24.05. Bob Dylan, Edgar Rebel, Big Mama Montse * Elmore James +

1941 Bob Dylan*
1963 Elmore James+
1963 Big Mama Montse*
1966 Edgar Rebel*

Happy Birthday

 

Bob Dylan   *24.05.1941

Bob Dylan [ˈdɪlən] (* 24. Mai 1941 als Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota) ist ein US-amerikanischer Folk- und Rockmusiker und Lyriker. Der Sänger spielt Gitarre, Mundharmonika, Orgel und Klavier. Er gilt als einer der einflussreichsten Musiker des 20. Jahrhunderts.[1]

Dylan begann Ende der 1950er Jahre nach Rock ’n’ Roll-Jahren in Schülerbands als Folkmusiker und wandte sich Mitte der 1960er Jahre der Rockmusik zu. Seine Texte waren zu Beginn seines Schaffens von der Folkbewegung und einem ihrer bekanntesten Vertreter, Woody Guthrie, später auch von symbolistischen Dichtern wie Arthur Rimbaud und Charles Baudelaire, aber auch von der Bibel beeinflusst.[2]

Leben

Kindheit und Jugend

Bob wurde als erstes Kind von Abraham „Abe“ Zimmerman (1911–1968) und seiner Frau Beatrice „Beatty“ Stone (1915–2000) im Mittleren Westen der USA geboren. Seine Eltern waren Nachfahren deutsch-ukrainisch-jüdischer Immigranten, die 1905 aus Odessa in die Vereinigten Staaten übergesiedelt waren.[3] Im Februar 1946 wurde sein jüngerer Bruder David Benjamin geboren. Zur selben Zeit erkrankte sein Vater an Poliomyelitis und verlor seine Stellung als leitender Angestellter bei der Standard Oil Company. Um der drohenden Verarmung zu entgehen, zogen die Zimmermans zu Bobs Großeltern nach Hibbing, Minnesota, wo Vater Abe Partner seiner beiden Brüder wurde, die als selbständige Elektriker arbeiteten.

Dylan hörte in seiner Jugend die Musik von Hank Williams, Little Richard, Chuck Berry und Buddy Holly. „Ich wollte immer schon Gitarrist und Sänger sein. Seit ich zehn, elf oder zwölf war, war dies das einzige, was mich interessierte … Henrietta war die erste Rock-’n’-Roll-Platte, die ich hörte.“ Er war auch schon früh an Literatur interessiert. So begeisterte er sich unter anderem für Bücher von John Steinbeck. Von seinen Eltern wurde sein musikalisches Talent gefördert. Unter der Anleitung eines Cousins lernte er zunächst Klavier spielen, bevor er zur akustischen und später zur elektrischen Gitarre wechselte. In dieser Zeit spielte er häufig Blues-Standards nach, die er im Radio hörte. Besonders beeindruckt war er von Elvis Presleys ersten Stücken, er brachte sich dessen Version von Blue Moon of Kentucky auf der Gitarre bei. Dieses Stück spielte er noch bis 1999 auf seinen Konzerten.

In der High School traf er Gleichgesinnte, die seinen Musikgeschmack teilten, und so war er schon bald Mitglied der A-cappella-Gruppe The Jokers, die vorwiegend auf Feiern auftrat. Aus ihr gingen später The Golden Chords hervor, deren Spielplan aus Coverversionen von Little-Richard-Stücken bestand. Mit dieser Band nahm er an einem Talentwettbewerb in Duluth teil und war sehr enttäuscht, als der erste Preis an eine Gruppe von Pantomimen ging.

Zu dieser Zeit trat er noch unter dem Namen „Bobby Zimmerman“ auf. Da ihm Musik und Auftritte immer wichtiger wurden, entschloss er sich dazu, seinen Nachnamen durch einen Künstlernamen zu ersetzen. Seine Wahl fiel auf „Dylan“, eine Entscheidung, zu der er sich im Laufe seiner Karriere unterschiedlich geäußert hat. So will er sich nach der Figur des Matt Dillon aus der damals populären Fernsehserie Rauchende Colts benannt haben, aber um sich von ihr abzugrenzen, habe er den Namen mit veränderter Schreibweise übernommen. Eine bekanntere und wahrscheinlichere Möglichkeit ist, dass sich der Name an den Dichter Dylan Thomas anlehnt, den er bewunderte und von dem er einige Bücher besaß. Er hat auch schon behauptet, der Name sei ihm einfach so eingefallen.[4]

Im Herbst 1959 verließ Dylan nach eigenen Angaben die „Wildnis“ und schrieb sich für einen Kunststudiengang mit Hauptfach Musik an der University of Minnesota in St. Paul ein. Dort besuchte er zwar nicht einen Kurs, kam aber mit der Folkmusik von Pete Seeger, The Kingston Trio und Woody Guthrie in Berührung. Besonders Guthries Technik, einen Folkstandard mit eigenen Texten und veränderter Phrasierung zu erneuern, faszinierte ihn. Später wandte er diese Technik selbst an. Seeger war eine Ikone der Linken und musikalisches Vorbild für ihn.

Ende Dezember 1960 besuchte er seine Eltern und teilte ihnen mit, er wolle eine Karriere als Musiker einschlagen. Die reagierten zunächst verärgert, denn sein Vater wollte ihn eigentlich in sein Geschäft aufnehmen. Sie gaben Dylan schließlich ein Jahr Zeit; so lange könne er machen, was er wolle. Sollte sich bis dahin kein Erfolg einstellen, müsse er zurück an die Universität und „etwas Richtiges“ lernen.
Bob Dylan als Folksänger

Über Umwege gelangte Dylan im Januar 1961 in den New Yorker Stadtteil Greenwich Village, der sich zu einem Anlaufpunkt für Künstler entwickelt hatte. Niedrige Mieten sorgten in den 1940er Jahren für einen Zulauf von Musikern, zu denen in den 1950ern die Beatniks kamen. Letztere wurden zunehmend politisch in ihren Werken und sorgten für einen steten Zustrom von Besuchern aus allen Bundesstaaten. Ihre Auftritte in den sogenannten Coffeehouses waren so gut besucht, dass die Bürgersteige rund um den zentral gelegenen Washington Square Park an den Wochenenden überfüllt waren und für den Verkehr gesperrt werden mussten. Anfang der 1960er Jahre wurde die Beatnik-Bewegung durch die Folk-Musik ergänzt, und Musiker wie Fred Neil, Phil Ochs und Tom Paxton hatten ihren ersten Auftritt im Village. Der Gitarrist und Sänger Dave Van Ronk und die Sängerin Odetta Holmes übten auf Dylan, der nur über das Zuhören viele Stilrichtungen aufsaugen konnte, eine starke Wirkung aus.

