BOB DYLAN
G'day folks,
Welcome to the life of a very famous singer.
There is
no songwriter who exerted a greater influence on popular music in the 20th
Century than Bob Dylan. Born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth and raised in the small
city of Hibbing in Minnesota’s desolate Mesabi Iron Range, the singer picked up
his first guitar after hearing Elvis Presley and Little Richard on the radio.
He wouldn’t discover folk music until enrolling in the University of Minnesota.
Zimmerman was drawn to the beatnik coffee house scene in the big city. He
changed his name to Dylan (in honor of the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas) and
began performing around town.
After one
year in college, Dylan dropped out and moved to Greenwich Village. Here, he
rose to fame as the leading figure in a major folk revival. Taking cues from
his idol, Woody Guthrie, Dylan inserted himself into the heart of a burgeoning
anti-war and Civil Rights movements, writing and performing socially conscious
and ingeniously literate original compositions.
In 1963,
his Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan would become the artistic high-water mark of
the Greenwich movement. In the ensuing years, Dylan would prove mercurial and
resistant to categorization, though all the more innovative for his work. As
the Vietnam conflict boiled over into war, Dylan shocked his folkie supporters
by departing the protest movement. In rock circles, the moment that he “plugged
in” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival remains a watershed event, marking
Dylan’s transformation into a fast-talking, surrealist hipster.
It was
during this contentious time that he also produced his very best and most
important work in Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61
Revisited (1965), and Blonde on Blonde (1966). Indeed, it could be
argued that with every movement of great importance in the history of rock,
from psychedelia in the mid-60s to country-rock in the late ’60s, from
singer-songwriter confessional in the early-70s to slick stadium rock by the
start of the ‘80s, Dylan has been a catalyst.
All told,
Bob Dylan has moved more than 100 million records, earned a Grammy, an Oscar, a
Golden Globe, a Pulitzer Prize, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. He is also
a member of the Rock and Roll, Nashville Songwriters, and Songwriters Halls of
Fame.
Clancy's comment: Go, Bob!
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