Bob Dylan

In the history of American popular music, few figures loom as large or as completely over the entire spectrum of performance as Bob Dylan. The folk singer-songwriter has a long history of breaking the rules, both sonically and politically, and has become one of the enduring spokespeople for the 1960’s civil rights movement.

With his trademark, sandpaper voice and seemingly never-ending stream of poetry, Dylan revolutionised the world’s perception of how a protest song, indeed, songs in general, could be written and performed. Encompassing the stream-of-consciousness narratives made popular by beat poets, a typical Dylan song could last up to 12 minutes, full of dense imagery and lengthy verses.

The harmonica-playing singer was to become legend early in his career, when his band plugged in for the first time at the Newport Folk Festival at 1965. This electric marriage between folk and rock’n’roll did not go down favourably, and Dylan’s outfit were booed offstage after only three songs.

Ironically, the public rejection of his renewed vision led Dylan to record arguably the two best albums of his career: 1965’s ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ and ‘Blonde On Blonde’ a year later. Many of Dylan’s seminal hits emerged from these records, including ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ (which pre-dated both the magazine and the band) and ‘Tombstone Blues’, each of which proved that music could be used as a form of social commentary as well as entertainment.

Dylan’s howled refrain, “how does it feel?”, was to influence many later songwriters, with Bruce Springsteen among them. Somewhat prophetically, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ would later be voted number one in Rolling Stone’s Greatest Songs of all Time. But the breadth of Dylan’s ambition was demonstrated on ‘Highway 61’s’ 11-minute closing opus, ‘Desolation Row’. Combining characters from fairytales, history and literature, this sprawling work left Dylan’s detractors and competitors for dead.

Understanding the man behind the guitar was a task many journalists were ill-prepared for; throughout his life Bob Dylan constantly shifted between musical allegiances, high-profile girlfriends and religions. Getting to know the real Robert Zimmerman (Dylan’s birth name) was notoriously difficult, a notion cemented in the recent Hollywood film, I’m Not There (starring Cate Blanchett and the late Heath Ledger), in which a variety of characters take on differing aspects of Dylan’s persona.

At the pinnacle of his success, Dylan was romantically linked to Warhol model, Edie Sedgwick, purportedly introduced The Beatles to marijuana, and in the late ‘70s, switched from Judaism to Christianity and back again. He also withdrew from public performance for eight years following a motorcycle crash in the mid-1960s.

Easily the most exciting aspect of Dylan’s career has been his extraordinary output. Where others have failed, Dylan has endured; he’s been on a self-proclaimed Never Ending Tour since 1988, has bounced back from some of the worst reviews directed at his more experimental outings and, vitally, continues to make records. His most recent, ‘Together Through Life’, was released this year to largely positive feedback. ‘Together’ is Dylan’s 33rd record, and debuted at number one on both sides of the Atlantic. Not bad for a 68-year old.