Bob Dylan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the recording artist. For information about his self-titled debut album, see .
Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, , ), is an , , , and who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades.
Much of Dylan's most notable work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal documentarian and reluctant figurehead of American unrest. Some of his songs, such as " " and " ", became of the and . His most recent studio album, , released on , , entered the US album charts at #1, making him, at age 65, the oldest living person to top those charts.
Dylan's early lyrics incorporated , , and influences, defying existing pop music conventions and appealing widely to the of the time. While expanding and personalizing musical styles, he has shown steadfast devotion to many traditions of American song, from and / to and , to English, Scottish and Irish folk music, even , , , and .
Dylan performs with the , and .
Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the . He has also performed alongside other major artists, such as , , , , , , , and . Although his contributions as performer and recording artist have been central to his career, his songwriting is generally held as his highest accomplishment.
His career accomplishments have been recognized with the , the , , and induction into the , and . Dylan was listed as one of . In 2004, was ranked #2 in 's , second to .
He has also been nominated several times for the .
Born Robert Allen Zimmerman on , , in , , Bob Dylan was raised there and in , on the northwest of . His grandparents were immigrants from present-day , , , and .
In his biography he writes that his paternal grandmother's maiden name was and her family originated from , although she grew up in the district of in Eastern . His paternal grandfather was from on the coast of . His paternal grandparents sailed from to the port of in from where they took off to immigrate to America.
His parents, Abraham Zimmerman and Beatrice Stone (Beatty), were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community. Zimmerman lived in Duluth until age seven. When his father was stricken with , the family returned to nearby , Beatty's hometown, where Robert Zimmerman spent the rest of his childhood.
Zimmerman spent much of his youth listening to the radio—first to the powerful and stations broadcasting from and later, to early . He formed several bands while in high school. The first, The Shadow Blasters, was short-lived.
The next band, The Golden Chords, lasted longer and played covers: their performance of ' "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone off. In his 1959 school year book, Robert Zimmerman listed his ambition as "To join ." The same year, he performed two dates under the name of Elston Gunn with , playing piano and providing handclaps.
Zimmerman enrolled at the in September 1959 and moved to . His early focus on gave way to an interest in American folk music, typically performed with an acoustic guitar. Dylan has recalled, "The first thing that turned me onto folk singing was .
I heard a record of hers in a record store. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson". He may have taken guitar lessons with Marvin Karlins at the University of Minnesota.
He soon began to perform at the 10 O'clock Scholar, a coffee house a few blocks from campus, and became actively involved in the local circuit, fraternizing with local folk enthusiasts and occasionally "borrowing" many of their albums.
During his Dinkytown days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as "Bob Dylan". In his autobiography, Chronicles (2004), Dylan wrote: "What I was going to do as soon as I left home was just call myself Robert Allen.
...
It sounded like a Scottish king and I liked it." However, by reading Downbeat magazine, he discovered that there was already a saxophonist called David Allyn. A little later he became acquainted with the work of writer and made a choice between Robert Allyn and Robert Dylan: "I couldn't decide—the letter D came on stronger" he explained.
He decided on "Bob" because there were several Bobbies in popular music at the time.
Dylan quit college at the end of his freshman year. He stayed in Minneapolis, working the folk circuit there with temporary journeys in , and .
In January 1961, he headed for to perform and to visit his ailing musical idol in a New Jersey . Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and was the biggest influence on his early performances. Dylan would later say of Guthrie's work, "You could listen to his songs and actually learn how to live.
" In the hospital room, Dylan also met Woody's old road-buddy visiting Guthrie the day after returning from his trip to Europe. Bob and Jack became friends and much of Guthrie's repertoire was actually channelled through Elliott. Dylan paid tribute to Elliott in Chronicles (2005).
After initially playing mostly in small "basket" clubs for little pay, Dylan gained some public recognition after a positive review in by critic . Shelton's review and word-of-mouth around led to legendary music business figure 's signing Dylan to that October. His performances, like those on his first Columbia album (1962), consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel material combined with some of his own songs.
