For almost 50 years, Bob Dylan has remained, along with James Brown, the most influential American musician rock & roll has ever produced. Inscrutable and unpredictable, Dylan has been both deified and denounced for his shifts of interest, while whole schools of musicians took up his ideas. His lyrics — the first in rock to be seriously regarded as literature — became so well known that politicians from Jimmy Carter to Vaclav Havel have cited them as an influence.

By personalizing folk songs, Dylan reinvented the singer-songwriter genre; by performing his allusive, poetic songs in his nasal, spontaneous vocal style with an electric band, he enlarged pop's range and vocabulary while creating a widely imitated sound. By recording with Nashville veterans, he helped give rise to Seventies country-rock. In the 1980s and 1990s, although he often seemed to flounder, he still had the ability to challenge, influence, and surprise listener — something he did more reliably in the late 1990s and 2000s, when he recorded some of the greatest music of his career.

Born May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, Robert Allen Zimmerman's family moved to Hibbing when he was six. After taking up guitar and harmonica, he formed the Golden Chords while a high school freshman. He enrolled at the arts college of the University of Minnesota in 1959; during his three semesters there, he began performing solo at coffeehouses as Bob Dylan; he legally changed his name in August 1962.

Dylan moved to New York City in January 1961, saying he wanted to meet Woody Guthrie, who by then was hospitalized with Huntington's chorea. Dylan visited his idol frequently. That April he played New York's Gerdes Folk City as the opening act for bluesman John Lee Hooker, with a set of Guthrie-style ballads and his own lyrics set to traditional tunes. A New York Times review by Robert Shelton alerted A&R man John Hammond, who signed Dylan to Columbia and produced his 1962 debut album.

Although Bob Dylan contained only two originals ("Talking New York" and "Song to Woody"), Dylan stirred up the Greenwich Village folk scene with his caustic humor and gift for writing deeply resonant topical songs. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (Number 22, 1963) included the soon-to-be folk standard "Blowin' in the Wind" (a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary), "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," and "Masters of War," protest songs on par with Guthrie's and Pete Seeger's. Joan Baez, already established as a "protest singer," recorded Dylan's songs and brought him on tour; in summer 1963 they became lovers.

By 1964, Dylan was playing 200 concerts a year. The Times They Are a-Changin' (Number 20, 1964) mixed protest songs ("With God on Our Side") and more personal lyrics ("One Too Many Mornings"). He met the Beatles that year and reportedly introduced them to marijuana. Another Side of Bob Dylan (Number 43), recorded in a single session on June 9, 1964 and released on August 8, concentrated on personal songs and imagistic free associations such as "Chimes of Freedom"; Dylan repudiated his protest phase with "My Back Pages." In late 1964 Columbia A&R man Jim Dickson introduced Dylan to Jim (later Roger) McGuinn, whose band the Byrds would in 1965 have its first hit with "Mr. Tambourine Man," kicking off the mid-decade folk-rock boom. Meanwhile the Dylan-Baez liaison fell apart, and Dylan met 25-year-old ex-model Shirley Noznisky, a.k.a. Sara Lowndes, whom he married in 1965.

With Bringing It All Back Home (Number Six), released early in 1965, Dylan surprised listeners for the first of many times by turning his back on folk purism; for half the album he was backed by a rock & roll band. On July 25, 1965, he played the Newport Folk Festival (where two years earlier he had been the cynosure of the folksingers) backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and was booed. The next month, he played the Forest Hills tennis stadium in Queens, NY, with a band that included members of Canadian band the Hawks (including drummer Levon Helm and guitarist Robbie Robertson), which accompanied him on tour and later became the Band. "Like a Rolling Stone" (Number Two, 1965) became Dylan's first major hit as a performer.

The music Dylan made in 1965 and 1966 revolutionized rock. The intensity of his performances and his live-in-the-studio albums — Highway 61 Revisited (Number Three, 1965), Blonde on Blonde(Number Nine, 1966) — were a revelation. His lyrics were analyzed, debated, and quoted like no pop before them. With rage and slangy playfulness, Dylan chewed up and spat out literary and folk traditions in a wild, inspired doggerel. He didn't explain; he gave off-the-wall interviews and press conferences in which he'd spin contradictory fables about his background and intentions. D.A. Pennebaker's documentary of Dylan's British tour, Don't Look Back, shows some of the hysteria that came to surround him and the cool detachment with which he would always regard his celebrity. As "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35" went to Number Two in April 1966, Dylan's worldwide record sales topped Ten million, and more than 150 other groups or artists across a wide range of genres had recorded at least one of his songs.