Dylan lernte dort auch seine erste große Liebe kennen, Suze Rotolo, die ihn nicht nur künstlerisch inspirierte, sondern auch seinen gesellschaftskritischen Blick schärfte. Sie machte ihn mit den Büchern der französischen Symbolisten Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine und Charles Baudelaire bekannt. Die wechselvolle Beziehung inspirierte ihn zu den sogenannten Love/Hate-Songs wie Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, Boots of Spanish Leather und Ballad in Plain D, mit denen er die damals übliche Form des romantisch verklärten Lovesongs um eine bittere Variante erweiterte.

Er besuchte auch sein Idol Woody Guthrie im Krankenhaus. Dieser befand sich bereits im Endstadium der unheilbaren Huntington-Krankheit und war ans Bett gefesselt. Da eine Unterhaltung mit ihm sehr mühselig gewesen wäre, spielte Dylan ihm stattdessen Guthrie-Songs vor. Seine Bewunderung für ihn und die Eindrücke von diesen Besuchen verarbeitete er später in Song To Woody, eine seiner ersten Eigenkompositionen.

Seinen ersten professionellen Auftritt absolvierte Dylan am 11. April 1961 im Gerde’s Folk City im Vorprogramm von John Lee Hooker.[5] Nachdem er mit Erfolg in kleinen Clubs aufgetreten war, machte er erste Schallplattenaufnahmen als Mundharmonikaspieler auf einem Album von Harry Belafonte. Am 29. September erschien in der New York Times ein sehr wohlwollender Artikel über ihn.[6] Der legendäre Impresario John Hammond wurde auf ihn aufmerksam und nahm ihn am 25. Oktober 1961 für das Major-Label Columbia unter Vertrag. Nach den Konditionen des Vertrages, der zunächst auf fünf Jahre angesetzt war, standen ihm ein kleiner Vorschuss und lediglich fünf Prozent der Einnahmen aus den Plattenverkäufen zu. Dies kümmerte ihn aber nicht, da er froh war, überhaupt einen Plattenvertrag zu erhalten. Suze Rotolo, die große Liebe und Freundin dieser Jahre, gewann in der Zeit der ersten Erfolge einen kritischeren Blick auf Dylan:

    „Der Erfolg [verwandelt] meinen Freund mehr und mehr in einen Egozentriker. […] Die Persönlichkeit verändert sich, sobald sie allen ein Begriff wird. Sie entwickeln eine unkontrollierbare Egomanie. […] Dies kann auch bescheidensten und demütigen Personen passieren […], es macht Klick und plötzlich kann diese Person nichts mehr wahrnehmen außer sich selbst. […] Jeden Tag wird es schlimmer“

– Suze Rotolo

Während sein erstes, 1962 erschienenes Album noch vornehmlich Fremdkompositionen enthielt und wenig Aufmerksamkeit erntete, brachten seine folgenden Alben The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan und The Times They Are a-Changin’ den Durchbruch. Sie enthielten neben einfachen, aber umso eindringlicheren Liebesliedern vor allem sozialkritische Songs. Blowin’ in the Wind auf The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan traf den Nerv der Zeit und wurde – wenn auch zunächst in der Interpretation von Peter, Paul and Mary – zur pazifistischen Hymne einer ganzen Generation. In dem wütend-eindringlichen Masters of War verfluchte Dylan den militärisch-industriellen Komplex. Einige Lieder wie das apokalyptische A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall deuteten bereits auf sein außergewöhnliches literarisches Talent hin. Die Arm in Arm mit Dylan auf dem Cover der LP abgebildete Frau ist seine damalige Freundin Suze Rotolo.

Am 3. August 1963 begann seine erste große Tournee durch die USA – als Gastsänger von Joan Baez, mit der er dann auch eine Liebesbeziehung hatte. Baez war zu jener Zeit bereits ein großer Star und konnte leicht größere Hallen füllen. Dylan sang auf diesen Konzerten, wo sie ihn voller Begeisterung dem Publikum vorstellte, einige Duette mit Baez. Für Dylan bedeutete diese Tour und die Verbindung mit Baez eine enorme Steigerung seiner Bekanntheit. Auch finanziell lohnte sich die Tour – sein Manager Albert Grossman hatte für ihn eine größere Beteiligung an den Einnahmen als für Joan Baez ausgehandelt, obwohl sie der Star der Tour war. Am 28. August 1963 trat er gemeinsam mit Baez und anderen Folksängern bei der Abschlusskundgebung des Civil Rights March nach Washington auf, bei der Martin Luther King seine berühmte Rede I Have a Dream hielt.

Dylans Erfolg Anfang der 1960er Jahre fiel in eine Periode des politischen und gesellschaftlichen Wandels in Amerika. 1960 wurde John F. Kennedy zum Präsidenten gewählt. Die Zeit war geprägt vom Kalten Krieg, von Rassenunruhen, aber auch von bedeutenden sozialen Reformen. Die Jugend wurde zunehmend politischer, und die Bürgerrechtsbewegung trat immer selbstbewusster auf. Bob Dylan wurde mit nicht einmal 25 Jahren eine Symbolfigur dieser emanzipatorischen Bewegung. Die Rolle eines Idols behagte ihm jedoch nicht. Er lehnte diese Rollenzuweisung kategorisch ab. Im Laufe seiner weiteren Karriere versuchte er immer wieder, sich der Vereinnahmung durch seine Fans zu entziehen, am deutlichsten vielleicht im Wedding Song aus dem Jahr 1974: „It’s never been my duty to remake the world at large, / nor is it my intention to sound a battle charge“ („Nie war es meine Pflicht, die Welt im Ganzen neu zu erschaffen, / noch ist es meine Absicht, einen Schlachtruf erklingen zu lassen“).

Bob Dylan als Rockmusiker

Ab Mitte der 1960er Jahre ließ Dylan seine bis dahin fast ausschließlich solo und auf der akustischen Gitarre gespielte Musik elektrisch verstärken und hatte jetzt auch eine Begleitband. Ein Meilenstein dieses Wechsels war 1965 sein Auftritt beim Newport Folk Festival mit der Paul Butterfield Blues Band, der bei den puristischen Freunden der Folkmusik heftige Kritik auslöste. Ein Teil des Publikums reagierte mit Buhrufen auf die elektrische Version von Maggie’s Farm. Auch hinter der Bühne spielten sich dramatische Szenen zwischen den Vertretern der klassischen Folktradition und der neuen elektronischen Musik ab. So soll Dylans Vorbild Pete Seeger damit gedroht haben, die Verkabelung der Band mit einer Axt zu durchtrennen. Nach drei Stücken ging Dylan mit der Band von der Bühne ab, wurde aber von Moderator Peter Yarrow zurückgebeten; er spielte dann noch zwei Stücke in gewohnter Manier solo mit Akustikgitarre und Mundharmonika. Diese Ereignisse werden in der 2005 erschienenen Dokumentation No Direction Home - Bob Dylan von Martin Scorsese aufgearbeitet, in der unter anderem seine Jugendliebe Suze Rotolo zu Wort kommt, die sich über ihre Beziehung zu Dylan lange nicht öffentlich äußerte.