As Dylan continued to record for Columbia, he recorded more than a dozen songs for a folk music magazine and record label, under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt. In August 1962, Robert Allen Zimmerman went to the building in New York and changed his name to Robert Dylan.
By the time Dylan's next record, , was released in 1963, he had begun to make his name as both singer and songwriter.
Many of the songs on this album were labelled , inspired partly by and influenced by 's passion for topical songs. "Oxford Town" was a sardonic account of 's ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the .
His most famous song of the time, " ", partially derived its melody from the traditional slave song "No More Auction Block", and coupled this to Dylan's lyrics questioning the social and political status quo.
The song was widely recorded and became an international hit for , setting a precedent for other artists. While Dylan's topical songs solidified his early reputation, Freewheelin' also included a mixture of love songs and jokey, frequently surreal talking blues. Humor was a large part of Dylan's persona, and the range of material on the album impressed many listeners including .
said, "We just played it, just wore it out. The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude - it was incredibly original and wonderful."
The Freewheelin' song " ", built melodically from a loose adaptation of the stanza tune of the folk , with its veiled references to , gained even more resonance as the developed only a few weeks after Dylan began performing it.
Like "Blowin' in the Wind", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" marked an important new direction in modern songwriting, blending a , lyrical attack with traditional folk progressions to create a sound and sense that struck listeners as somehow new and ancient simultaneously.
Soon after the release of Freewheelin, Dylan emerged as a dominant figure of the so-called "new folk movement" headquartered in Lower Manhattan's . While an interpreter of traditional songs, Dylan's singing voice was considered unusual.
Dylan was untrained as a vocalist. His phrasing sounded eccentric to many but was actually in a style hearkening back to the folk-singers of the 1920s and '30s. This was a singing style to which Dylan might have been familiar from hearing it himself from recordings, but it was a manner virtually unheard-of in the music industry of the time.
Many of his most famous early songs first reached the public through versions by other performing musicians who were more immediately palatable. , celebrated as the queen of the folk movement, became Dylan's advocate as well as his lover. In addition to jumpstarting Dylan's performance career by inviting him onstage during her concerts, she recorded several of his early songs and was influential in bringing Dylan to national and international prominence.
Others who recorded and released his songs around this time included , , , , , , and , most attempting to impart more of a pop feel and rhythm to the songs where Dylan and Baez performed them mostly as sparse folk pieces keying rhythmically off the vocals. These covers were so ubiquitous by the mid-1960s that started to promote him with the tag "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan".
By 1963, Dylan and Baez were both prominent in the movement, singing together at rallies including the where gave his " " speech.
In January, Dylan appeared on in the play , playing the part of a "hobo guitar-player". His next album, , reflected a more sophisticated, politicized and cynical Dylan. This bleak material, addressing such subjects as the murder of civil rights worker and the despair engendered by the breakdown of farming and mining communities ("Ballad of Hollis Brown", " "), was accompanied by two love songs, "Boots of Spanish Leather" and "One Too Many Mornings", and the renunciation of "Restless Farewell".
The -influenced " " describes a young socialite's killing of a hotel maid. The song never explicitly mentions race, but many sources wrote it leaves no doubt that the killer is white, the victim black.
By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk-protest movement.
Accepting the " Award" from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee at a ceremony shortly after the assassination of , 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 every man) in assassin .
His next album, , recorded on a single June evening in 1964, had a lighter mood than its predecessor. The surreal Dylan reemerged on "I Shall Be Free #10" and "Motorpsycho Nightmare", accompanied by a sense of humor that has often reappeared over the years.
"Spanish Harlem Incident" and "To Ramona" are unusual non-ironic love songs, "I Don't Believe You"; a rock and roll song played on acoustic guitar, and "It Ain't Me Babe"– a thinly disguised rejection of the role his reputation thrust at him. His newest direction was signaled by three lengthy songs: the " " sets elements of social commentary against a denser metaphorical landscape in a style later characterized by as "chains of flashing images"; " " attacks the simplistic and arch seriousness of his own earlier topical songs; and " ", written before many songs included on Another Side but held back for Dylan's next release in the interest of striking just the right feel in the presentation of this milestone song.
