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Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman May 24,
1941) is a highly influential American songwriter,
musician, and poet.

Much of Dylan's best known work is from the 1960s,
when he became a documentarian and reluctant
figurehead of American unrest. Many involved in
the civil rights movement found an anthem in his
song "Blowin' In The Wind". Millions of young
people embraced "The Times They Are A-Changin'" as
an icon of the decade.

Dylan expanded the vocabulary of popular music by
incorporating politics/social commentary,
philosophy, and literature.  In doing so he
created a style which combines lyrical stream of
consciousness with often absurdist social and
political moralizing, defying folk music
convention and appealing widely to the
counterculture of the time.  While expanding and
personalizing musical styles, Dylan has
nonetheless shown devotion to traditions of
American song, from folk music|folk and country
music|country/blues to rock 'n' roll and
rockabilly, to Gaelic balladry, even jazz, swing,
and Broadway theatre|Broadway.

==Music career and personal life==
=== Beginnings ===
Dylan was born and spent his earliest years in
Duluth, Minnesota. After his father Abraham was
stricken with polio, the family returned to nearby
Hibbing, Minnesota|Hibbing, his mother Beatty's
home town, as Robert neared his sixth birthday. 
His grandparents were Lithuanian, Russian and
Ukraine|Ukranian Jewish emigrants, and his parents
were part of the area's small but close-knit
Jewish community.

Dylan spent much of his youth listening to the
radio, at first the powerful blues and country
music stations beamed all the way from New
Orleans, Louisiana|New Orleans and, later, early
rock and roll. He made his earliest known
recordings (with two friends) on Christmas Eve
1956, in a department store booth, singing verses
of songs by Carl Perkins, Little Richard, Lloyd
Price, The Penguins, and others. Dylan formed
several bands while in high school; the first, The
Shadow Blasters, was short-lived, but the second,
the Golden Chords, proved more durable and more
successful. In 1959 he toured briefly, under the
name of Elston Gunnn with Bobby Vee, playing piano
and supplying handclaps.

An able but not outstanding student, he started
university studies in 1959 in Minneapolis,
Minnesota|Minneapolis, where he was actively
involved in the local Dinkytown, USA|Dinkytown
folk music circuit. During his Dinkytown days
Zimmerman began introducing himself as Bob Dylan
(or Dillon). Dylan has never explained the exact
source for the pseudonym, sometimes alluding to an
apparently mythical uncle, sometimes to the hero
of Gunsmoke, to its similarity to his middle name,
and occasionally acknowledging some reference to
the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. 

Dylan quit college at the end of his freshman year
but stayed in Minneapolis, working the folk
circuit there with temporary sojourns in Denver,
Colorado, and Chicago, Illinois. In January 1961,
en route to Minneapolis from Chicago, he changed
course and headed to New York City to perform and
to visit his ailing idol Woody Guthrie. Initially
playing mostly in small "basket" clubs for little
pay, he soon gained some public recognition after
a review in the New York Times (September 29,
1961) by critic Robert Shelton,  while John
Hammond, a legendary music business figure, signed
him to Columbia Records.

At the time his voice, musicianship and
songwriting were still raw. His performances, like
his first Columbia album (1962 in music|1962's Bob
Dylan (album)|Bob Dylan), consisted of familiar
folk, blues and gospel material seasoned with a
few of his own songs.  As he continued to record
for Columbia, 1962 also saw Dylan recording some
of his lesser songs for Broadside (a folk music
magazine and record label), under the pseudonym
Blind Boy Grunt. By the time his next record, The
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in which his girlfriend
Suze Rotolo appeared on the cover, was released in
1963 in music|1963, he had begun to make his name
as both a singer and composer, specializing in
protest songs, initially in the style of Guthrie
and soon practically developing his own genre.  

His most famous songs of the time are typified by
"Blowin' In The Wind", its melody partially
derived from the traditional slave song "No More
Auction Block", coupled with lyrics challenging
the social and political status quo. In hindsight,
the lyrics to some of these songs may appear
unsophisticated ("How many times must the
cannonballs fly before they are forever banned"),
but compared to the largely anemic popular culture
of the 1950s they were a breath of fresh air, and
the songs fueled the zeitgeist of the 1960s.
"Blowin' In The Wind" itself was widely recorded,
an international hit for Peter, Paul and Mary,
setting an enduring precedent for other artists to
cover Dylan's songs. While Dylan's topical songs
made his early reputation, Freewheelin  also mixed
in finely crafted bittersweet love songs ("Don't
Think Twice, It's Alright", "Girl From the North
Country") and jokey, frequently surreal talking
blues ("Talking World War III Blues", "I Shall Be
Free"). The song "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"
occupies a plane perhaps above even "Blowin' In
The Wind", with its hard-hitting imagery and
almost God's-eye perspective. It represents a
nearly alchemical moment in modern songwriting in
which time-tested folk structures are reworked
into a latter-day idiom encompassing world events
and deep personal reflection (the citizen's life
"flashing before his eyes" under the apprehension
of apocalypse). The song gained even more
resonance as the Cuban Missile Crisis|Cuban
missile crisis developed only a few weeks after
Dylan began performing it.

