Bob Dylan (born 1941) was an American singer-songwriter regarded as one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century popular music. [1] Rising out of the early 1960s folk revival, he wrote songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Like a Rolling Stone" that fused vivid, literary lyrics with folk and rock forms. [3] In 2016 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for creating new poetic expression within the American song tradition. [2]
Early life and education
Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on 24 May 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, and grew up in the nearby mining town of Hibbing. [1] As a teenager he absorbed rock and roll, blues, and country music from the radio and formed local bands. He enrolled at the University of Minnesota in 1959, where he began performing in Minneapolis coffeehouses and immersed himself in traditional folk music, adopting the stage name Bob Dylan before leaving school without a degree. [3]
New York and the folk revival
In early 1961 Dylan moved to New York City, drawn in part by the ailing folk singer Woody Guthrie, and became a fixture of the Greenwich Village folk scene. [1] He signed with Columbia Records and released his self-titled debut in 1962. His second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), featuring "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," established him as a leading songwriter whose work was closely identified with the civil rights and antiwar movements. [3]
Going electric
From 1965 Dylan moved away from acoustic protest material toward electric rock, a shift crystallized by his amplified set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. [1] The albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde produced enduring songs including "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Mr. Tambourine Man." A 1966 motorcycle accident led him to withdraw from touring and record quietly in upstate New York. [1]
Later career
Dylan remained prolific across the following decades, releasing the acclaimed Blood on the Tracks in 1975, recording a series of Christian-themed albums at the end of the 1970s, and returning to wide acclaim with Time Out of Mind in 1997. [1] From 1988 he sustained an itinerant concert schedule often called the Never Ending Tour, and continued to release new studio work into the twenty-first century. [4]
Legacy and honors
Dylan's influence on songwriting, performance, and the cultural standing of popular music is widely recognized. [4] He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, received a Pulitzer Prize special citation in 2008 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, and in 2016 became the first songwriter awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. [2]