In 1964-65 Dylan’s appearance changed rapidly, as he made his move from leading contemporary song-writer of the folk scene to rock’n’roll star.
His scruffy jeans and work shirts were replaced by a wardrobe. A London reporter wrote: “Hair that would set the teeth of a comb on edge. A loud shirt that would dim the neon lights of Leicester Square.
He looks like an undernourished cockatoo.” Dylan also began to play with interviewers in increasingly cruel and surreal ways. Appearing on the TV show and asked about a movie he was planning to make, he told Crane it would be a cowboy horror movie.
Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied. “No, I play my mother.”
His March 1965 album was yet another stylistic leap.
Influenced by (whose recording of " " was racing up the US charts), and the rock and roll of his youth, the album featured his first significant up-tempo rock songs. The first single, " ", owed much to 's "Too Much Monkey Business" and was provided with an early courtesy of 's presentation of Dylan's 1965 tour, . Its free association lyrics both harked back to the manic energy of Beat poetry and were a forerunner of rap and hip-hop.
In 1969, the militant group took their name from a line in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" ("You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows").
The of the album was a different matter, including four lengthy acoustic songs whose undogmatic political, social and personal concerns are illuminated with the semi-mystical imagery that became another trademark. One of these songs, " ", had already been a hit for The Byrds, albeit in a truncated form, while "Gates of Eden", " ", and " " have been fixtures in Dylan's live performances for most of his career.
That summer Bob Dylan made history by performing his first electric set (since his high school days) with a pickup group drawn mostly from the , i.e. (guitar), Sam Lay (drums), Jerome Arnold (bass), plus (organ) and (piano), while at the (see ).
Dylan had appeared at Newport twice before, in 1963 and 1964, and two wildly divergent accounts of the crowd's response in 1965 emerged. 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 by his electric guitar.
An alternative account claims audience members were merely upset by poor sound quality and a surprisingly short set. Whatever sparked the crowd's disfavor, Dylan soon reemerged and sang two much better received solo acoustic numbers, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Mr. Tambourine Man", although his choice of the former has often been described as a carefully selected death knell for the kind of consciously sociopolitical, purely acoustic music that the were demanding of him, with "New Folk" in the role of "Baby Blue".
The significance of Dylan's 1965 Newport performance is still debated, whether or not he purposely outraged the folk music establishment. wrote in : "Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside traditions formulated over time..
. But what of Bobby Dylan?.
.. Only a non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel.
" On 29 July, just four days after his controversial performance at Newport, Dylan was back in the studio in New York recording "Positively 4th Street". The song teemed with images of paranoia and revenge ("I know the reason/That you talk behind my back/I used to be among the crowd/You're in with"), and was widely interpreted as Dylan's put-down of former friends from the folk community, friends he had known in the clubs along West 4th Street.
Many in the folk revival had embraced the idea that life equaled art, that a certain kind of life defined by suffering and social exclusion in fact replaced art.
Folksong collectors and singers often presented folk music as an innocent characteristic of lives lived without reflection or the false consciousness of capitalism. This philosophy, both genteel and paternalistic, was ultimately what Dylan had run afoul of by 1965. But at an Austin press conference in September of that year, on the day of his first performance with , he described his music not as a pop charts-bound break with the past, but as “historical-traditional music.
” Dylan later told interviewer : “What folk music is...
is based on myths and the Bible and plague and famine and all kinds of things like that which are nothing but mystery and you can see it in all the songs….All these songs about roses growing out of people’s brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels…and seven years of this and eight years of that and it’s all really something that nobody can touch..
..(the songs) are not going to die.
” It was this mystical, living tradition of songs that served as the palette for Bringing It All Back Home, but in a nod to changing times first openly displayed at Newport, electrically amplified instruments were now also part of the mix.
The single " " was a U.S.
and UK hit; at over six minutes, it helped to expand the limits of songs played on hit radio. In 2004, listed it at number one on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. Its signature sound — with a full, jangling band and an organ riff — characterized his 1965 album, .