While undeniably a fine interpreter of traditional
songs, Dylan was hardly a "good" singer under the
narrow strictures of American popular-commercial
music; many of his songs first reached the public
through versions by other artists. Joan Baez, a
friend and sometime lover, took it upon herself to
record and perform his early material regularly;
others who covered his songs included The Byrds,
Sonny and Cher, The Hollies, Manfred Mann and
Herman's Hermits. So ubiquitous were these covers
by the mid-1960s that CBS started to promote him
with the tag: "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan".
Whoever sang his songs, they were immediately
recognizable as his, and a good part of his fame
rested not only on his lyrical excellence but on
the underlying attitude—a sort of "po' boy
adrift in the wide world" posture that rapidly
changed to hipster arbiter of all things cool and
uncool.

=== Protest and another side ===
By 1963 in music|1963, Dylan was becoming
increasingly prominent in the civil rights
movement, singing at rallies including the March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom|March on
Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his
"I have a dream" speech. Dylan's next album, The
Times They Are A-Changin', reflected a more
sophisticated, politicized and cynical Dylan. This
bleak material, concerned with such subjects as
the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers and
the despair engendered by the breakdown of farming
and mining communities ("Ballad of Hollis Brown",
"North Country Blues"), was tempered by two
formidable love songs, "Boots of Spanish Leather"
and "One Too Many Mornings," and the epic
renunciation of "Restless Farewell." The Bertolt
Brecht|Brechtian-influenced "The Lonesome Death of
Hattie Carroll", a highlight of the album, 
describes a young socialite's killing of a hotel
maid.  Never explicitly mentioning race, the song
leaves no doubt that the killer is white, the
victim black.

As a sign of the political influence of Dylan's
lyrics, the radical insurgent group the Weathermen
even named themselves after a lyric in his
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" ("You don't need a
weatherman to know which way the wind blows").

By the end of the year, however, Dylan felt both
manipulated and constrained by the folk-protest
movement. Accepting the "Thomas Paine|Tom Paine
Award" from the National Emergency Civil Liberties
Committee at a ceremony shortly after the
assassination of John F. Kennedy, a drunken,
rambling Dylan questioned the role of the
committee, insulted its members as old and
balding, and claimed to see something of himself
(and of everyman) in assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. 

Perhaps inevitably then, his next album, the
accurately but prosaically titled Another Side Of
Bob Dylan, recorded on a single June evening in
1964 in music|1964, had a lighter mood than its
predecessor. The surreal Dylan reemerged on "I
Shall Be Free #10" and "Motorpsycho Nightmare"
employing a sense of humor which would persist
throughout his career. "Spanish Harlem Incident"
and "To Ramona" were touching love songs, "I Don't
Believe You," a prototypical rock and roll song
played on acoustic guitar, and "It Ain't Me Babe,"
a romping rejection of the role his reputation
thrust at him. His newest direction was signaled
by three songs: "Chimes of Freedom," long and
impressionism|impressionistic, sets elements of
social commentary against a denser metaphorical
landscape in a style later characterized by Allen
Ginsberg as "chains of flashing images";  "My Back
Pages" even more personally attacks the simplistic
and arch seriousness of his own earlier topical
songs; and a musically undeveloped "Mr. Tambourine
Man", recorded that night but fortunately left off
the album. 

In the early 1960s, Dylan had adopted a sort of
Huckleberry Finn persona and told picaresque tales
of knocking around, hopping freights, and working
at folksy jobs.  In that phase, lasting a few
years, he sang and wrote somewhat like the Woody
Guthrie of 25 or 30 years earlier.  However, as he
“brought it all back home” (the result of
psychedelic drug experiences, or so some who knew
him have claimed), Dylan’s point of view as a
writer became at once more thoroughly contemporary
and more surrealistic, and probably more honest. 

Throughout this time Dylan's artistic development
moved so fast that he frequently left both critics
and fans behind. His March 1965 in music|1965
album Bringing It All Back Home was a further
stylistic leap.  Influenced by The Beatles (whose
artistic development had already been enhanced by
Dylan's influence) and the rock and roll of his
youth, the first side contained his first
significant original up-tempo rock songs.
Lyrically, however, the songs were pure Dylan,
exhibiting his dry wit and inhabited by a sequence
of grotesque, metaphorical characters. The raucous
first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," owed
much to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business"
and was provided with an early music video
courtesy of D. A. Pennebaker's cinema verite
presentation of Dylan's 1965 tour, Don't Look
Back. 

Side 2 of the album was a different matter,
including four lengthy acoustic songs whose
undogmatic political, social and personal concerns
are illuminated with the rich poetic imagery that
would become another trademark. One of these
songs, "Mr. Tambourine Man," had already been a
hit for The Byrds, albeit in a truncated form, and
would remain one of Dylan's most enduring
compositions, while "Gates Of Eden," "It's All
Over Now Baby Blue," and "It's Alright Ma (I'm
Only Bleeding)" have justifiably been fixtures in
Dylan's live performances for most of his career.

