One could demarcate Bob Dylan’s last and continuing artistic phase from 1989 to the present. Regaining momentum, Dylan undertook from June 1988 onward his “Never Ending Tour” in which he took on 72 conference performances. In 1985, he participated in the charity single “We Are the World” supporting relief in Africa. His 1983 album Infidels took another twist, shedding religious themes for the secular and surreal. In the same measure that Dylan was enthusiastic for the religious theme, he had come during this period of his life to view politics and the Yuppies as insincere and commercially appropriated (314, 331). This would become his last album for fifteen years. For three years, he recorded and performed only religious material, the outcome being a confusion of his critics and a Grammy Award for his “gospel” song “Gotta Serve Somebody.” The song was part of the album Slow Train Coming, which captured Dylan’s apocalyptic presentiment. After dabbling with worldwide religious teachings such as the I Ching, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and those of Gurdjieff, he found his way in Christ, formally converting to Christianity in 1979 (McDougal 277–78). After a performing hiatus of eight years, Dylan came out with the album Blood on the Tracks in 1975, which represented a return to lyrical form.ĭylan’s third artistic phase could be mapped to the period 1978–89, coinciding with the Me Decade. That year he also appeared in George Harrison’s benefit concert for the fledgling nation Bangladesh. His first book, Tarantula, a collection of disparate writings, came out in 1971. While recuperating Dylan amalgamated footage of his tour into the film Eat the Document, and audio recordings into the album Live 1966. Concerts were halted while he recovered from a motorcycle accident while residing in Woodstock, New York. He spent time in Nashville and toured Europe (Kooper). During this period Dylan continued his musical expansion with varied themes and an electric sound that moved beyond folk music, such as the combined carnal and spiritual themes of the Blonde on Blonde album.
McDougal describes Dylan’s second phase as stretching from 1966–78. The album Highway 61 Revisited, however, showed his sophisticated side, lurching away from politics and towards observation of the ironies of life with judicious incorporation of biblical allusion. With Joan Baez, his songs launched into the civil rights movement. In Greenwich Village, he wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” and protest songs commenting on life in Cold War America. He had already read and taken to heart the autobiography of Woody Guthrie and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in New York he spent personal time with Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. The move was accomplished four days after the presidential inauguration of John F.
Bob Zimmerman adopted his last name Dylan from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas before opting to move to Greenwich Village in New York City to pursue his music career more seriously. He performed music in coffee houses located in the surrounding bohemian neighborhood known as Dinkytown. Looking for “the speed, the sound” of the city, upon high school graduation he matriculated at University of Minnesota, but dropped out with the rise of his artistic interests.
He took up the guitar and harmonica in 1955 at age 14, launching at that time into his first high school rock and roll band, the Golden Chords (CMUSE). As a youngster he was taken with the music of Hank Williams, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Johny Ray. He was in kindergarten when he witnessed his father Abram Zimmerman brought low by polio following World War II. He came from third-generation Russian and Lithuanian Jewish ancestry, but was born in a Catholic hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on (Kooper). Author Dennis McDougal divides Bob Dylan’s life into four phases in Dylan: The Biography the first, from 1941–66, relating to his early maturation, personally and professionally.
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