critics and fans alike. Many thought the songs were among the best Dylan had ever written. Songs such as "Shelter from the Storm," "Idiot Wind," and "Tangled Up in Blue" clearly expressed the deep loss and anger at the end of a marriage.

In 1979, Dylan renounced his Judaism and became a born-again Christian. By this time, fans had become used to his extreme changes of direction. Few took much notice of his Christian album Saved (1980). By 1983, Dylan had returned to Judaism. He continued to write, perform, and record. In 1989 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His 1998 album Time Out of Mind won the Grammy award for Album of the Year. In 1986 Dylan married again, though he kept his marriage to Carol Dennis a secret for many years. They divorced in 1992. He had five children from his first marriage and one from his second. One of his sons, Jakob, followed his father into a successful career in popular music with the band, The Wallflowers.