That summer, Bob Dylan stoked the drama of his
legacy by performing his first electric set (since
his high school days) with a pickup group drawn
mostly from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the
Newport Folk Festival.  Dylan had appeared at
Newport twice before in 1963 and 1964. Two wildly
divergent accounts of the crowd's response in 1965
survive to this day.  The settled fact is that
Dylan, met with a mix of cheering and booing, left
the stage after only three songs.  As one version
of the legend has it, the boos were from the
outraged folk fans Dylan alienated with his
electric guitar.  The alternative account has it
that the audience members were upset by poor sound
quality and a surprisingly short set.  Whatever
sparked the crowd's disfavor, Dylan soon reemerged
and sang two far better-received solo acoustic
numbers. Nevertheless, the import of the
appearance at Newport worked its way into the
awareness of this restless generation: thoughtful
acoustic music was no longer enough even for
tradition-aware singers like Dylan; times were
indeed "a changin" and electricity was needed to
express those changes.

=== Creative height, motorcycle crash ===
The single "Like a Rolling Stone" was a U.S. hit,
cementing his reputation as a lyricist; at over
six minutes, devoid of a bridge, the song also
helped to expand the limits of hit radio. Its
signature sound, with a full, jangling band and a
simple organ riff, would characterize his next
album, Highway 61 Revisited (titled after the road
that led from his native Minnesota to the musical
hotbed of New Orleans, Louisiana|New Orleans; and
referencing any number of  blues songs; e.g., Fred
McDowell|Mississippi Fred McDowell's "61
Highway."). The songs were in the same vein as the
hit single, surreal litanies of the grotesque
flavored by Mike Bloomfield's blues guitar, a
tight rhythm section and Dylan's obvious enjoyment
of the sessions. Electric amplification and the
blues-rock backbeat ruled this album, and all
thought of Dylan remaining exclusively in the "new
folk" category should have been abandoned. The
closing song, "Desolation Row", is a lengthy
apocalyptic vision with references to many figures
of Western culture.


In support of the record, Dylan was booked for two
U.S. concerts and set about assembling a band.
Bloomfield was unwilling to leave the Butterfield
Band, so Dylan mixed Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks
from his studio crew with bar-band stalwarts
Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, best known for
backing Ronnie Hawkins. In August 1965 at Forest
Hills Auditorium, the group were heckled from an
audience who, Newport notwithstanding, still
demanded the acoustic troubadour of previous
years; their reception on the 3rd of September at
the Hollywood Bowl was more uniformly favorable. 

Neither Kooper nor Brooks wanted to go on the road
steadily with Dylan, and he was unable to lure his
preferred band, a crew of west coast musicians
best known for backing Johnny Rivers, featuring
guitarist James Burton and drummer Mickey Jones,
away from their regular commitments.  Dylan then
hired Robertson and Helm's full band, The Band|The
Hawks, for his tour group, and began a string of
studio sessions with them in an effort to record
the follow-up to Highway 61 Revisited.

Dylan secretly married Sara Lownds on November 22,
1965; their first child, Jesse Byron Dylan, was
born in January 1966.

While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly
receptive audiences on tour (though not before the
audience reaction led Helm to leave the group late
in 1965), their studio efforts foundered.  At John
Hammond's suggestion, producer Bob Johnston
brought Dylan to Nashville to record, surrounding
him with a cadre of top-notch session men, with
only Robertson and Kooper brought down from New
York to play more limited roles.  The Nashville
sessions brought out what Dylan would later call
"that thin wild mercury sound" and a classic
record often viewed as one of the greatest in
American popular music, Blonde on Blonde.

Dylan undertook an ambitious "world tour" of
Australia and Europe in the spring of 1966. The
first half of these concerts were solo acoustic.
The second half, backed by the Hawks, provoked
much jeering and slow handclapping. The tour
culminated in a famously raucous confrontation
with his audience at the Manchester Free Trade
Hall in England.  Immortalized mistakenly as the
"Royal Albert Hall" concert, the recording was
officially released in 1998. At the climax of the
concert, a folk fan angry that Dylan had adopted
an electric sound, shouted "Judas!" from the
audience, and Dylan responded, "I don't believe
you! You're a liar!" before turning to the band
and exhorting them to "Play fuckin' loud!" as they
launched into the last song of the
night—"Like a Rolling Stone".

After his European tour, Dylan returned to New
York, but the pressures on him continued to
increase: his publisher was demanding a finished
manuscript of the poem/novel Tarantula
(book)|Tarantula and manager Albert Grossman had
already scheduled a grueling summer/fall concert
tour. The pace of his private and professional
life seemed unsustainable. On July 29 1966, near
his home in Woodstock, New York, the brakes of his
Triumph 500 motorcycle locked, throwing him to the
ground. The extent of his injuries was never fully
disclosed, and whether through necessity or
opportunism, Dylan used an extended convalescence
to escape the pressures of stardom.

Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative
work, he began editing footage into Eat the
Document, a rarely exhibited follow-up to Don't
Look Back.  In 1967 in music|1967 he began
recording music with the Hawks at his home and,
legendarily, the basement of the Hawks' nearby
"Big Pink".  The relaxed atmosphere yielded
renditions of many of Dylan's favored old and new
songs and some newly written pieces.  These
originals, at first compiled as demos for other
artists to record, began to circulate on their own
merits.  Columbia belatedly released selections
from them in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Later in
1967, the Hawks--soon to be rechristened as The
Band--independently recorded the album Music From
Big Pink, thus beginning a long and successful
recording and performing career of their own.  

Unsurprisingly, Dylan's official output appeared
strongly influenced by his changed lifestyle.  In
December 1967 he released his first official album
since the accident, John Wesley Harding
(album)|John Wesley Harding, a contemplative
record set in a landscape which drew on both the
American West and the Old Testament. It included
"All Along The Watchtower" with lyrics derived
from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9). The song
was later immortalized by Jimi Hendrix in a
version that Dylan himself has acknowledged as
definitive. The sparse structure and
instrumentation, coupled with lyrics which took
the Judeo-Christian tradition seriously, marked a
departure not only from Dylan's own work but from
the escalating psychedelic fervor of the 1960s
musical culture.

Woody Guthrie died in October 1967, and Dylan made
his first public appearances in 18 months at a
pair of Guthrie memorial concerts in January 1968.

Dylan's next release, Nashville Skyline (1969 in
music|1969), was virtually a mainstream country
record featuring instrumental backing by Nashville
musicians, a mellow-voiced, contented Dylan, a
duet with Johnny Cash, and the hit single "Lay
Lady Lay".  Dylan appeared on Cash's new
television show and then gave a high-profile
performance at the Isle of Wight rock festival
(after rejecting overtures to appear at the
Woodstock event far closer to his home).

=== The 1970s ===
In the early 1970s Dylan's output was of varied
and unpredictable quality. "What is this shit?"
notoriously asked Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone
magazine writer and Dylan loyalist, about 1970 in
music|1970's Self Portrait.  In general, Self
Portrait, a double LP including few original
songs, was poorly received.  Later that year,
Dylan released New Morning, something of a return
to form. His unannounced appearance at George
Harrison|George Harrison's 1971 in music|1971
Concert for Bangladesh was widely praised, but
reports of a new album, a television special, and
a return to touring came to nothing.  

In 1972, Dylan signed onto Sam Peckinpah's film
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providing the Pat
Garrett and Billy the Kid (album)|songs and taking
a minor role as "Alias," a minor member of Billy's
gang. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", among Dylan's
most covered songs, has proved much more durable
than the film itself.

In 1973 in music|1973, after his contract with
Columbia ran out, Dylan signed with David Geffen's
new Asylum label. He recorded Planet Waves with
the Band; like New Morning, Planet Waves was
initially viewed as a return to peak form, but in
retrospect appears less substantial (although
"Forever Young" has proved to be one of Dylan's
most lasting songs). Columbia almost
simultaneously released Dylan (album)|Dylan, a
haphazard collection of studio outtakes often
termed a "revenge" release.

In early 1974 in music|1974, Dylan and the Band
staged a high-profile, coast-to-coast tour of
North American; promoter Bill Graham claimed he
received more ticket purchase requests than any
prior tour by any artist. The tour is documented
on the Before the Flood album, but Dylan refused
to allow a tour film to be made. 

After the tour, Dylan and his wife became publicly
estranged. He filled a small, red notebook with
songs springing from the breakup and in September,
with the help of John Hammond, quickly recorded
the album Blood on the Tracks in the New York City
studio where his recording career began.  Word of
Dylan's efforts soon leaked out, and expectations
were high, but Dylan delayed the album's release,
then rerecorded half the songs in Minneapolis at
year's end.  Released early in 1975 in music|1975,
BOTT was critically acclaimed and commercially
successful, although Dylan's fans still debate the
relative merits of the ultimate release and the
original recordings.

That summer, Dylan wrote his first successful
"protest" song in 12 years (an eponymous 1971
tribute to George Jackson sank almost unnoticed),
championing the cause of boxer Rubin Carter|Rubin
"Hurricane" Carter who he believed had been
wrongfully imprisoned for a triple homicide in
Paterson, New Jersey. (Carter was retried and
reconvicted in the mid-1970s; he was released in
1985 when that conviction was overturned.) After
visiting Carter in jail Dylan wrote "Hurricane
(song)|Hurricane", a sympathetic presentation of
Carter's situation. Despite its length, the song
was released as a single and performed at every
1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the Rolling
Thunder Revue. The tour was something different: a
varied evening of entertainment featuring many
performers drawn mostly from the resurgent
Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone
Burnett; Steven Soles; David Mansfield; former The
Byrds|Byrds frontman Roger McGuinn; Scarlet
Rivera, a violin player Dylan discovered while she
was walking down the street to a rehearsal, her
violin case hanging on her back; and a reunion
with Joan Baez. Joni Mitchell added herself to the
Revue in November, and poet Allen Ginsberg
accompanied the troupe, staging scenes for the
film Dylan was simultaneously shooting. 