Auch auf der anschließenden Europatournee, bei der er sich von den Musikern begleiten ließ, die später unter dem Namen The Band bekannt wurden, stieß seine elektrisch verstärkte Musik teils auf heftige Ablehnung, vor allem in England. 1966 wurde er bei einem Konzert für seinen vermeintlichen „Verrat“ an der Folkmusik gar als „Judas“ beschimpft (zu hören auf The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966 (1998)). Während dieser Tournee wurde es beinahe zu einem Ritual, dass das Publikum Dylan und seine Band ausbuhte. Dylan selbst forderte bei dem besagten Konzert seine Band dazu auf, besonders laut zu spielen.

Dylan wurde zum Rockstar, der Millionen von Schallplatten verkaufte und von Teilen der sich zunehmend politisierenden Gegenkultur als Sprachrohr betrachtet wurde. Er litt nun jedoch zunehmend unter dem Erfolgsdruck. Viele seiner alten Fans nahmen ihm seine Hinwendung zur Rockmusik übel und reagierten geradezu feindselig. Andere versuchten, ihn für sich zu vereinnahmen. Die Presse begann einerseits, ihn auf die Rolle des Idols einer Generation festzulegen, andererseits des Verrats an den Idealen der Folkbewegung zu bezichtigen. Wenn Journalisten ihn auf Pressekonferenzen durch suggestive Fragen in die Enge zu treiben versuchten, gab Dylan meist schlagfertig und leicht arrogant wirkende, absurde Antworten und ließ sie ins Leere laufen. Gleichwohl war ihm die Anspannung aufgrund der Belastung durch das Tourneeleben und die Reaktion von Presse und Publikum deutlich anzumerken. Kurioserweise werden viele der spontanen Aussagen Dylans aus jener Zeit (etwa seine ironisch gemeinte Selbsteinschätzung als „Song and Dance Man“) bis heute angeführt.

Seinen Wandel vom Folksänger zum Rockmusiker vollzog er auf drei Alben, die er in kurzer Abfolge Mitte der 1960er Jahre veröffentlichte und die heute als Klassiker der Rockmusik gelten. Auf der zweiten Seite der LP Bringing It All Back Home befinden sich ausschließlich akustisch eingespielte Songs, die A-Seite der LP bestritt Dylan aber bereits mit einer Band. Die zwei folgenden Alben Highway 61 Revisited und die Doppel-LP Blonde on Blonde enthalten fast nur elektrisch verstärkte Rocksongs. Like a Rolling Stone von Highway 61 Revisited schaffte es 1965 auf Platz 2 der Billboard-Single-Charts. Das Lied wurde später von der Zeitschrift Rolling Stone zum „Greatest Song of All Time“ gekürt, und Greil Marcus schrieb 2005 ein Buch über dessen Entstehung.

Vor allem sprachlich erreichten seine Lieder auf diesen Platten eine bis dahin in der populären Musik unerreichte Komplexität. Seine Texte waren gespickt mit Metaphern und literarischen Verweisen, außerdem tauchten Anspielungen auf Drogenerfahrungen auf. Typisch für diese Periode waren auch ausufernde, surrealistisch anmutende Wortspielereien, die Dylan in der Art des Stream of Consciousness verfasste. Solches dominiert auch das 1965 geschriebene und erst 1971 erschienene Buch Tarantula sowie die längeren Texte und Prosagedichte, die er gelegentlich auf den Rückseiten seiner LP-Cover veröffentlichte. Die berühmtesten davon sind die Eleven Outlined Epitaphs von 1964, die in den 1980er Jahren in deutscher Übersetzung von Carl Weissner auch in Buchform erschienen. Dylan wurde damals stark von den Dichtern der Beat Generation wie Jack Kerouac beeinflusst, mit Allen Ginsberg verband ihn ein freundschaftliches Verhältnis.

Ende 1965 heiratete er das Fotomodell Sara Lowndes. Die Hochzeit wurde vor der Öffentlichkeit geheimgehalten. Lowndes brachte eine Tochter aus erster Ehe in die Verbindung mit. So wurde Dylan im Alter von 24 Jahren plötzlich Familienvater. Nun schirmte er sein Privatleben erst recht strikt vor der Öffentlichkeit ab. Einer der bekanntesten der zahlreichen Songs, die er von seiner Beziehung zu Sara inspiriert schrieb, ist Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, der auf der Doppel-LP Blonde on Blonde eine der vier Plattenseiten einnimmt. Dies bekannte er nach der Trennung von seiner Frau 1975 quasi öffentlich mit dem Song Sara auf dem Album Desire. Dylan war und ist auch ansonsten äußerst zurückhaltend, was Angaben zu möglichen Adressaten seiner Lieder und Interpretationen der Inhalte seiner Texte betrifft.

Rückzug ins Privatleben

Nach einem Motorradunfall Ende Juli 1966 zog er sich für zwei Jahre völlig aus der Öffentlichkeit zurück. Das Ausmaß des Unfalls liegt bis heute im Unklaren. Er ermöglichte Dylan jedoch die radikale Abkehr von einem Lebensstil, der bei ihm – diktiert von einem übervollen und kräfteraubenden Terminkalender und seiner damals außerordentlichen künstlerischen Produktivität – nahezu eine komplette gesundheitliche und mentale Erschöpfung provoziert hatte. Dylan lebte nun in Bearsville in der Nähe des kleinen Ortes Woodstock unweit von New York und widmete sich vornehmlich seiner Frau Sara und den gemeinsamen Kindern. Er trat in den folgenden Jahren nur vereinzelt auf, so auch nicht beim legendären Woodstock-Festival in Bethel. Im ersten Teil seiner Autobiografie „Chronicles“ sagt er, dass er sich damals ein einfaches Leben mit einem Job von 9 bis 17 Uhr wünschte. Musikalisch orientierte er sich in dieser Zeit an der Country-Musik. Es entstanden zwei Alben, die er teilweise in Nashville aufnahm – das spartanisch instrumentierte John Wesley Harding und das für seine Verhältnisse sehr gefällige Nashville Skyline, auf dem er auch mit dem Country-Musiker Johnny Cash zusammenarbeitete. Die LP wurde zu Dylans bis dahin größtem kommerziellen Erfolg. Dylan bereitete so der Akzeptanz der bislang als reaktionär verpönten Country-Musik im Rocklager den Boden und wurde – neben Buffalo Springfield / Neil Young, den Byrds und Gram Parsons – zu einem Wegbereiter des Country-Rock. Mit den Musikern der Band nahm er im Keller eines alten Hauses in Woodstock ein Sammelsurium teils fast vergessener Songs der US-amerikanischen Rootsmusik (Blues, Folk und Country) auf, die jahrelang als Bootlegs kursierten, bevor sie 1975 offiziell und stark gekürzt unter dem Titel The Basement Tapes veröffentlicht wurden. Häufig werden die Lieder jener Zeit als Dylans Bekenntnis zu den Freuden des einfachen Lebens als Familienvater gedeutet. Von vielen seiner alten Fans wurde ihm dafür jedoch erneut Verrat an den Idealen der Gegenkultur vorgeworfen.