On July 29, 1966, Dylan smashed up his Triumph 55 motorcycle while riding near his Woodstock, New York, home. With several broken neck vertebrae, a concussion, and lacerations of the face and scalp, he was reportedly in critical condition for a week and bedridden for a month, with aftereffects including amnesia and mild paralysis. Though the extent of Dylans' injuries was later questioned by biographers, he did spend nine months in seclusion. As he recovered, he and the Band recorded the songs that were widely bootlegged — and legitimately released in 1975 — as The Basement Tapes (Number Seven), whose droll, enigmatic, steeped-in-Americana sound would be continued by the Band on their own.

In 1968 Dylan made his public re-entry with the quiet John Wesley Harding (Number Two), which ignored the baroque psychedelia in vogue over the prior year; Dylan wrapped his enigmatic lyrics in such folkish ballads as "All Along the Watchtower" (later covered, and redefined, by Jimi Hendrix). On January 20, 1968, he returned to the stage, performing three songs at a Woody Guthrie memorial concert, and in May 1969 he released the overly countryish Nashville Skyline(Number Three), featuring "Lay Lady Lay" (Number Seven , 1969) and "Girl From the North Country," with a guest vocal by Johnny Cash and a new, mellower voice.

Dylan's early-Seventies acts seemed less portentous. His 1970 Self Portrait (Number Four) included songs by other writers and live takes from a 1969 Isle of Wight concert with the Band. Widely criticized, Dylan went back into the studio and rush released the mild and twangy New Morning(Number Seven, 1970). By mid-1970 Dylan had moved to 94 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village; on June 9, he received an honorary doctorate in music from Princeton.

George Harrison, with whom Dylan cowrote "I'd Have You Anytime," "If Not for You," and a few other songs that summer, persuaded Dylan to appear at the benefit Concert for Bangladesh; Leon Russell, who also performed, produced Dylan's single "Watching the River Flow." That year he also released his first protest song since the mid-Sixties , "George Jackson." In 1971, Tarantula, a collection of writings from the mid-Sixties, was published to an unenthusiastic reception.

Dylan sang at the Band concert that resulted in Rock of Ages (1972) but didn't appear on the album; he sat in on albums by Doug Sahm, Steve Goodman, McGuinn, and others. Late in 1972 he played the role of Alias in and wrote a score for Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Number 16, 1973). Writings and Drawings by Bob Dylan, a collection of lyrics and liner notes up to New Morning, was published in 1973. Between Columbia contracts, Dylan moved to Malibu in 1973 and made a handshake deal with David Geffen's Asylum label, which released Planet Waves (Number One, 1974); Columbia retaliated with Dylan (Number 17), a collection of embarrassing outtakes from Self Portrait. (Dylan has never been reissued on CD.) Dylan and the Band played 39 shows in 21 cities, selling out 651,000 seats for a 1974 tour; the last three dates in L.A. were recorded for Before the Flood (Number Three, 1974).

"Dylan scrapped an early version of Blood on the Tracks, recutting several songs with local Minneapolis players, and the result hit Number One in 1975. He cowrote some of the songs on the platinum Desire (Number One, 1976) with producer Jacques Levy; before making that LP, Dylan had returned to some Greenwich Village hangouts. A series of jams at the Other End led to the notion of a communal tour, and in October bassist Rob Stoner began rehearsing the large, shifting entourage (including Baez and such Village regulars as Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Bobby Neuwirth) that became the Rolling Thunder Revue, which toured on and off — with guests including Allen Ginsberg, Joni Mitchell, Mick Ronson, McGuinn, and Arlo Guthrie — until spring 1976.

The Revue started with surprise concerts at small halls (the first in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for an audience of 200) and worked up to outdoor stadiums like the one in Fort Collins, Colorado, where NBC-TV filmed Hard Rain. The troupe played two benefits for convicted murderer Rubin ""Hurricane"" Carter (subject of Dylan's ""Hurricane,"" from Desire), which, after expenses, raised no money. Dylan's efforts helped Carter get a retrial, but he was convicted and one of the witnesses, Patty Valentine, sued Dylan over his use of the name in ""Hurricane"" (Valentin lost the suit in 1979; six years later, a federal judge overturned Carter's conviction, freeing him after nearly 20 years in prison.)