Running through the fall of 1975 and again through
the spring of 1976, the tour also encompassed the
release of the album Desire (album)|Desire (1976
in music|1976), with many of Dylan's new songs
featuring an almost travelogue-like narrative
style, showing the influence of his new
collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy. The spring
1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV
concert special, Hard Rain, and an LP of the same
title; no concert album from the better-received
and better-known opening half of the tour would be
released until 2002, when Live 1975 appeared as
the fifth volume of Dylan's Bootleg Series.

The fall 1975 tour with the Revue also provided
the backdrop to Dylan's three hour and fifty-five
minute film Renaldo and Clara, its sprawling,
improvised and frequently baffling narrative mixed
with striking concert footage and reminiscences.
Released in 1978, the movie received generally
poor, sometimes scathing, reviews and had a very
brief theatrical run. Later in that year, Dylan
allowed a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert
performances, to be more widely released. 

In November 1976, Dylan appeared at The Band's
"farewell" concert, along with other guests
including Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van
Morrison, and Neil Young. Martin Scorsese's
concert film The Last Waltz, including about half
of Dylan's set, was released in 1978.

Dylan's 1978 in music|1978 album Street-Legal was
generally well reviewed.  Lyrically one of his
more complex and absorbing, it suffered, however,
from a poor sound mix (attributed to his studio
recording practices), submerging much of its
instrumentation in the sonic equivalent of cotton
wadding until its remastered CD release nearly a
quarter century later.  

Dylan's work in the late 1970s and early 1980s was
dominated by his becoming, 1979, a born-again
Christianity|Christian. He released two albums of
exclusively religious material and a third that
seemed mostly so; of these, the first, Slow Train
Coming (1979), is generally regarded as the most
accomplished.  When touring from the fall of 1979
through the spring of 1980, Dylan refused to play
secular music, delivered increasingly long
sermonettes on stage, and often discussed the
apocalyptic predictions of Hal Lindsey.

According to Allmusic.com
:In 1982, Dylan traveled to Israel, sparking
rumors that his conversion to Christianity was
short-lived.  He returned to secular recording
with 1983's Infidels, which was greeted with
favorable reviews.

=== Hard-working elder statesman ===
==== 1980s ====
Doldrums set in through much of the 1980s, with
his work varying from the well-regarded (1983 in
music|1983 Infidels) to the very poorly received
(1988 Down in the Groove). Infidels was more
noteworthy to many for what it did not include
than for what it did, as Dylan left off the album
what many consider to be one of his greatest
songs, "Blind Willie McTell (song)|Blind Willie
McTell", as well as "Foot of Pride", "Someone's
Got a Hold of My Heart" and "Lord Protect My
Child", which were later released on the boxed set
The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased)
1961-1991.  Many Dylan devotees consider an early
version of the LP, prepared by producer/guitarist
Mark Knopfler, to be superior to the final version
both in performance and in song selection.  The
decade's later albums each contain gems, from 1985
in music|1985's Empire Burlesque ("When the Night
Comes Falling from the Sky" and "Dark Eyes") to
Knocked Out Loaded (1986 in music|1986) (with the
long, clever "Brownsville Girl") to even Down in
the Groove (1988 in music|1988) (containing the
catchy "Silvio", with lyrics written by Grateful
Dead collaborator Robert Hunter (singer)|Robert
Hunter. Dylan made a number of music videos during
this period, but only "Political World" found any
regular airtime on MTV.

In late 1985, Dylan married his longtime backup
singer Carolyn Dennis (often professionally known
as Carol Dennis). Their daughter, Desiree, was
born early in 1986.  The couple divorced in the
early 1990s. 

In 1987 he starred in  Richard Marquand's movie
Hearts of Fire, in which he played a washed up
rock star turned chicken farmer whose teenage
lover (Fiona) leaves him for a jaded English
synth-pop sensation (Rupert Everett). The film was
a critical and commercial dud. When asked in a
press conference if he had anything to do with
writing this movie Dylan replied, attempting to
stifle his laughter, "I couldn't have possibly
written anything like that."

Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame in 1988. Later that spring, he took part in
the first Traveling Wilburys album project,
working with Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty,
and his good friend George Harrison on
lighthearted, well-selling fare. Despite Orbison's
death, the other four Wilburys issued a sequel in
1990.

Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note
with the Daniel Lanois-produced Oh Mercy (1989 in
music|1989).  Lanois's influence is audible
throughout Oh Mercy, especially in the ambience
provided by reverb-heavy guitar tracks. "Ring Them
Bells" seems to call for Christians to maintain a
visible presence in the world, perhaps adding fuel
to the debate over Dylan's religious orientation. 
The track "Most of the Time", a ruminative lost
love composition, was later prominently featured
in the film High Fidelity while "What Was It You
Wanted?" was a love song that doubled as a dry
comment on the expectations of fans.

==== 1990s and beyond ====
Dylan's 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990
in music|1990), an odd about-face from the serious
Oh Mercy.  This album, dedicated to Gabby Goo Goo,
puzzlingly included several apparently childish
songs, including "Under the Red Sky"  and "Wiggle
Wiggle", all recorded straight-on without any of
the studio wizardry of "Oh Mercy".  The dedication
can be explained as a nickname for Dylan's
four-year-old daughter, but the story that the
album's songs were written for her entertainment
is plainly apocryphal.     