Titled after the road that led from Dylan's native Minnesota to the musical hotbed of , the songs passed stylistically through the birthplace of blues, the , and referenced any number of songs. For example, "61 Highway". The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, surreal litanies of the grotesque flavored by 's blues guitar, a rhythm section and Dylan's obvious enjoyment of the sessions.
The closing song, " ", is an apocalyptic vision with references to many figures of .
A mix of , and Dylan's own brand of surrealism, (1966) is often considered one of the finest recordings of American popular music.
In support of the record, Dylan was booked for two U.
S. concerts and set about assembling a band. was unwilling to leave the Butterfield Band, so Dylan mixed and from his studio crew with bar-band stalwarts and , best known for backing .
In August 1965 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the group was heckled by an audience who, Newport notwithstanding, still demanded the acoustic troubadour of previous years. The band's reception on at the was more uniformly favorable.
Neither Kooper nor Brooks wanted to tour with Dylan, and he was unable to lure his preferred band, a crew of west coast musicians best known for backing , featuring guitarist and drummer , away from their regular commitments.
Dylan then hired Robertson and Helm's full band, , 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 on , ; their first child, Jesse Byron Dylan, was born on , . Dylan and Lownds had four children in total: , Anna Lea, Samuel Isaac Abraham, and (born , ).
Dylan also adopted Sara Lownds' first daughter Maria Lownds (born , ) from a prior marriage. In the 1990s the youngest of the pair's children, , became well known as the lead singer of the band . is a film director and a successful businessman.
While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences on tour, their studio efforts floundered. Producer had been trying to persuade Dylan to record in Nashville for some time. In February 1966 Dylan agreed and Johnston surrounded him with a cadre of top-notch session men.
At Dylan's insistence, Robertson and Kooper came down from to play on the sessions. The Nashville sessions created what Dylan later called "that thin wild mercury sound" - (1966). said the record was a masterpiece because it was "taking two cultures and smashing them together with a huge explosion": the musical world of Nashville, and the world of the "quintessential New York hipster" Bob Dylan.
For many critics, Dylan's mid-'60s trilogy of albums – Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde – represents one of the great cultural achievements of the 20th century. In Mike Marqusee's words: "Between late 1964 and the summer 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 , and , advertising jargon and social commentary, and , he forged a coherent and original artistic voice and vision.
The beauty of these albums retains the power to shock and console."
Dylan undertook a "world tour" of and in the spring of 1966. Each show was split into two parts.
Dylan performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on and . In the second half, backed by , he played high voltage electric music. This contrast provoked many fans, who jeered and slowly handclapped.
The tour culminated in a famously raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester in (officially released on CD in 1998 as ). At the climax of the concert, one fan, angry with Dylan's electric sound, shouted: " !" and Dylan responded, "I don't believe you.
.. You're a liar!
" He turned to the band and, just within earshot of the microphone, said "Play it fucking loud!" They then launched into the last song of the night — "Like a Rolling Stone" — with an apocalyptic intensity.
After his European tour, Dylan returned to , but the pressures on him continued to increase.
His publisher was demanding a finished of the poem/novel . Manager had already scheduled an extensive summer/fall concert tour. On , , while Dylan rode his 500 in , its brakes locked, throwing him to the ground.
Though the extent of his injuries were never fully disclosed, it was confirmed that he indeed broke his neck. Dylan used an extended convalescence to escape the pressures of stardom: "When I had that motorcycle accident ..
. I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was just workin' for all these leeches. And I really didn't want to do that.
"
Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began editing footage of his 1966 tour into , a rarely exhibited follow-up to Dont Look Back. In 1967 he began recording music with the Hawks at his home and 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 songs, initially compiled as demos for other artists to record, provided hit singles for , , and . Columbia belatedly released selections from them in 1975 as . Later in 1967, the Hawks (soon to be rechristened as ) independently recorded the album , thus beginning a long and successful recording and performing career of their own.
In December 1967 Dylan released , his first album since the motorcycle crash. It was a quiet, contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape which drew on both the and the . 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.