In 1976 Dylan appeared in the Band's farewell concert, The Last Waltz, which was filmed by Martin Scorsese. Dylan's wife, Sara Lowndes, filed for divorce in March 1977. She received custody of their five children: Maria (Sara's daughter by a previous marriage, whom Dylan had adopted), Jesse, Anna, Samuel, and Jakob. (It was revealed in 2001 that in 1986 Dylan had secretly married backup singer Carolyn Dennis, six months after she gave birth to the couple's daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan. The couple divorced in 1992.)

In 1978 Dylan took a $2 million loss on Renaldo and Clara, a four-hour film including footage of the Rolling Thunder tour and starring himself and Joan Baez. He embarked on an extensive tour (New Zealand, Australia, Europe, the U.S., and Japan, where he recorded Live at Budokan), redoing his old songs with some of the trappings of a Las Vegas lounge act.

In 1979 Dylan announced that he was a born-again Christian. The platinum Slow Train Coming(Number 24, 1979) netted Dylan his first Grammy (for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male). His West Coast tour late in 1979 featured only his born-again material; Saved (Number 24, 1980) andShot of Love (Number 33, 1981) continued that message. In late 1981 he embarked on a 22-city U.S. tour; in 1982 amid rumors he had repudiated his born-again Christianity, Dylan traveled to Israel.Infidels (Number 20, 1983), recorded with a band that included Mark Knopfler, Mick Taylor, and reggae greats Sly and Robbie, answered no questions. Despite its title, the album was more churlish than religious, although Dylan did admit that ""Neighborhood Bully,"" his apparent defense of Israeli policy towards Palestine, was indeed about Arab-Israeli relations.

Biograph (Number 33, 1985), a five-LP retrospective with 18 previously unreleased tracks, helped put Dylan's long career in perspective, but Empire Burlesque (Number 33), released the same year, puzzled listeners with its backup singers and cluttered production by dance-music specialist Arthur Baker. A tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 1986 supported the sloppy, crypticKnocked Out Loaded (Number 53). Dylan then toured in 1987 with the Grateful Dead as his backup band, yielding the concert album, Dylan & the Dead (Number 37, 1989). Dylan delayed release ofDown in the Groove (Number 61, 1988) twice in six months. The final product, with guests including Eric Clapton, Steve Jones (Sex Pistols), rappers Full Force, and members of the Dead, sounded tentative and unfocused. But as ""Lucky,"" one-fifth of the Traveling Wilburys, Dylan seemed to genuinely enjoy participating in a group project again.

Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 and later that year released his best received album of the Eighties, Oh Mercy (Number 30). Produced by Daniel Lanois (U2, Robbie Robertson) in New Orleans, it was a coherent collection of songs, and Dylan sounded reenergized and engaged. But as he had throughout his career, Dylan defied expectations. On his Never Ending Tour, started in 1988, Dylan recast his songs, at times throwing them away with offhand performances. His appearance on the L'Chaim — To Life telethon led to rumors he had joined a Hasidic sect. Under the Red Sky (Number 38, 1990), the follow-up to Oh Mercy, was widely panned.

"In 1990 Dylan was named a Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Art et des Lettres, France's highest cultural honor. At the 1991 Grammy ceremony, where he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award, Dylan's whimsical acceptance speech and almost unintelligible performance of "Masters of War" (the first Gulf War had recently started), left some fans scratching their heads, with others applauding his pugnacious attitude. Dylan opened up the vaults for The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) (Number 49, 1991), 58 outtakes, live tracks, demos, and rarities that proved his prolific virtuosity.

On October 16, 1992, Columbia marked the 30th anniversary of Dylan's first album with Bobfest, an all-star concert at New York's Madison Square Garden featuring more than 30 artists, including Neil Young, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash, Lou Reed, and Dylan himself. Broadcast live on pay-per-view, it was released as an album and video the next year. As if to bring his career full circle, Dylan recorded two folkish solo guitar and vocal albums, Good as I Been to You (Number 51, 1992) and World Gone Wrong (Number 70, 1993).

In the mid-Nineties Dylan revived his live concerts by assembling one of the best bands of his career — he stopped throwing away his songs, instead playing both country-rock and acoustic string-band versions of his best compositions. He made a triumphant appearance at Woodstock '94, though he had snubbed the 1969 festival. In late 1994 Dylan performed on MTV's Unpluggedwith his new band augmented by Pearl Jam's producer Brendan O'Brien on keyboards; highlights were released on the 1995 Unplugged album (Number 23).

Hooking up again with producer Lanois, Dylan recorded the deep-blue songs of Time Out of Mind, which debuted (and peaked) on the Billboard chart at Number Ten, becoming his highest-charting release (as well as his most acclaimed) in nearly 20 years. The same year Dylan found himself on the road touring and crossing paths with his son Jakob Dylan's band the Wallflowers.

