Bob Dylan: Blowing in the Wind
Robert Allen Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan, turned 80 yesterday, as we reminisce how a kid from Minnesota changed not just music, but pop culture
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What’s up, folks?
Yesterday we celebrated the 80th birthday of the iconic Rock legend “ Robert Allen Zimmerman”, popularly known as “ Bob Dylan “.
Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career spanning nearly 60 years; and his songs have become anthems for the civil rights and anti-war movements.
His lyrics during this period incorporated a range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the rising counterculture in 60’s America.
He has influenced some of the biggest artists of the world: The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young- you name it. His influence has often been referred to as the ‘ Seinfeld Effect ‘, referring to Jerry Seinfeld, the famous comedian and TV actor whose work set the tone for stand-up comedy and sitcom television for decades to come.
Even beyond Music, he inspired personalities including Steve Jobs- who worshipped Dylan and according to Walter Isaacson’s biography, bonded with co-founder Steve Wozniack over their fandom of the artist.
“We’d buy brochures of Dylan lyrics and stay up late interpreting them, Dylan’s words struck chords of creative thinking.”
Dylan has been active as a musician for 60 years now and recently he announced that he was selling the copyrights of his entire song catalog to Universal Music for $400 Million, something we covered in one of our previous editions of the Newsletter.
In his long-spanning career, Dylan has:
- Sold over 125 million albums worldwide.
- Won 11 Grammy Awards.
- Won a Nobel Prize for Literature.
- Been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
- Won Oscars and Golden Globe awards for Best Music
- Released 39 Studio albums and 95 singles
- Accumulated a net worth of $350 Million
He has also been mentioned in the “ Times 100: Most Important People Of The Century “ as a “master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation”.
Talk about checking off boxes, Dylan has literally done it all.
But how did it all start? How did the son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine become one of the biggest songwriters and pop culture influencers of all time? Let’s get into it 👇🏻
Having dropped out of the Univerity of Minessota in 1960, Dylan traveled to New York to pursue his musical career and he played gigs in clubs such as “Cafe Wha?” and “Gaslight Cafe” around Greenwich. He signed with Colombia Records and released his first album in 1962.
Dylan’s first album, Bob Dylan, released March 19, consisted of familiar folk, blues, and gospel with two original compositions. The album sold only 5,000 copies in its first year, just enough to break even. In 1962, he also legally changed his name to “Bob Dylan”.
By 1966, Dylan had gone from an up-and-coming folkie to the voice of the ’60s generation, and pioneered electrically amplified rock guitars, and in the space of 15 months recorded three of the most important and influential rock albums of the 1960s: Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966),
Commenting on the first song of Highway 61 revisited, a six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965), Rolling Stone magazine wrote:
“No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time”.
However, Dylan found it hard to keep up with his fame. Woodstock, a town where he lived near New York, had become a “nightmare,” with moochers at his door and goons breaking in.
“Everything was wrong, the world was absurd, “ he wrote in his memoir.
On July 29th, 1966, He met with a motorcycle accident as he fell off from his Triumph Tiger 100. Rumors sprouted over the following months that he was gravely injured, blind, or disfigured. Over the years, Dylan has indicated that he broke a vertebra and got a concussion.
It is one of the most analyzed cases of motorcycle accidents ever, as the initial phase was sketchy and there were no police reports of the incident and no records of an ambulance being called.
Dylan wrote in his memoir, Chronicles:
“I had been in a motorcycle accident and I’d been hurt, but I recovered, truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race. Having children changed my life and segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on. Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me and I was seeing everything through different glasses.”
For Dylan, this had been a blessing in disguise as the pressure from his music career was getting to him and after the accident, Dylan successfully withdrew himself from public life and, despite continuously releasing music, albeit, in a more relaxed, less prolific basis, it would be another eight years before he would tour again-with the break revitalizing the all-time great.
While Dylan was a real vocal experimenter and pushed his vocal cords beyond their limits, It is speculated that the accident was also one reason why his voice deteriorated over time.
Despite that, Dylan was hugely successful post his hiatus, having released a staggering 32 studio albums, post his accident, and getting recognized for his contributions that extended far beyond music.
My favorite Dylan fact? He opened for Martin Luther King at his infamous 1963 protest “ March on Washington”, made popular by the ‘ I Have a Dream ‘ speech which called for civic and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States.
Check out his performance here 👇🏻
Is there anything this guy has not done? 🤯
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Originally published at https://incentify.substack.com.