Im Jahr 1969 wurde sein Sohn Jakob geboren, der mittlerweile selbst als Musiker arbeitet. Dylan hat außer ihm drei weitere Kinder: Anna, Jesse und Samuel. Sein Doppelalbum Self Portrait aus dem Jahr 1970 erschien vielen Fans als eine lieblose Sammlung uninspirierter Songs und gilt als eine seiner schlechtesten Platten. Dylan selbst bezeichnete die Veröffentlichung später als den Versuch eines Befreiungsschlags, mit dem er die von ihm als bedrückend empfundene Erwartungshaltung seines Publikums zerstören wollte. Danach veröffentlichte er zwei als respektabel, aber nicht herausragend angesehene Alben (New Morning und Planet Waves) und spielte eine kleine Rolle in Sam Peckinpahs Western Pat Garrett jagt Billy the Kid an der Seite von Kris Kristofferson und James Coburn. Er schrieb zudem die Musik zu diesem Film, darunter das ebenso hymnische wie desillusionierte Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. Vor Publikum trat er nur noch selten auf, so beispielsweise 1969 beim Isle of Wight Festival oder 1971 beim Konzert für Bangladesch.
Scheidung und Hinwendung zum Christentum

Mitte der 1970er Jahre begann Dylans private Idylle zu bröckeln, als seine Ehe in eine Krise geriet. Eine spektakuläre Comebacktournee (dokumentiert auf dem Doppelalbum Before the Flood) Anfang 1974 war zwar binnen weniger Stunden ausverkauft und ein großer Publikumserfolg, die Kritiken fielen jedoch eher zwiespältig aus. Kritisiert wurde vor allem, dass er kaum neue Songs bringe und mehr „schreie als singe“. Auffallend war, dass er viele bekannte Lieder in völlig neuem musikalischen Gewand darbot und diese damit zwar einerseits revitalisierte, andererseits aber oft bis zur Unkenntlichkeit veränderte. Diese Herangehensweise an das eigene Werk hat Dylan bis heute beibehalten und sie ist zu einem Markenzeichen geworden. 1975 veröffentlichte Dylan Blood on the Tracks. Das Album wird seither als Dylans künstlerische Verarbeitung der Trennung von seiner Frau Sara interpretiert. Bob Dylan selbst hat jedoch immer wieder einen direkten Zusammenhang bestritten.

1975/76 startete er das Projekt der Rolling Thunder Revue, eine Art musikalischen fahrenden Zirkus mit zahlreichen Musikern, der oft nur kurzfristig angekündigt an verschiedenen Orten der USA Station machte. Dylans Auftritte während des ersten Teils dieser Tournee werden heute zu den besten seiner Karriere gezählt.[7] Auf der Platte Desire, auf der Songs aus dieser Zeit veröffentlicht wurden, sang Dylan auch im Duett mit Emmylou Harris. Sie war ein großer kommerzieller und künstlerischer Erfolg und brachte Dylan auf einen zweiten Zenit seiner Popularität.[8] Besonders bekannt wurde der Song Hurricane über den Boxer Rubin Carter, dessen Karriere möglicherweise durch ein rassistisch motiviertes juristisches Fehlurteil beendet worden war. Mit dem wehmütigen Lied Sara setzte er seiner ehemaligen Frau ein Denkmal. Der vierstündige Kinofilm Renaldo & Clara, der die Tour dokumentierte und bei dem Dylan selbst Regie führte, wurde jedoch von der Kritik verrissen und brachte wenig ein. 1977 nahm er Hintergrundgesang für ein Stück von Leonard Cohens Album Death of a Ladies’ Man auf. Noch im selben Jahr wurden Bob und Sara Dylan geschieden.

Auf einer erfolgreichen Welttournee im Jahr 1978 (unter anderem mit einem Auftritt am 1. Juli vor etwa 75.000 Menschen auf dem Zeppelinfeld, dem ehemaligen Reichsparteitagsgelände in Nürnberg) hatte Dylan angeblich ein religiöses Erweckungserlebnis, als jemand aus dem Publikum ein kleines silbernes Kreuz auf die Bühne warf. Aufsehen erregte seine 1979 erfolgte Konversion zum christlichen Glauben, bei der er zum Anhänger der Erweckungsbewegung wurde, was sich in seinen folgenden Platten deutlich niederschlug. Zwischen 1979 und 1981 veröffentlichte er drei christlich inspirierte Alben (Slow Train Coming, Saved und Shot of Love) und predigte bei Auftritten zu seinem Publikum.

Diese erneute Wendung in Dylans Musik konnte ein Großteil seines Publikums nicht nachvollziehen. Er war teilweise harscher Kritik ausgesetzt, obwohl er für den Song Gotta Serve Somebody seinen ersten Grammy erhielt. Die Lyrik des von „göttlicher Offenbarung“ durchdrungenen Liedes Every Grain of Sand gilt zudem als einer seiner inspiriertesten Texte. Mit der Zeit flaute die Kontroverse um seine christliche Phase ab, zumal sich ab 1981 mit dem Lied Lenny Bruce (eine Hommage an den 1966 verstorbenen subversiven Komiker) wieder eine Rückkehr zu weltlichen Themen andeutete.
Krise
Die 1980er Jahre waren durch viele unterschiedliche Alben gekennzeichnet, deren Stil (Musik und Text) bei Kritik und Publikum großteils verhaltene Resonanz auslöste. Während Infidels (1983) und Empire Burlesque (1985) noch einige hervorragende Songs enthalten, erreichte er mit Knocked Out Loaded (1986) und Down in the Groove (1988) einen künstlerischen Tiefpunkt. Die Musikzeitschrift Rolling Stone wählte Down in the Groove im Mai 2007 zum „schlechtesten Album eines bedeutenden Künstlers“.[9] Am 28. Januar 1985 nahm Dylan an den Aufnahmen zu We are the World teil und sang die Zeile “there’s a choice we’re making”. In der zweiten Hälfte der Dekade hatte er mit einem Alkoholproblem zu kämpfen. Die Auftritte jener Zeit verliefen zum Teil entsprechend chaotisch. Beim Live-Aid-Konzert am 13. Juli 1985 zugunsten der hungernden Bevölkerung Äthiopiens fiel er mit der Bemerkung auf, er hoffe, ein Teil des Geldes würde für die leidenden US-amerikanischen Farmer verwendet. („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, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks…“.) Diese Aussage wurde zwar angesichts der hungernden Bevölkerung Äthiopiens von vielen als unangemessen betrachtet und teils heftig kritisiert, führte schließlich aber dazu, dass ein Benefiz-Konzert Farm Aid organisiert wurde, das erstmals am 22. September 1985 in Champaign, Illinois, stattfand.