Other highlights of the year for Dylan included performing before Pope John Paul II in Bologna, Italy; the inaugural release on his Egyptian Records label (The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers — A Tribute); and receiving the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award from President Bill Clinton at the White House. That year he had a brush with death when he suffered a serious heart infection that landed him in the hospital for a few tense days. In 1998 he picked up three Grammys for Time Out of Mind (Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk Album, and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the track "Cold Irons Bound"), and released The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert, one of the most legendary of all live rock performances. (It's the one where an audience member, incensed at Dylan's electric performance, shouts, "Judas!" Dylan's response: "I don't believe you. You're a liar! [to band] Play fucking loud," before crashing into "Like a Rolling Stone.") Also that year, Dylan's Time Out of Mind song "To Make You Feel My Love" was turned by Garth Brooks into a Number One country smash.

In 2000, Dylan received the prestigious Polar Prize and performed a new song, "Things Have Changed," for the soundtrack of the movie Wonder Boys. (It was also included on The Essential Bob Dylan, a two-CD anthology, later that year.) The song went on to receive a Grammy Award and Dylan's first-ever Oscar. Another kind of retrospective occurred with the fascinating Japan-onlyLive 1961-2000: Thirty-Nine Years of Great Concert Performances (2001), which collected some of Dylan's most striking performances from throughout his concert history.

In summer 2001, Dylan took his road band back into the studio and in a quick burst recorded "Love and Theft", which reached Number Five. The title was a reference to Eric Lott's groundbreaking minstrelsy study of the same name, and it was canny: Dylan here played the same cracked voice and doomy viewpoint that fueled Time Out of Mind for laughs, even cracking a knock-knock joke in "Po' Boy." The effect was as hard-hitting as Time Out of Mind, and the album won every major critics poll, with several reviewers reading deeply into the fact that an album as apocalyptic as this one was released on September 11, 2001.

From there, Dylan scooped out his vaults some more, with volumes 5 and 6 of The Bootleg Series(covering the Rolling Thunder Revue and a 1964 Philharmonic Hall performance, respectively) as well as the early Live at the Gaslight 1962, which was initially sold only through Starbucks. He also penned a book of impressionistic memoirs, Chronicles Vol. 1, to great acclaim. No Direction Home, the Martin Scorsese documentary and its accompanying two-CD soundtrack, were released in 2005; the film (which had limited screenings before airing on PBS and becoming available on DVD) did a sharp job of capturing Dylan's life and work through 1966. But Dylan was still in trim, as he demonstrated on the road and with 2006's Modern Times, which became his first album to top the chart since Desire 30 years earlier. It merged the approaches he'd taken on his previous two albums, and, like its predecessor, earned a five-star rating from Rolling Stone. That year Dylan began his XM Satellite show Theme Time Radio Hour, in which he would tell stories and spin records ranging from early 20th century obscurities to more contemporary artists like Prince and Blur.

Todd Haynes' surrealistic film I'm Not There arrived the following year, and featured six different actors of different races and genders — Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw — playing the role of Dylan. Having already appeared in a bizarre and controversial lingerie advertisement for Victoria's Secret in 2004, Dylan upped the ante in 2009, teaming with producer and rapper Will.i.am for a Super Bowl Pepsi ad doing an updated "Forever Young."

Ever the unpredictable lightning rod, he released two new albums that year: the generally well-received Together Through Life (his second Number One album of his fifth decade as an artist) and a strange set of holiday covers, Christmas In The Heart (Number 23). The latter polarized fans and critics alike, who either saw it as a typically enigmatic Dylan move or just a bad decision. Whatever the opinions, the 21st-century Dylan was clearly the oldest performer in rock still making unassailably interesting and popular albums.

Portions of this biography appeared in The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001). Mark Kemp contributed to this article.

ROLLING STONE

. Poster announcing Carnegie Chapter Hall show, 1961

Classic Annie Leibovitz Junior Birdman portrait, 1978

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is accused of being a 'Judas'

17 May 1966

Alexis Petridis
Sunday 12 June 2011 00.40 BST

ooking back, the rage at Bob Dylan's abandonment of political songwriting in favour of performing with a Fender Stratocaster and a rock'n'roll backing band seems utterly baffling. Folk fans' arguments – that it was evidence of dilettantism, of an arrogant remoteness, of a lack of commitment to a worthy cause, that you couldn't hear the words, that it was just too loud – have been trampled by the weight of rock history. If nothing else, the famous cry of "Judas!" that interrupted his performance at the Manchester Free Trade Hall on 17 May 1966 and the footage of outraged fans streaming out of other dates, carrying on as if they'd been personally insulted by his decision to "go electric", tells you that the heightened, hysterical pitch of the online comment board is actually nothing new: "Bob Dylan was a bastard in the second half," bellows one disgruntled patron. The most lasting effect of the whole controversy was not on Dylan, but on folk revivalism itself, which, ever after, was doomed to be labelled a bit fusty, boring and uncool by onlookers: the price you pay for trying to stop progress.