The next few years saw Dylan returning to his folk
roots with two albums covering old folk and blues
numbers: Good As I Been to You (1992 in
music|1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993 in
music|1993), featuring nuanced interpretations and
ragged but highly original acoustic guitar work.
His 1995 in music|1995 concert on MTV Unplugged,
and the album culled from it, marked Dylan's only
newly recorded output during the mid-1990s.
Essentially a greatest hits collection, it also
included of "John Brown," an unreleased 1963 song
detailing the ravages of both war and jingoism. 

With the quality of his output taking a turn for
the better, and a stack of songs reportedly begun
while snowed-in on his Minnesota ranch, Dylan
returned to the recording studio with Lanois in
January 1997.  That spring, before the album's
release, Dylan was hospitalized with a
life-threatening heart infection, pericarditis,
brought on by histoplasmosis. His scheduled
European tour was cancelled, but Dylan made a
speedy recovery and left the hospital saying, "I
really thought I'd be seeing Elvis Presley|Elvis
soon."  He was back on the road by midsummer, and
in early fall performed before the Pope at the
World Eucharistic Conference in Bologna, Italy.

September saw the release of the new
Lanois-produced album, Dylan's first collection of
original songs in seven years. Time Out of Mind,
with its bitter assessment of love and morbid
ruminations, was highly acclaimed and achieved an
unforeseen popularity among young listeners,
particularly the song "Love Sick", later covered
by The White Stripes.  This collection of complex
songs won him his first solo Album of the Year
Grammy Award (he was one of numerous performers on
Concert for Bangladesh|The Concert for Bangladesh,
the 1972 winner).  The ballad "To Make You Feel My
Love", covered by both Garth Brooks and Billy
Joel, generated more royalties than any song he
had written since the 1960s.  Black humor is
present throughout Time Out of Mind but comes out
most on the 16-minute blues "Highlands", his
longest track to date. 

In 2001, his song "Things Have Changed", penned
for the movie Wonder Boys, won an Academy Award
for Best Song.  For reasons unannounced, the Oscar
(by some reports a facsimile) tours with him,
presiding over shows perched atop an amplifier. 

Love and Theft, an album that explores divergent
styles of American music and revisits Dylan's own
creative roots, emerged as an uplifting piece of
art amidst a great tragedy, having been released
on September 11, 2001 in music|2001. Lyrically
adventurous and musically unprecedented in his
long career, Love and Theft, by many accounts,
stands among the greatest of his work.  Even those
quite familiar with his earlier work may have
trouble imagining Bob Dylan crooning, as he does
on "Bye and Bye" and "Moonlight".  Many believe
the album's lyrical strengths are as pronounced as
in his most famous earlier work. Though Dylan
produced the record himself under the pseudonym
Jack Frost, the record's fresh sound is owed in
part to the accompanists.  Tony Garnier
(musician)|Tony Garnier, bassist and bandleader,
had played with Dylan for 12 years, longer than
any other musician. Larry
Campbellhttp://www.members.cox.net/larrycampbell20
00, one of the most accomplished American
guitarists of the last two decades, played on the
road with Dylan from 1997 through 2004.  Guitarist
Charlie Sexton and drummer David Kemper had also
toured with Dylan for years. Keyboard player Augie
Meyers, the only musician not part of Dylan's
touring band, had also played on Time Out of Mind.

2003 saw the release of the film Masked &
Anonymous, largely a joint creative venture with
television producer Larry Charles, featuring one
of the largest ever assemblages of top Hollywood
stars in a single film.  Dylan and Charles cowrote
the film under the pseudonyms Rene Fontaine and
Sergei Petrov.  As difficult to decipher as some
of his songs, Masked & Anonymous was panned by
most major critics and had a limited run in
theaters.  

In 2005 preproduction began on a film entitled I'm
Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368794/. The movie
makes use of seven characters to represent the
different aspects of Dylan's life. The movie is to
be directed by Todd Haynes, and the cast currently
includes Cate Blanchett, Adrien Brody and Richard
Gere.

==== Recent live performances ====


Dylan has played over 100 dates a year for the
entirety of the 1990s and the 2000s, a far heavier
schedule than most performers who started out in
the 1960s. The "Never Ending Tour" continues,
anchored by longtime bassist Tony Garnier and
filled out with talented musicians better known to
their peers than to their audiences. To the dismay
of some fans Dylan refuses to be a nostalgia act;
his reworked arrangements, evolving bands and
experimental vocal approaches keep the music
unpredictable night after night.

Dylan, once famous as a guitar player, has not
been playing guitar in live performance since 2002
(with very rare exceptions).  Instead he chooses
to play on the keyboard, with the occasional
harmonica solo.  Various rumors have circulated as
to why Dylan gave up his guitar, none terribly
reliable.

Dylan chooses songs from throughout his 40-year
career, seldom playing the same set twice. While
his chief place in posterity will be as the
preeminent songwriter of latter 20th-century
America, his roles as recording artist and
performer are cherished just as highly by his
contemporaries.