Am 4. Juni 1986 heiratete Dylan Carolyn Dennis, eine seiner vielen Background-Sängerinnen, mit denen er damals zusammen war. Eine gemeinsame Tochter war am 31. Januar 1986 zur Welt gekommen. Hochzeit wie Geburt wurden jedoch vor Bekannten und vor der Öffentlichkeit geheimgehalten, nur einige enge Freunde des Paares wussten davon. Erst 2001 machte sie Howard Sounes in einer Biographie publik. Die Ehe war bereits Anfang der 1990er Jahre geschieden worden. 1987 gab Dylan zusammen mit Roger McGuinn und Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers ein Konzert in Ost-Berlin, zu dem der Kartenverkauf in West-Berlin sehr schleppend verlaufen war.[10]

Ab 1988 wirkte er neben Roy Orbison, Tom Petty und Jeff Lynne maßgeblich in der von George Harrison ins Leben gerufenen Gruppe Traveling Wilburys mit. Die Gruppe, die von 1988 bis 1990 Bestand hatte, produzierte zwei Studioalben. Seit 1988 befindet sich Dylan auf der inoffiziell so bezeichneten Never Ending Tour, die ihn schon mehrmals um den Erdball führte. Dabei gibt er im Schnitt über 100 Konzerte pro Jahr. Während Dylan in den ersten Jahren der Never Ending Tour manche Stücke mit zumeist skurrilen Kommentaren einleitete, spricht er dabei, mit Ausnahme der Vorstellung der Bandmitglieder, oft so gut wie kein Wort und beschränkt sich allein auf das Singen und Musizieren. Gelegentlich findet er jedoch Gefallen daran, einen Witz einzustreuen.[11] Jedes Dylan-Konzert der vergangenen Jahrzehnte (inzwischen etwa 4000) wurde als sogenanntes Bootleg illegal mitgeschnitten. Die Mitschnitte werden in Fankreisen unter „Tape Tradern“ kostenlos getauscht.

Im selben Jahr wurde Bob Dylan in die Rock and Roll Hall of Fame[12] aufgenommen. Sein Laudator war Bruce Springsteen, der zu Beginn seiner Karriere als „neuer Dylan“ bezeichnet worden war. 1989 gelang Dylan mit dem von Daniel Lanois in New Orleans produzierten Album Oh Mercy die Rückkehr zu alter Form, der Nachfolger Under the Red Sky (1990) war jedoch erneut eine Enttäuschung. 1991 wurde ihm ein weiterer Grammy für sein Lebenswerk verliehen. In der ersten Hälfte der 1990er Jahre veröffentlichte er keine neuen Kompositionen. 1992 und 1993 erschienen zwei Alben (Good As I Been to You, World Gone Wrong) mit Aufnahmen traditioneller Folk- und Bluessongs, die er solo, nur begleitet von Gitarre und Mundharmonika, einspielte.

Rückkehr

Am 14. August 1994 trat Dylan auf dem Woodstock-II-Festival auf, einer Neuauflage des legendären Festivals von 1969. Sein Auftritt wurde zur Überraschung vieler Beobachter von dem überwiegend jugendlichen Publikum euphorisch aufgenommen. Im November 1994 nahm er ein Live-Album mit DVD für die MTV-Unplugged-Reihe auf. Ursprünglich wollte er darauf alte Country- und Blues-Stücke spielen, die Produzenten wollten aber stattdessen einige seiner größten Hits. Dylan gab nach, und das Album wurde eines seiner finanziell erfolgreichsten und erreichte Platz 23 der US-amerikanischen Album-Charts. Der Verlag Random House veröffentlichte im selben Jahr unter dem Titel Drawn Blank einen Bildband mit Zeichnungen von Dylan, die er zwischen 1989 und 1992 angefertigt hatte. Sie zeigen seine Eindrücke vom Tourleben – Straßen, Hotelzimmer und Diners. Im Vorwort erwähnt er, dass das Zeichnen für ihn eine Möglichkeit sei, dem Alltagsleben zu entfliehen und zu entspannen.

1996 stimmte er der Verwendung seines Liedes The Times They Are a-Changin’ in Werbespots der Bank of Montreal und der Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft Coopers & Lybrand zu. 2004 stellte er für einen Werbespot von Victoria’s Secret nicht nur sein Lied Love Sick zur Verfügung, sondern trat auch als Akteur auf. 1997 veröffentlichte Dylan nach sieben Jahren erstmals wieder neue eigene Songs. Mit dem abermals von Daniel Lanois produzierten düsteren Album Time Out of Mind schaffte er ein Comeback. Für die Platte wurde er gleich mit drei Grammys ausgezeichnet, unter anderem für den Song Cold Irons Bound. Mit dem Song Things Have Changed für den Film Die WonderBoys gewann er im Jahr 2001 den Golden Globe Award und den Oscar für den besten Filmsong. 2000 erhielt er außerdem den inoffiziellen „Nobelpreis für Musik“, den Polar Music Prize.

1997 gab Dylan auch ein Konzert, bei dem Johannes Paul II. und Kardinal Ratzinger, der spätere Benedikt XVI.,[13] anwesend waren. Es fand während eines Internationalen Eucharistischen Kongresses in Bologna[14] statt und wurde von 300.000 Menschen besucht. Dylan gab zu diesem Anlass Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door und seinen Anti-Kriegs-Klassiker A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall sowie als Zugabe Forever Young zum Besten. 1998 ging er mit seinen Musikerkollegen Van Morrison und Joni Mitchell auf Tournee. Ein Jahr später begleitete ihn Paul Simon auf eine erfolgreiche US-Tournee, auf der jeder einen größeren eigenen Teil vortrug, wo sie aber auch vier Lieder gemeinsam sangen.

Am 11. September 2001 erschien “Love and Theft”, eine von Publikum und Kritik begeistert aufgenommene Platte. Auf dem Album unternimmt Dylan eine Reise zu den Wurzeln der amerikanischen Musik. 2003 erschien der Spielfilm Masked and Anonymous, für den er zusammen mit Larry Charles das Drehbuch schrieb und in dem er die Hauptrolle übernahm. Für die Rollenbesetzung konnte zahlreiche Hollywoodstars gewonnen werden. Im Oktober 2004 erschien der erste Teil seiner auf drei Teile angelegten Autobiografie Chronicles: Volume One (Simon & Schuster), in Deutschland unter demselben Titel, übersetzt von Gerhard Henschel und Kathrin Passig.[15] Gleichzeitig wurden auch seine Texte bis zum Album “Love and Theft” unter dem Titel Lyrics 1962–2001 veröffentlicht, in Deutschland in der – nach Vorgabe von Dylans Management wortgetreuen – Übersetzung von Gisbert Haefs (Hoffmann und Campe, 2004). Zur Vermarktung des Buches gab er im Dezember 2004 sein erstes Fernsehinterview seit 19 Jahren.