THE GUARDIAN

Charlie Brown mourns Bob’s 30th birthday, 1971

Bob Dylan, 1966

PERSONAL LIFE

Family

Dylan married Sara Lownds on November 22, 1965. Their first child, Jesse Byron Dylan, was born on January 6, 1966, and they had three more children: Anna Lea (born July 11, 1967), Samuel Isaac Abram (born July 30, 1968), and Jakob Luke (born December 9, 1969). Dylan also adopted Sara's daughter from a prior marriage, Maria Lownds (later Dylan, born October 21, 1961). Bob and Sara Dylan were divorced on June 29, 1977. Maria married musician Peter Himmelman in 1988. In the 1990s, Dylan's son Jakob became well known as the lead singer of the band The Wallflowers. Jesse Dylan is a film director and a successful businessman.

Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, Dylan's daughter with his backup singer Carolyn Dennis (often professionally known as Carol Dennis), was born on January 31, 1986, and Dylan married Carolyn Dennis on June 4, 1986. The couple divorced in October 1992. Their marriage and child remained a closely guarded secret until the publication of Howard Sounes' Dylan biography, Down the Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan in 2001.

When not touring, Dylan is believed to live primarily in Point Dume, a promontory on the coast of Malibu, California, though he also owns property around the world.^[385]^[386]

Religious beliefs

Growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, Dylan and his family were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community, and in May 1954 Dylan had his Bar Mitzvah. Around the time of his 30th birthday, in 1971, Dylan visited Israel, and also met Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the New York-based Jewish Defense League. Time magazine quoted him saying about Kahane, "He's a really sincere guy. He's really put it all together." Subsequently, Dylan downplayed the extent of his contact with Kahane.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dylan converted to Christianity. From January to April 1979, he participated in Bible study classes at theVineyard School of Discipleship in Reseda, California. Pastor Kenn Gulliksen has recalled: "Larry Myers and Paul Emond went over to Bob's house and ministered to him. He responded by saying, 'Yes he did in fact want Christ in his life.' And he prayed that day and received the Lord."

By 1984, Dylan was distancing himself from the "born again" label. He told Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone magazine: "I've never said I'm born again. That's just a media term. I don't think I've been an agnostic. I've always thought there's a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there's a world to come." In response to Loder's asking whether he belonged to any church or synagogue, Dylan laughingly replied, "Not really. Uh, the Church of the Poison Mind." In 1997 he told David Gates of Newsweek:

Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like "Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain" or "I Saw the Light"—that's my religion. I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I've learned more from the songs than I've learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

In an interview published in The New York Times on September 28, 1997, journalist Jon Pareles reported that "Dylan says he now subscribes to no organized religion."

Dylan has been a supporter of the Chabad Lubavitch movement in the last 20 years, and has privately participated in Jewish religious events, including the Bar Mitzvahs of his sons and attending Hadar Hatorah, a Chabad Lubavitch yeshiva. In September 1989 and September 1991, he appeared on the Chabad telethon. Dylan reportedly visitsChabad synagogues; on Yom Kippur in 2007 he attended Congregation Beth Tefillah, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was called to the Torah for the sixth aliyah.

Dylan has continued to perform songs from his gospel albums in concert, occasionally covering traditional religious songs. He has also made passing references to his religious faith—such as in a 2004 interview with 60 Minutes, when he told Ed Bradley that "the only person you have to think twice about lying to is either yourself or to God." He also explained his constant touring schedule as part of a bargain he made a long time ago with the "chief commander—in this earth and in the world we can't see."

In a 2009 interview with Bill Flanagan promoting Dylan's Christmas LP, Christmas in the Heart, Flanagan commented on the "heroic performance" Dylan gave of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and that he "delivered the song like a true believer". Dylan replied: "Well, I am a true believer."