It included " ", with lyrics derived from the (21:5–9). The song was later recorded by , whose celebrated version Dylan himself acknowledged as definitive in the liner notes to . Dylan and his bands have performed arrangements much closer to Hendrix's than to the John Wesley Harding version since 1974.
died on October 3rd 1967, and Dylan made his first public appearances in eighteen months at a pair of Guthrie memorial concerts the following January.
Dylan's next release, (1969), was virtually a mainstream country record featuring instrumental backing by musicians, a mellow-voiced, contented Dylan, a duet with , and the hit single " ". In 1969 Dylan appeared on the first episode of Cash's new television show and then gave a high-profile performance at the rock festival (after rejecting overtures to appear at the far closer to his home).
In the early 1970s critics charged Dylan's output was of varied and unpredictable quality. Rolling Stone magazine writer and Dylan loyalist notoriously asked "What is this shit?" upon first listening to 1970's .
In general, Self Portrait, a double LP including few original songs, was poorly received. Later that year, Dylan released , which some considered a return to form. His unannounced appearance at 1971's 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 's film , providing the songs (see ) and taking a role as "Alias", a minor member of Billy's gang. Despite the film's failure at the box office, The movie's most memorable song, " ", has proved its durability, having been covered by over 150 recording artists.
Dylan signed with 's new Asylum label when his contract with expired in 1973, and he recorded with while rehearsing for a major tour.
The album included two versions of "Forever Young". The phrase may have been lifted from 's ("For ever panting, and for ever young") but Dylan turned it into an emotional work which has become one of his most popular concert songs. Columbia Records simultaneously released , a haphazard collection of studio outtakes (almost exclusively cover songs), which was widely interpreted as a churlish response to Dylan's signing with a rival record label.
In January 1974 Dylan and embarked on their high-profile, coast-to-coast of ; promoter claimed he received more ticket purchase requests than for any prior tour by any artist. A live double album of the tour, , was released on .
After the tour, Dylan and his wife became publicly estranged.
He filled a small red notebook with songs about his marital problems, and quickly recorded a new album entitled in September 1974. Word of Dylan's efforts soon leaked out, and expectations were high. But Dylan delayed the album's release, and then, by years end he had re-recorded half of the songs at Studios in with production assistance from his brother .
Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. In the , described "the accompaniments [as] often so trashy they sound like mere practise takes." In Rolling Stone, reviewer wrote that "the record has been made with typical shoddiness".
Over the years critics have come to see it as one of Dylan's greatest achievements, perhaps the only serious rival to his great mid 60s trilogy of albums. In , Bill Wyman wrote: "Blood on the Tracks is his only flawless album and his best produced; the songs, each of them, are constructed in disciplined fashion. It is his kindest album and most dismayed, and seems in hindsight to have achieved a sublime balance between the logorrhea-plagued excesses of his mid-'60s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years.
" The songs have been described as Dylan's most intimate and direct.
That summer Dylan wrote his first successful "protest" song in twelve years, championing the cause of boxer who he believed had been wrongfully imprisoned for a triple homicide in (an eponymous 1971 tribute to , a who was killed in prison, sank almost unnoticed). After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote " ", presenting the case for Carter's innocence.
Despite its 8:32 minute length, the song was released as a single, peaking within the top forty on the U.S. , and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the .
The tour was a varied evening of entertainment featuring many performers drawn mostly from the resurgent Greenwich Village folk scene, including ; ; ; ; ; former frontman . British guitarist ; , a player Dylan discovered while she was walking down the street to a rehearsal, her violin case hanging on her back; and a reunion with (the tour marked Baez and Dylan's first joint performance in more than a decade). added herself to the Revue in November, and poet accompanied the troupe, staging scenes for the film Dylan was simultaneously shooting.
was initially hired as the writer for this film, but ended up accompanying the tour as informal chronicler.
Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour encompassed the release of the album (1976), with many of Dylan's new songs featuring an almost -like narrative style, showing the influence of his new collaborator, playwright . The spring 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special, Hard Rain, and the LP ; no concert album from the better-received and better-known opening half of the tour was released until 2002, when appeared as the fifth volume in Dylan's official Bootleg Series.