Am 26. und 27. September 2005 wurde vom amerikanischen Sender PBS der Film No Direction Home – Bob Dylan im Zuge der Serie American Masters ausgestrahlt. Die Dokumentation über die Jahre 1959 bis 1966 wurde von Starregisseur Martin Scorsese produziert. Für den Film wurden hunderte Stunden unveröffentlichten Materials gesichtet und ein Interview mit Dylan geführt. Der im August 2005 erschienene Soundtrack zur Dokumentation ist gleichzeitig der siebte Teil der „Bootleg Series“. Von Mai 2006 bis April 2009 moderierte Dylan beim amerikanischen Radiosender XM Satellite Radio die wöchentlich gesendete einstündige Sendung Theme Time Radio Hour, die sich jeweils einem bestimmten Thema widmet. Er selbst wählte dafür die Musik aus, die fast einhelliges Lob erntete und ein Publikum erreichte, das weit über den Kreis der Dylan-Fans hinausging.[16]

Im August 2006 erschien Dylans 32. Studioalbum Modern Times, das weltweit überwiegend auf sehr positives Echo stieß und mit dem er das erste Mal seit Desire (1976) wieder an die Spitze der US-Charts gelangte. Die Rückkehr auf Platz eins der US-Hitparade nach drei Jahrzehnten war zuvor noch keinem lebenden Musiker gelungen. Ende Juni 2007 kündigte Dylan an, ein endgültiges Best-of-Album mit dem Titel Dylan zu veröffentlichen. Das Album kam am 1. Oktober 2007 weltweit in den Handel und erschien in zwei Versionen: Eine Ausgabe enthält 18 der erfolgreichsten Dylan-Songs, die „Highlight Deluxe Edition“ umfasst 51 Tracks auf 3 CDs. Am 24. April 2009 erschien ein Studioalbum mit dem Titel Together Through Life.[17] Am 13. Oktober 2009 wurde ein weiteres Studioalbum veröffentlicht mit dem Titel Christmas in the Heart, das Weihnachtsklassiker wie Little Drummer Boy oder Winter Wonderland enthält. Der Erlös aus dem Verkauf der CD ging als Spende an das Welternährungsprogramm und die Organisation Crisis UK. Diese verteilen in der Weihnachtswoche rund 15.000 Mahlzeiten an Obdachlose.[18] Am 7. September 2012 erschien ein neues Studioalbum mit dem Titel Tempest Im Sommer 2011 kam Dylan für einige Auftritte nach Europa, ebenso im Herbst 2013.

Am 23. November 2014 gab Dylan im Zuge einer Erforschung, wie ein Konzert, das für große Menschenmengen gedacht ist, auf eine einzelne Person wirkt, in der Philadelphia Academy of Music eine private Vorstellung für den schwedischen Fernsehstar Frederik Wikingsson.[19] Im Februar 2015 erfolgte die Veröffentlichung des 36. Studioalbums Shadows in the Night – ein Konzeptalbum mit Neuinterpretationen bekannter Sinatra-Stücke aus den 1950ern.
Aquarelle und Gouachen von Bob Dylan

Nebenher betätigt sich Dylan auch als Zeichner und Maler. Auf seinen Reisen durch die USA, Mexiko, Europa und Asien fertigte er Zeichnungen an, überwiegend mit Bleistift und Kohle. Erste Schwarz-weiß-Zeichnungen wurden 1994 unter dem Titel „Drawn Blank“ veröffentlicht. Im August 2007 wurde bekannt, dass Dylan diese Zeichnungen in einem aufwendigen Verfahren koloriert hat. Ausschlaggebend für diese künstlerische Umsetzung war das Interesse der Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, welche dieses außermusikalische Werk Dylans mit seiner ersten Kunstausstellung The Drawn Blank Series - Aquarelle und Gouachen zwischen Oktober 2007 und Februar 2008 würdigen wollte. In dieser Ausstellung wurden 170 Aquarelle und Gouachen gezeigt. Aufgrund des großen Erfolges wurde die Ausstellung bis Ostern 2008 verlängert.
Bob Dylans „Never ending Tour“

Der Begriff „Never ending Tour“ wurde von dem Kritiker Adrian Deevoy in einem Interview 1989 geprägt.[20] Die Tour selbst begann 1988 und läuft immer noch. Dylan spielt dabei jährlich um die 100 Konzerte verteilt auf die halbe Welt. Am 16. Oktober 2007 soll Dylan gemäß der Website Still on the Road in Dayton, Ohio, das 2000. Konzert der Tour gespielt haben.

Dylans Einführung erfreut sich unter Fans hoher Beliebtheit. Bis August 2002 lautete diese:

    „Ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome Columbia Recording Artist: Bob Dylan“

Seit dem 15. August 2002 wurde sie in Anlehnung an einen Zeitungsartikel geändert:

    „Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the poet laureate of rock ’n’ roll. The voice of the promise of the 60’s counterculture. The guy who forced folk into bed with rock. Who donned makeup in the 70's and disappeared into a haze of substance abuse. Who emerged to find Jesus. Who was written off as a has-been by the end of the 80’s, and who suddenly shifted gears releasing some of the strongest music of his career beginning in the late 90’s. Ladies and gentlemen – Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan![21]“

Diese allerdings wurde mit Beginn des Jahres 2012 ebenfalls abgeschafft. Eine Ankündigung Dylans findet derzeit nicht statt.

Seit dem Oktober 2013 spielt Dylan im Gegensatz zu den früheren Jahren fast immer eine sehr ähnliche Set-List.
Einfluss auf die Popkultur

Bob Dylan hat die Entwicklung der Popmusik seit den 1960er Jahren wie kaum ein anderer Musiker beeinflusst. Er schöpft aus dem riesigen Fundus traditioneller, populärer amerikanischer Musik von Folk über Country bis zu Gospel, Blues und Rock ’n’ Roll. Dieses Erbe der sogenannten Americana bildet über seine gesamte Karriere den Nährboden seines Werks. Obgleich er sich diese Idiome teilweise erst im Laufe seiner Karriere angeeignet hat, ist es ihm immer wieder gelungen, sie entscheidend zu transformieren und zu erweitern. Eines seiner größten Verdienste ist sicher, dass er mit einer starken Hinwendung auf die Texte seiner Lieder der modernen Rockmusik eine sprachliche Komplexität gegeben hat, die bis dahin unvorstellbar war.