Legacy

Dylan has been described as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, musically and culturally. He was included in the Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century where he was called "master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation". In 2008, The Pulitzer Prize jury awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power." President Barack Obama said of Dylan in 2012, "There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music." In their 2008 assessment of the "100 Greatest Singers", Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at number seven. Rolling Stone then ranked Dylan at number two in its 2011 list of "100 Greatest Artists" of all time, while "Like A Rolling Stone" was listed as the "Greatest Song of all Time." In 2008, it was estimated that Dylan had sold about 120 million albums worldwide.

Initially modeling his writing style on the songs of Woody Guthrie, the blues of Robert Johnson, and what he termed the "architectural forms" of Hank Williams songs, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry". Paul Simonsuggested that Dylan's early compositions virtually took over the folk genre: "[Dylan's] early songs were very rich ... with strong melodies. 'Blowin' in the Wind' has a really strong melody. He so enlarged himself through the folk background that he incorporated it for a while. He defined the genre for a while."

When Dylan made his move from acoustic folk and blues music to a rock backing, the mix became more complex. For many critics, his greatest achievement was the cultural synthesis exemplified by his mid-1960s trilogy of albums—Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. In Mike Marqusee's words:

Between late 1964 and the middle of 1966, Dylan created a body of work that remains unique. Drawing on folk, blues, country, R&B, rock'n'roll, gospel, British beat,symbolist, modernist and Beat poetry, surrealism and Dada, advertising jargon and social commentary, Fellini and Mad magazine, he forged a coherent and original artistic voice and vision. The beauty of these albums retains the power to shock and console."

Dylan's lyrics began to receive detailed scrutiny from academics and poets. Literary critic Christopher Ricks published Dylan's Visions of Sin, a 500-page analysis of Dylan's work, placing him in the context of Eliot, Keats and Tennyson, claiming that Dylan was a poet worthy of the same close analysis. Former British poet laureate Sir Andrew Motionargued that his lyrics should be studied in schools. Since 1996, academics have lobbied the Swedish Academy to award Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was finally awarded in 2016. Dylan became the first musician to be awarded the Literature Prize, placing him in the company of T. S. Eliot, Toni Morrison and Samuel Beckett.

Dylan's voice also received critical attention. New York Times critic Robert Shelton described his early vocal style as "a rusty voice suggesting Guthrie's old performances, etched in gravel like Dave Van Ronk's." David Bowie, in his tribute, "Song for Bob Dylan", described Dylan's singing as "a voice like sand and glue". His voice continued to develop as he began to work with rock'n'roll backing bands; critic Michael Gray described the sound of Dylan's vocal work on "Like a Rolling Stone" as "at once young and jeeringly cynical". As Dylan's voice aged during the 1980s, for some critics, it became more expressive. Christophe Lebold writes in the journal Oral Tradition, "Dylan's more recent broken voice enables him to present a world view at the sonic surface of the songs—this voice carries us across the landscape of a broken, fallen world. The anatomy of a broken world in "Everything is Broken" (on the album Oh Mercy) is but an example of how the thematic concern with all things broken is grounded in a concrete sonic reality."

Dylan is considered a seminal influence on several musical genres, especially folk rock, country rock and Christian rock. As Edna Gundersen stated in USA Today: "Dylan's musical DNA has informed nearly every simple twist of pop since 1962." Punk musician Joe Strummer praised Dylan for having "laid down the template for lyric, tune, seriousness, spirituality, depth of rock music." Other major musicians who acknowledged Dylan's importance include Johnny Cash, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Syd Barrett Joni Mitchell, and Tom Waits. Dylan significantly contributed to the initial success of both the Byrds and the Band: the Byrds achieved chart success with their version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and the subsequent album, while the Band were Dylan's backing band on his 1966 tour, recorded The Basement Tapes with him in 1967,^[438] and featured three previously unreleased Dylan songs on their debut album.

Some critics have dissented from the view of Dylan as a visionary figure in popular music. In his book Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, Nik Cohn objected: "I can't take the vision of Dylan as seer, as teenage messiah, as everything else he's been worshipped as. The way I see him, he's a minor talent with a major gift for self-hype." Australian criticJack Marx credited Dylan with changing the persona of the rock star: "What cannot be disputed is that Dylan invented the arrogant, faux-cerebral posturing that has been the dominant style in rock since, with everyone from Mick Jagger to Eminem educating themselves from the Dylan handbook."

Fellow musicians also presented dissenting views. Joni Mitchell described Dylan as a "plagiarist" and his voice as "fake" in a 2010 interview in the Los Angeles Times, in response to a suggestion that she and Dylan were similar since they had both created personas. Mitchell's comment led to discussions of Dylan's use of other people's material, both supporting and criticizing him. In 2013 Mitchell told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in an interview that her remarks in the Los Angeles Times had been taken "completely out of context", and that the interviewer was a "moron". Mitchell added: "I like a lot of Bob's songs. Musically he's not very gifted. He's borrowed his voice from old hillbillies. He's got a lot of borrowed things. He's not a great guitar player. He's invented a character to deliver his songs."