== Fan base ==
Bob Dylan's large and vocal fan base write books,
essays, 'zines, etc. at a furious rate.  They also
maintain a massive Internet presence with daily
Dylan news, another site which rigorously
documents every song he has ever played in
concert, and one where visitors bet on what songs
he will play on upcoming tours.  Within minutes of
the end of concerts, set lists and reviews are
posted by his loyal following.

The poet laureate of Britain, Andrew Motion, is a
vocal supporter of Dylan's work, as are musicians
Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty,
David Bowie, Ian Hunter and Neil Young.  His songs
have been covered by more artists than perhaps any
other contemporary songwriter's.

== Chronicles Vol. 1 ==
After a lengthy delay, October 2004 saw the
publishing of Bob Dylan's autobiography,
Chronicles, Vol. 1. He once again confounded
expectations. Dylan wrote three chapters about the
year between his arrival in New York in 1961 and
recording his first album, focusing on the brief
period when he wasn't famous while virtually
ignoring the mid-1960s when his fame was at its
height. He also devoted chapters to two
lesser-known albums, New Morning (1970) and Oh
Mercy (1989), which contained insights into his
collaborations with the poet Archibald MacLeish
and producer Daniel Lanois, respectively. In the
New Morning chapter, Dylan expresses distaste for
the label "spokesman of a generation" and he
evinces disgust with his more fanatical followers.

Another section features Dylan's account of a
guitar-strumming style in mathematical detail that
he claimed was the key to his renaissance in the
1990s. Despite the opacity of some passages, there
is an overall clarity in voice that is generally
missing in Dylan's other prose writings, and a
noticeable generosity towards friends and lovers
of his early years. At the end of the book, Dylan
describes with great passion the moment when he
listened to the Brecht/Weill song "Pirate Jenny",
and the moment when he first heard Robert
Johnson’s recordings. In these passages, Dylan
suggested the process which ignited his own
song-writing gift.

Six weeks after its publication, Chronicles, Vol.
1 was number 5 on the New York Times' Hardcover
Non-Fiction best seller list and climbing.
Simultaneously, Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com
reported it as their number 2 best seller among
all categories. Chronicles Vol. 1 is the first of
three planned volumes.

== Discography/Film/Books (incomplete) ==
See Bob Dylan discography.


See also: List of people compared to Bob Dylan,
List of Born-again Christian Laypeople

== Known pseudonyms ==
* Elston Gunnn (the spelling is an eccentricity of
his adolescence)
* Bob Dylan (now his legal name)
* Blind Boy Grunt
* Bob Landy
* Robert Milkwood Thomas
* Lucky Wilbury
* Boo Wilbury
* Jack Frost
* Sergei Petrov

== Further reading ==
* Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume 1. Simon and
Schuster, October 5, 2004, hardcover, 208 pages.
ISBN 0743228154
* Michael J. Gilmour, "Tangled Up in the Bible:
Bob Dylan and Scripture".  Continuu, 2004, 160
pages.  ISBN 0826416020
* Michael Gray, Song & Dance Man III: The Art of
Bob Dylan. Continuum International, 2000,
paperback, 944 pages. ISBN 0826463827 
* Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades
Revisited. Perennial Currents, 2003, 800 pages.
ISBN 006052569X
* Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: A Life In Stolen
Moments, Schirmer Books, 1986, 403 pages. ISBN
0825671566.  Also known as Bob Dylan: Day By Day
* David Hajdu, Positively 4th Street: The Lives
and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez
Farina, and Richard Farina Farrar Straus Giroux,
2001, 328 pages. ISBN 0374281998
*Greil Marcus, The Old, Weird America: The World
of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, Picador, 2001, ISBN
0312420439 (also published as "Invisible
Republic")
* Greil Marcus, Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at
the Crossroads, PublicAffairs, 2005 ISBN
1586482548 2005
* Mike Marqusee, Chimes of Freedom : The Politics
of Bob Dylan's Art The New Press, NY, 2003. 327
pages. ISBN 1-56584-825-X
* Anthony Scaduto, Bob Dylan, Helter Skelter, 2001
reprint of 1972 original, 312 pages. ISBN
1900924234
* Robert Shelton, No Direction Home, Da Capo
Press, 2003 reprint of 1986 original, 576 pages. 
ISBN 0306812878
* Sam Shepard, Rolling Thunder Logbook, Da Capo,
2004 reissue, 176 pages, ISBN 0306813718
* Howard Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob
Dylan, Grove Press, 2001, 527 pages.  ISBN
0802116868
* Anthony Varesi, "The Bob Dylan Albums", Guernica
Editions, 2002, 264 pages.  ISBN 1550711393

== See also ==
* Best selling music artists

== External links ==


commons|Bob Dylan

=== Portals ===
* http://www.bobdylan.com/ BobDylan.com - official
site, including lyrics
* http://www.expectingrain.com/ Expecting Rain
Longtime favorite fan site, updated daily.
* http://my.execpc.com/%7ebillp61/boblink.html
BobLinks Another classic fansite, with a
comprehensive categorized link collection and
up-to-date tour information.
* http://www.emplive.org/visit/galleries/dylan.asp
Bob Dylan's American Journey Gateway to the
Experience Music Project's online Dylan resources.