War die Rockmusik vor ihm vor allem durch triviale Liebeslieder geprägt (ein Sammler und Freund von Dylans Werken beschrieb diese Phase einmal sehr zutreffend als „Liebe und Triebe“), so wurde sie mit Dylan nicht nur, angelehnt an die sozialkritische Tradition der Folkmusik, politisch, sondern auch zu einem Medium ernst zu nehmender Poesie. Dylan etablierte den Popsong als ein Medium, mit dem individuelle Erfahrungen verarbeitet und mitgeteilt werden können. Einige von Dylans Texten gelten als Werke von höchstem literarischem Rang und waren Gegenstand intellektueller Diskussionen (beispielsweise Desolation Row, Like a Rolling Stone und Hurricane). Dylan hat also einen bedeutenden Beitrag dazu geleistet, die populäre Rockmusik als ernsthafte Kunstform zu etablieren.[22]

Seit 1996 wird Dylan immer wieder als Anwärter auf den Literatur-Nobelpreis gesehen. Eine von den Schriftstellern John Bauldie und Allen Ginsberg geleitete Kampagne führte 1996 zu seiner offiziellen Nominierung. Unterstützt wurde sie auch von dem Literaturprofessor Gordon Ball, der Dylans Texte in ihrem „außergewöhnlich einfallsreichen Symbolismus“ mit Arthur Rimbaud und William Butler Yeats vergleicht.[23] Für andere erweckt Dylans dunkle und assoziationsreiche Lyrik „immer wieder den Eindruck, als wisse er mehr, als könne er tiefer dringen und Antworten geben.“[24] Geschmälert werden Dylans Chancen indes dadurch, dass seine Songs nur im weiteren Sinne als Literatur klassifiziert werden können, da sie erst durch die musikalische Darbietung ihre Wirkung ganz entfalten.[25]

Dylans Hinwendung zu komplexen Texten und einer individuellen Spielweise der Rockmusik Mitte der 1960er Jahre fanden etwa zeitgleich mit nicht minder bedeutenden Innovationen anderer Popmusiker statt: In England nahmen The Beatles mit Rubber Soul und Revolver zwei Alben auf, die sich sowohl musikalisch als auch textlich deutlich von dem bis dahin üblichen Niveau der gängigen Popmusik abhoben. In den USA experimentierten The Velvet Underground mit neuen musikalischen Formen und verarbeiteten literarische Themen in ihren Texten. Selbst Brian Wilson von den Beach Boys – also eigentlich ein Musiker, der bis dahin auf naive Popsongs abonniert war – veröffentlichte gegen den Widerstand seiner Plattenfirma das Album Pet Sounds, das in seiner musikalischen Komplexität vieles der damals üblichen seichten Popmusik in den Schatten stellte und ungewöhnlich melancholische und nachdenkliche Töne anschlug. Mit Dylan und diesen anderen, kaum weniger herausragenden Künstlern, erhielt die sich formierende und immer selbstbewusster artikulierende Gegenkultur auch eine künstlerische Stimme.

Dylan verwirklichte seine sich immer wieder wandelnden musikalischen und textlichen Vorstellungen (von idealistischen, explizit politischen Folksongs über surrealistische Rocknummern und sentimentalen Country-Songs bis zu gospeligen Predigten in Liedform) zwar durchaus mit Unterstützung seiner Plattenfirma, aber teilweise gegen einen geradezu erbitterten Widerstand seiner angestammten Fangemeinde. Dies verdeutlicht, wie sehr Dylan zu der Rolle des populären Rockmusikers als autonomer Künstler beigetragen hat.

Immer wieder betonte er, wie wichtig traditionelle Folksongs für seine Entwicklung waren und sind. Oft zog er seine Inspiration aus Liedern aus der Zeit vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, die längst aus dem öffentlichen Bewusstsein verschwunden waren. Die dort verarbeiteten Mythen und Legenden der amerikanischen Kultur bilden einen Grundpfeiler seines Schaffens als Songwriter.

Deutlich erkennbar wurde dies bereits auf seiner ersten LP, auf der er größtenteils traditionelle Songs spielte. Aber auch später trat dies immer wieder offen zu Tage, so auf The Basement Tapes und den beiden Anfang der 1990er Jahre veröffentlichten Soloalben sowie auf seinem Album “Love and Theft” von 2001. Das dort enthaltene Stück High Water (For Charlie Patton) bezog sich explizit auf Charley Pattons Bluessong High Water Everywhere aus dem Jahr 1929, der von der desaströsen und folgenreichen Mississippiflut 1927 erzählte.

So wie es in diesen alten Liedern der amerikanischen Folklore durchaus üblich war, in den Texten reale Ereignisse zu thematisieren, so greift auch Dylan solche Themen in seinen Songs auf. Dies waren besonders in seiner frühen Karriere sozialkritische Themen, später zunehmend auch persönliche Erfahrungen.[26]

Dylan hatte nie eine dem klassischen Schönheitsideal genügende, ausgebildete Singstimme. Seine Qualitäten als Sänger sind umstritten: Einige Kritiker schätzen seine ausdrucksstarke, absichtlich „unschöne“ Art zu singen, die ungewöhnliche Phrasierung voller rhythmischer Verschiebungen, seinen unverwechselbar selbstbewusst meckernden Sound; andere wiederum stört, dass Dylan (ursprünglich wohl, um die traditionellen Blues- und Folksongs der ersten Platten glaubwürdiger klingen zu lassen) mit einer künstlich aufgerauten, sozusagen verstellten Stimme singe. Das Magazin Time höhnte in den 1960er Jahren, seine Stimme klinge, „als käme sie über die Mauern eines Tuberkulose-Sanatoriums“. Dies änderte sich vorübergehend während seiner Country-Phase um 1970, als er beinahe glatt klang – nicht zuletzt deshalb, weil er zwischenzeitlich das Rauchen aufgegeben hatte. Über die Jahre ist seine Stimme allerdings deutlich gealtert, so dass sie inzwischen einen geradezu krächzenden Klang hat, der ihr aber durchaus Charakter und Ausdruck verleiht.

Seine Songs sind von zahlreichen Musikern aufgenommen worden. Hierzu gehören Joan Baez, Eric Clapton, The Byrds, Rod Stewart, Van Morrison, Joe Cocker, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, Bryan Ferry (der 2007 ein Album ausschließlich mit Dylan-Liedern mit dem Titel Dylanesque herausbrachte) und sogar Elvis Presley. Zahlreiche Lieder Dylans sind erst durch die Aufnahmen anderer Musiker populär geworden, was auch an seiner wenig massenkompatiblen Stimme liegen mag, so beispielsweise It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue in der Fassung von Them, Mr. Tambourine Man von den Byrds, Blowin’ In The Wind von den Hollies, All Along the Watchtower in der Version von Jimi Hendrix, Mighty Quinn und Father Of Night in den Interpretationen von Manfred Mann sowie Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door von Guns N’ Roses.