Talking to Mikal Gilmore in Rolling Stone in 2012, Dylan responded to the allegation of plagiarism, including his use of Henry Timrod's verse in his album Modern Times, by saying that it was "part of the tradition".

If Dylan's work in the 1960s was seen as bringing intellectual ambition to popular music, critics in the 21st century described him as a figure who had greatly expanded the folk culture from which he initially emerged. Following the release of Todd Haynes' Dylan biopic I'm Not There, J. Hoberman wrote in his 2007 Village Voice review:

Elvis might never have been born, but someone else would surely have brought the world rock 'n' roll. No such logic accounts for Bob Dylan. No iron law of history demanded that a would-be Elvis from Hibbing, Minnesota, would swerve through the Greenwich Village folk revival to become the world's first and greatest rock 'n' roll beatnik bard and then—having achieved fame and adoration beyond reckoning—vanish into a folk tradition of his own making.

Prior to the June 2014 sale of the original lyrics of "Like a Rolling Stone", written on four sheets of hotel stationery by Dylan in 1965, Richard Austin, of Sotheby's, New York, said: "Before the release of Like a Rolling Stone, music charts were overrun with short and sweet love songs, many clocking in at three minutes or less. By defying convention with six and a half minutes of dark, brooding poetry, Dylan rewrote the rules for pop music."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS BY BOB DYLAN

Dylan, Bob (1971). Tarantula. Macmillan.
Dylan, Bob (1973). Writings and Drawings by Bob Dylan.
Dylan, Bob (1985). Lyrics: 1962–1985. Knopf.
Dylan, Bob (2004). Chronicles: Volume One. Simon & Schuster.
Dylan, Bob (2004). Lyrics: 1962–2001. Simon & Schuster. I
Dylan, Bob (2014). Lyrics: Since 1962. Simon & Schuster. Edited by Christopher Ricks, Lisa Nemrow, Julie Nemrow.

ART BOOKS BY BOOK DYLAN

Dylan, Bob (1994). Drawn Blank.
Dylan, Bob (2008). The Drawn Blank Series.
Dylan, Bob (2010). The Brazil Series. Prestel.
Dylan, Bob (2011). The Asia Series. Gagosian Gallery.
Dylan, Bob (2013). Revisionist Art: Thirty Works by Bob Dylan. Abrams.
Dylan, Bob (2014). Bob Dylan: Face Value. National Portrait Gallery.

INTERVIEWS BY BOB DYLAN

Younger Than That Now: The Collected Interviews with Bob Dylan. Thunder's Mouth Press.
Cott, Jonathan (ed.) (2006). Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews. Hodder & Stoughton.

BIOGRAPHIES OF BOB DYLAN

Bell, Ian (2012). Once Upon a Time: The Lives of Bob Dylan. Mainstream Publishing.
Bell, Ian (2013). Time Out Of Mind: The Lives of Bob Dylan. Mainstream Publishing.
Cott, Jonathan (1984). Dylan. Rolling Stone Press.
Dalton, David (2012). Who Is That Man?: In Search of the Real Bob Dylan. New York: Hyperion.
Epstein, Daniel Mark (2011). The Ballad of Bob Dylan: A Portrait. HarperCollins.
Heylin, Clinton (1996). Bob Dylan: A Life In Stolen Moments: Day by Day 1941–1995. Schirmer Books.
Heylin, Clinton (2000). Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades: Take Two. Viking.
Heylin, Clinton (2011). Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades: 20th Anniversary Edition. Faber and Faber.
McDougal, Dennis (2014). Dylan: The Biography. John Wiley & Sons.
Scaduto, Anthony (1972). Bob Dylan. Spher
Shelton, Robert (1986). No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan. New English Library.
Shelton, Robert (2011). No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (Revised & updated edition). Omnibus Press.
Sounes, Howard (2001). Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan. Grove Press.
Spitz, Bob (1988). Dylan: A Biography. McGraw-Hill.
Thompson, Toby (1972). Positively Main Street: An unorthodox view of Bob Dylan. New English Library.
Williams, Richard (1992). Dylan: A Man Called Alias. Bloomsbury.