The fall 1975 tour with the Revue also provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film , a sprawling and improvised narrative mixed with 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 , , , and . 's acclaimed cinematic chronicle of this show, , was released in 1978 and included about half of Dylan's set.
Dylan and Lownds were divorced on , , though they reportedly remained in regular contact for many years and, by some accounts, even to the present day.
Dylan's 1978 album was lyrically one of his more complex and cohesive; 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, in 1979, a . He released two albums of exclusively religious material, exploring his own version of music.
(1979), is generally regarded as the more accomplished of these albums, winning him the as "Best Male Vocalist" for his song "Gotta Serve Somebody". The second album, (1980), was not so well-received. When touring from the fall of 1979 through the spring of 1980 Dylan refused to play secular music and delivered sermonettes on stage, such as:
Years ago they. .. said I was a prophet. I used to say, "No I'm not a prophet" they say "Yes you are, you're a prophet." I said, "No it's not me." They used to say "You sure are a prophet. " They used to convince me I was a prophet. Now I come out and say Jesus Christ is the answer. They say, "Bob Dylan's no prophet. " They just can't handle it. | Dylan's religious conversion was met with distrust by some fans and fellow artists.
Shortly before his December 1980 shooting, , for example, recorded "Serve Yourself", in negative response to Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody".
But for Rolling Stone editor , writing in his review for , Dylan had not "sold out" totally to born-again Christianity so much as he had simply shifted focus. According to him, Dylan was still Dylan, and the same intensity and passion had been present in Dylan's protest songs of the 1960s. Wenner commented:
Slow Train Coming is pure, true Dylan, probably the purest and truest Dylan ever. The religious symbolism is a logical progression of Dylan's Manichaean vision of life and his pain-filled struggle with good and evil.
"I don't go to church or to a synagogue. I don't kneel beside my bed at night. I don't think I will. I have yet to face the terror I read about in all the great literature. But, since politics, economics and war have failed to make us feel any better—as individuals or as a nation—and we look back at long years of disrepair, then maybe the time for religion has come again, and rather too suddenly—'like a thief in the night.
'"
In the 70s he became good friends with Christian singer and even performed on one of his songs and spoke at his funeral.
In the fall of 1980 Dylan briefly resumed touring, restoring several of his most popular 1960s songs to his repertoire, for a series of concerts billed as "A Musical Retrospective".
, recorded the next spring, featured Dylan's first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with explicitly Christian songs.
The haunting " " reminded some critics of ’s verses.
In the 1980s the quality of Dylan's recorded work varied, from the well-regarded in 1983 to the panned in 1988. Critics such as Michael Gray condemned Dylan's 1980s albums both for showing an extraordinary carelessness in the studio and for failing to release his best songs.
The Infidels recording sessions produced several notable outtakes, and many have questioned Dylan's judgment in leaving them off the album. Most well-regarded of these were " " (which was both a tribute to the dead blues singer and an extraordinary evocation of African American history reaching back to "the ghosts of slavery ships" ), "Foot of Pride" and "Lord Protect My Child"; these songs were later released on the boxed set . An earlier version of Infidels, prepared by producer/guitarist , contained different arrangements and song selections than what appeared on the final product.
Dylan contributed vocals to 's fundraising single " ". On , he appeared at the climax of the concert at , . Backed by and , Dylan performed a ragged version of "Hollis Brown", his ballad of rural poverty, and then said to a worldwide audience exceeding one billion people: "I hope that some of the money .
.. maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe .
.. one or two million, maybe .
.. and use it to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks.
" His remarks were widely criticised as inappropriate, but they did inspire to organise a series of events, , to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.
In June 1986 Dylan married his longtime backup singer (often professionally known as Carol Dennis). Their daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, was born on , .
The couple divorced in October 1992.
In 1987 Dylan starred in 's movie , in which he played a washed-up-rock-star-turned-chicken farmer called "Billy Parker", whose teenage lover ( ) leaves him for a jaded English synth-pop sensation ( ). The film was a critical and commercial flop.
