Bob Dylan Biography

Bob Dylan was born in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. He began performing while still attending college at the University of Minnesota, and then shortly after moving to New York, began performing around the Greenwich Village area. When he wasn’t frequenting the local folk clubs in the area, he was visiting Woody Guthrie, one of his heroes, in the hospital.

Bob Dylan caught the eye of Columbia Records and they signed him in the early 1960’s. By 1962, his debut album was released, but it garnered minimal attention. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was released in 1963, and fared much better. The album contained the now iconic “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and Dylan began to perform with more notable performers, such as Joan Baez.  The Times They Are a-Changing (1964) and Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964) followed. Bringing it All Back Home arrived in 1965, launching Bob Dylan’s new electric/acoustic sound. In hindsight, the album can be viewed as the earliest inklings of the folk-rock movement; although perhaps not viewed as such during the time, it was certainly groundbreaking and recognized as such.

Following a terrifying motorcycle accident in 1966 which almost took his life, Bob Dylan took a few years off to reflect and change his sound a bit. His next few albums presented a harder rock sound, and then eventually he found a country sound which suited him. These years brought the albums Blonde on Blonde (1966), John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969), Self Portrait (1970), and Dylan (1973.) In 1974, Bob Dylan released Planet Waves, his first album to hit number one, and then a year later Blood on the Tracks. He entered the 1980’s with albums such as: Saved (1980), Infidels (1983), Knocked Out Loaded (1986), and Oh Mercy (1989.) In the 1990’s, Dylan released Under the Red Sky (1990), World Gone Wrong (1993), and Time Out of Mind (1997), which became the second album to garner Bob Dylan recognition, earning three Grammies this time, for Best Male Rock Vocal, Best Contemporary Folk Album, and Album of the Year.

In the new millennium, Bob Dylan crafted the song “Things Have Changed,” featured in the film Wonder Boys, earning him his first Academy Award for Best Song and a Golden Globe for Best Original Song. Love and Theft was released in 2001, earning Dylan more Grammy nominations. Additional albums in the new millennium include: Modern Times (2006), Together Through Life (2009), and Tempest (2012), Shadows in the Night (2015), Fallen Angels (2016), and Triplicate (2017.)

Bob Dylan remains an iconic and somewhat mysterious figure in the history of American music. The film I’m Not There encapsulates the public’s fascination with him as an artist and individual, and he is among the most celebrated and respected songwriters alive today. He has been inducted into three different halls of fame: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, and—most recently—the Nobel Prize in Literature for his lyrics. Bob Dylan continues to perform and record; he recently wrapped an extensive tour of Europe and North American which concluded in the fall of 2017.