BOOK ABOUT BOB DYLAN

Barker, Derek (2008). The Songs He Didn't Write: Bob Dylan Under The Influence. Chrome Dreams.
Bauldie, John, ed. (1992). Wanted Man: In Search of Bob Dylan. Penguin Books.
Corcoran, Neil, ed. (2002). Do You, Mr Jones? Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors. Chatto & Windus.
Dettmar, Kevin J., ed. (2008). The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan. Cambridge University Press.
Engel, Dave (1997). Just Like Bob Zimmerman's Blues: Dylan in Minnesota. River City Memoirs.
Gans, Terry Alexander (1982). What's Real and What Is Not. Bob Dylan through 1964: the Myth of Protest. Hobo Press.
Gill, Andy (1998). Classic Bob Dylan: My Back Pages. Carlton.
Gray, Michael (2000). Song & Dance Man III. Continuum.
Gray, Michael (2006). The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. Continuum International.
Griffin, Sid (2007). Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes. Jawbone.
Griffin, Sid (2014). Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (Revised & updated edition). Jawbone.
Hedin, Benjamin (2004). Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader. W. W. Norton & Company.
Heylin, Clinton (1995). Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, 1960–1994. St. Martin's Griffin.
Heylin, Clinton (2009). Revolution In The Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, Volume One: 1957–73. Const
Heylin, Clinton (2010). Still On The Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan, Volume Two: 1974–2008. Constable.
Hinchey, John (2002). Like a Complete Unknown: The Poetry of Bob Dylan’s Songs, 1962-1969. Stealing Home Press.
Humphries, Patrick (1991). Oh No! Not Another Bob Dylan Book. Square One Books.
Kramer, Daniel (1991). Bob Dylan: A Portrait of the Artist's Early Years. Plexus Publishing.
Lee, C.P. (1998). Like The Night: Bob Dylan and the Road to the Manchester Free Trade Hall. Helter Skelter.
Lee, C. P. (2000). Like a Bullet of Light: The Films of Bob Dylan. Helter Skelter.
Marcus, Greil (1997). Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes. Picador.
Marcus, Greil (2005). Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. PublicAffairs.
Marcus, Greil (2013). Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968–2010. PublicAffairs.
Marqusee, Mike (2005). Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan and the 1960s. Seven Stories Press.
Marshall, Lee (2007). Bob Dylan: The Never Ending Star. Polity.
Marshall, Scott (2002). Restless Pilgrim: The Spiritual Journey of Bob Dylan. Relevant Books.
McGregor, Craig (1972). Bob Dylan: A Retrospective. William Morrow & Co.
Mellers, Wilfrid (1984). A Darker Shade of Pale: A Backdrop to Bob Dylan. Faber and Faber.
Mensema, Bill (2009). Fietsen met Bob Dylan. Passage.
Muir, Andrew (2001). Razor's Edge: Bob Dylan & the Never Ending Tour. Helter Skelter.
Muir, Andrew (2003). Troubadour: Early & Late Songs of Bob Dylan. Woodstock Publications.
Muir, Andrew (2013). One More Night: Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour. Andrew Muir.
Pichaske, David (2010). Song of the North Country: a Midwest Framework to the Songs of Bob Dylan. Continuum
Polizzotti, Mark (2006). Highway 61 Revisited. Continuum.
Ricks, Christopher (2003). Dylan's Visions of Sin. Penguin/Viking.
Riley, Tim (1992). Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary. Knopf/Vintage.
Schatzberg, Jerry (2006) Genesis Publications.
Shain, Britta Lee (2016). Seeing the Real You At Last. Jawbone.
Shepard, Sam (1978). Rolling Thunder Logbook. Penguin Books.
Sloman, Larry (1978). On the Road With Bob Dylan: Rolling With the Thunder. Bantam Books.
Thomson, Elizabeth, ed. (1990). The Dylan Companion. Macmillan Publishers.
Trager, Oliver (2004). Keys to the Rain.
Wald, Elijah (2015). Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties. Dey Street Books.
Weberman, A.J. (2005). Dylan to English Dictionary. Yippie Museum Press.
Williams, Paul (1980). Dylan - What Happened?. Entwhistle Books.
Williams, Paul (1991). Bob Dylan: Performing Artist The Early Years 1960–1973. Underwood-Miller.
Williams, Paul (2004). Bob Dylan, Performing Artist: The Middle Years (1974–1986). Omnibus Press. ISBN
Williams, Paul (2005). Bob Dylan, Performing Artist: Mind Out Of Time (1986–1990 & beyond). Omnibus Press.
Wilentz, Sean (2009). Bob Dylan In America. The Bodley Head.
Williamson, Nigel (2004). The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan. Rough Guides..