=== Chords and Lyrics ===

* http://www.dylanchords.com/ dylanchords.com
Chords & Lyrics, and articles 
* http://www.bobdylanroots.com/ bobdylanroots.com
Bob Dylan's musical roots and Influences
*
http://homepage.mac.com/danielmartin/Dylan/html/so
ngs/Lists/A.html “It's not a house it's a
home” page Includes lyrics to many songs and
versions not found elsewhere.
* http://orad.dent.kyushu-u.ac.jp/dylan/song.html
Lyrics in English and Japanese
* http://bobdylan.lyrics.info/ Bob Dylan lyrics -
complete collection of Bob Dylan lyrics from
http://lyrics.info/ lyrics.info

=== Concert recordings, outtakes, etc. ===
* http://www.angelfire.com/wa/monicasdude Bob
Dylan Field Recordings Guide A huge
compilation/index of information information on
Dylan's "unofficial" recordings
* http://trading.dylantree.com/ CD-Rs
* http://www.dustyoldfairgrounds.com Dusty Old
Fairgrounds an exhaustive index of Dylan's
recordings and performances
* http://dvdylan.com/ DVDylan.com Bob Dylan DVD
Recording Database
* http://www.dylanbase.com/Allalbums.asp Dylanbase
User-contributed reviews of "unofficial"
recordings
* http://www.bobsboots.com/ bobsboots.com - A Bob
Dylan bootleg "museum" website
* http://www.searchingforagem.com/ Rare but not
Boot
*
http://cvrc.med.upenn.edu/~greenberg/cowboy1.html
Covers by Bob
* http://home.adelphia.net/~dyln61/project_74.htm
Project '74, documents 1974 Dylan/Band tour
*
http://www.angelfire.com/folk/jackofharts7/dylan19
78.html 1978 Tour Guide
* http://www.angelfire.com/rant/gospelproject/ The
Gospel Project, documents Dylan's 1979-80
evangelical tours

=== Reference works ===
* http://www.bjorner.com/bob.htm Olof's files
Reference guide, yearly chronicles,
sessionography, etc.
* http://www.hardingesimpole.co.uk/olof/ Olof's
Files Same as above, but in book form. 
* http://www.execpc.com/~billp61/dates.html Bob
Dylan tour dates
* http://www.tangled.ca/ Tangled: A Recording
History Of Bob Dylan Standard reference book for
collectors, 5th edition

=== Magazines ===

* http://www.two-riders.co.uk/ The Bridge
* http://www.bobdylanisis.com ISIS 
* http://judasmagazine.com/ Judas! 
* http://www.freewheelin-on-line.info/
Freewheelin' (online magazine)
*
http://www.expectingrain.com/dok/div/telegraph/pas
ttishes.html The Telegraph (archive, no longer
published)

=== Commentary ===
* http://www.radiohazak.com/Dylan.html Influence
of Judaism on Dylan
*
http://web.utk.edu/~wparr/scripture/scripturelinks
.html Influence of Christianity on Dylan
*
http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Side%20essay%202.h
tm Article on the ambiguity in his lyrics

=== Books ===
*
http://linux02.lib.cam.ac.uk/~cjs2/cda/www_cats21.
cgi?n=Bob+Dylan&t=&s=&o=w&b=1&m=200&Submit+search=
Submit+search&.cgifields=o Books (from Cambridge
University Library Catalogue)
* http://www.taxhelp.com/toc.html Bibliography
* http://www.edlis.org/alone Academic series: Bob
Dylan All Alone On A Shelf

=== Misc. ===
* http://www.hibbing.org/dylan1/story.html Life In
Hibbing An account of young Robert Zimmerman's
life in Hibbing, prepared for the local "Dylan
Days 2005" event
* Dylan's speech to the
http://www.corliss-lamont.org/dylan.htm NELC
* http://www.expectingrain.com/dok/atlas/ Atlas
* http://www.expectingrain.com/dok/who/who.html
Who's Who
* http://www.bjorner.com/Covers.htm Covers of Bob
by others
* http://www.expectingrain.com/dok/edlis/barf.html
"Barf" list of songs referring to Dylan
* http://www.radiohazak.com/Peace.html Bob Dylan
and Israel,
http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/bully.html
Neighborhood Bully lyrics with audio
* Search Google archive of
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?gro
up=rec.music.dylan rec.music.dylan 1989-present
(includes all HWY61-L posts)
* Search the Dylan Mailing List Archives 
http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=hwy
61-l HWY61-L 1995-present (includes many
rec.music.dylan posts, with wheat separated from
chaff)
* http://www.edlis.org EDLIS
*
http://www.geocities.com/temptations_page/DylGuide
.html The Annotated Bob Dylan
* Master & Disciple -
http://www.thrasherswheat.org/jammin/dylan.htm Bob
Dylan & Neil Young
*http://www.new-pony.com/timeline.html Bob Dylan
Timeline
* http://www.my-back-pages.com my-back-pages
On-line Dylan community (message board)
*http://www.tvtalkin.com/ Film and television
recordings of Bob Dylan


Bob Dylan