Dylan was inducted into the in 1988. Later that spring he took part in the first album, working with , , , and his good friend on lighthearted, well-selling fare. Despite Orbison's death, the other four Wilburys issued a sequel in 1990.
He also toured with famous rock band the in the late 1980s.
Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with the -produced (1989). Lanois's influence is audible throughout Oh Mercy.
"Ring Them Bells" seems to call for Christians to maintain a visible presence in the world. The track "Most of the Time", a lost love composition, was later prominently featured in the film , while "What Was It You Wanted?" has been interpreted both as a catechism and a wry comment on the expectations of critics and fans.
Dylan made a number of music videos during this period, but only "Political World" found any regular airtime on .
Dylan performs at a 1996 concert in Stockholm.
.
The album was dedicated to "Gabby Goo Goo", and contained several apparently simple songs, including "Under the Red Sky" and "Wiggle Wiggle". The "Gabby Goo Goo" dedication was later explained as a nickname for Dylan's four-year-old daughter. Sidemen on the album included , from , , , , and .
Despite the stellar line-up, the record received bad reviews and sold poorly. Dylan would not make another studio album of new songs for seven years.
The next few years saw Dylan returning to his roots with two albums covering old folk and blues numbers: (1992) and (1993), featuring interpretations and acoustic guitar work.
He claimed his wish to perform a set of traditional songs for the show was overruled by executives who insisted on a greatest hits package. The album produced from it (see ) included " ", an unreleased 1963 song detailing the ravages of both war and .
With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed-in on his Minnesota ranch, Dylan returned to the recording studio with Lanois in January 1997.
Late that spring, before the album's release, he was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart infection, , brought on by . His scheduled European tour was cancelled, but Dylan made a speedy recovery and left the hospital saying, "I really thought I'd be seeing soon." He was back on the road by midsummer, and in early fall performed before at the World Eucharistic Conference in , .
The Pope treated the audience of 200,000 people to a sermon based on Dylan's lyric " ".
September saw the release of the new Lanois-produced album, . With its bitter assessment of love and morbid ruminations, Dylan's first collection of original songs in seven years became highly acclaimed.
It also achieved an unforeseen popularity among young listeners, particularly the opening song, "Love Sick". This collection of complex songs won him his first solo "Album of the Year" (he was one of numerous performers on , the 1972 winner). The love song "To Make You Feel My Love" was covered by both and .
Guitarist and drummer had also toured with Dylan for years. Keyboard player , the only musician not part of Dylan's touring band, had also played on Time Out of Mind. The album was critically well-received and nominated for several Grammy awards.
Critics noted that at this late stage in his career, Dylan was deliberately widening his musical palette. The styles referenced in this album included , Western swing, jazz, and even lounge ballads.
"Love and Theft" generated controversy when some similarities between the lyrics of the album to Japanese writer 's book were pointed out.
A music video for the song was also produced in promotion of the motion picture.
2003 also saw the release of the film , a creative collaboration with television producer , featuring many well-known actors. Dylan and Charles cowrote the film under the pseudonyms Rene Fontaine and Sergei Petrov.
The movie makes use of seven characters to represent the different aspects of Dylan's life. The movie is to be directed by , and the cast currently includes , , and .
's film biography was shown on and , on in the United Kingdom and in the United States.
In a well-publicized interview to promote the album, Dylan criticised the quality of modern sound recordings and claimed that his new songs "probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em".
Despite some coarsening of Dylan’s voice ( critic characterised his singing on the album as “a catarrhal death rattle” ) most reviewers gave the album high marks and many described it as the final instalment of a successful trilogy, embracing Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft. Among the tracks most frequently singled out for praise were "Workingman's Blues #2" (the title was a nod to 's song of that name), and the final song “Ain’t Talkin’”, a nine minute talking blues in which Dylan appeared to be walking “through all-enveloping darkness, before finally disappearing into the murk”.
The show has won widespread praise from fans and critics for the way that Dylan conveyed his eclectic musical taste with panache and eccentric humor. At the end of 2006, Dylan announced the next installment of his " ": concert dates in Europe in spring 2007.
Dylan performing in in November 2005.
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