Auf viele Musiker hat Bob Dylan einen prägenden Einfluss gehabt, unter anderem Van Morrison, The Beatles, Steely Dan, Bruce Springsteen, Jimi Hendrix und Nick Cave. Auch der deutsche Musiker Wolfgang Niedecken, der österreichische Liedermacher Wolfgang Ambros, der einige der frühen Songs Dylans ins Deutsche übersetzt hat, und Falco, dessen Sarg zu den Klängen von It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue in die Erde gelassen wurde, zähl(t)en Bob Dylan zu ihren Vorbildern.

Das Nachrichtenmagazin Newsweek fand für Dylans Bedeutung die Formulierung: „Er bedeutet für die Popmusik das gleiche wie Einstein für die Physik“. In der vom US-Musikmagazin Rolling Stone veröffentlichten Liste der 500 besten Alben aller Zeiten ist Dylan mit zehn Alben vertreten (davon zwei in den Top 10), er liegt damit nur knapp hinter den Beatles mit elf Alben.[27]
Ehrungen

Dylan ist Träger zweier Ehrendoktortitel. Den ersten erhielt er 1970 von der Universität Princeton,[28] den zweiten verlieh ihm am 23. Juni 2004 die schottische University of St. Andrews, die ihn als „Ikone des 20. Jahrhunderts“ betitelte, dessen Lieder seine Zeit prägten, so wie auch die Zeit seine Lieder prägten. Bob Dylans Lyrik sei in den Anfängen von politischem Dialog durch Musik nicht mehr wegzudenken.[29]

Am 8. April 2008 wurde die Verleihung des Pulitzer-Sonderpreises an Bob Dylan bekanntgegeben. Er erhielt den Preis für seinen besonderen Einfluss auf die Popkultur und seine „lyrischen Kompositionen“.[30][31]

US-Präsident Barack Obama verlieh ihm 2009 in Abwesenheit die National Medal of Arts. „Live 1966 (The Royal Albert Hall Concert)“ wurde in The Wire's "100 Records That Set The World On Fire (While No One Was Listening)" aufgenommen. 2011 wurde er in die American Academy of Arts and Sciences gewählt.

2012 wurde Dylan mit der Presidential Medal of Freedom ausgezeichnet.[32] 2013 wurde er als Ehrenmitglied auf Lebenszeit in die American Academy of Arts and Letters aufgenommen.[33]

Dylan wurde auf der Frühjahrs-Mitgliederversammlung der Akademie der Künste Berlin am 25. Mai 2013 als neues Mitglied in die Sektion Film- und Medienkunst gewählt.[34]

Im November 2013 wurde Dylan mit dem französischen Orden der Ehrenlegion ausgezeichnet. Bei der Verleihung lobte Kulturministerin Aurélie Filippetti den Sänger als einzigartige Verkörperung der „subversiven Kraft der Kultur, die die Menschen und die Welt verändern kann“.

weiter:  http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan

Bob Dylan (/ˈdɪlən/; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, artist, and writer. He has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when his songs chronicled social unrest, although Dylan repudiated suggestions from journalists that he was a spokesman for his generation. Nevertheless, early songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving his initial base in the American folk music revival, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" altered the range of popular music in 1965. His mid-1960s recordings, backed by rock musicians, reached the top end of the United States music charts while also attracting denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.

Dylan's lyrics have incorporated various political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the performances of Little Richard, and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson and Hank Williams, Dylan has amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning 50 years, has explored the traditions in American song—from folk, blues, and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and the Great American Songbook. Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards and harmonica. Backed by a changing line-up of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but his greatest contribution is considered his songwriting.

Since 1994, Dylan has published six books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. As a musician, Dylan has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time; he has received numerous awards including Grammy, Golden Globe and Academy Award; he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power." In May 2012, Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.

Life and career

Origins and musical beginnings

Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew name שבתאי זיסל בן אברהם [Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham])[2][3] in St Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, the first of two boys, in Duluth, Minnesota,[4][5] and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Range west of Lake Superior. Dylan's paternal grandparents, Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire now Ukraine, to the United States following anti-Semitic pogroms of 1905.[6] His maternal grandparents, Ben and Florence Stone, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the United States in 1902.[6] In his autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan writes that his paternal grandmother's maiden name was Kirghiz and her family originated from Kağızman district of Kars Province in north-eastern Turkey.[7]

Dylan's parents, Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone, were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community. Robert Zimmerman lived in Duluth until age six, when his father had polio and the family returned to his mother's home town, Hibbing, where Zimmerman spent the rest of his childhood. Robert Zimmerman spent his early years listening to the radio—first to blues and country stations from Shreveport, Louisiana, and, as a teen, to rock and roll.[8] Zimmerman formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School. In the Golden Chords, he performed covers of songs by Little Richard[9] and Elvis Presley.[10] Their performance of Danny & the Juniors' "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone.[11] In 1959, his high school yearbook carried the caption: "Robert Zimmerman: to join 'Little Richard'."[9][12] The same year, as Elston Gunnn [sic], he performed two dates with Bobby Vee, playing piano and clapping.[13][14][15]

Zimmerman moved to Minneapolis in September 1959 and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. His focus on rock and roll gave way to American folk. In 1985, he said:

    The thing about rock'n'roll is that for me anyway it wasn't enough ... There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms ... but the songs weren't serious or didn't reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.[16]

He began to perform at the Ten O'Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse a few blocks from campus, and became involved in the Dinkytown folk music circuit.[17][18]

During his Dinkytown days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as "Bob Dylan".[19][a 1] In his memoir, Dylan acknowledged that he had been influenced by the poetry of Dylan Thomas.[20] Explaining his change of name in a 2004 interview, Dylan remarked: "You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free."[21]

1960s
Relocation to New York and record deal

In May 1960, Dylan dropped out of college at the end of his first year. In January 1961, he traveled to New York City, to perform there and visit his musical idol, Woody Guthrie,[22] who was seriously ill with Huntington's disease in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital.[23] Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and influenced his early performances. Describing Guthrie's impact, he wrote: "The songs themselves had the infinite sweep of humanity in them ... [He] was the true voice of the American spirit. I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie's greatest disciple."[24] As well as visiting Guthrie in hospital, Dylan befriended Guthrie's acolyte, Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Much of Guthrie's repertoire was channeled through Elliott, and Dylan paid tribute to Elliott in Chronicles: Volume One.[25]

From February 1961, Dylan played at clubs around Greenwich Village. He befriended and picked up material from folk singers there, including Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, Odetta, the New Lost City Ramblers, and Irish musicians the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.[26] In September, Dylan gained public recognition when Robert Shelton wrote a review in The New York Times of a show at Gerde's Folk City.[27] The same month Dylan played harmonica on folk singer Carolyn Hester's third album, which brought his talents to the attention of the album's producer, John Hammond.[28] Hammond signed Dylan to Columbia Records in October. The performances on his first Columbia album, Bob Dylan, in March 1962,[29] consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel with two original compositions. The album sold only 5,000 in its first year, enough to break even.[30] Within Columbia Records, some referred to the singer as "Hammond's Folly"[31] and suggested dropping his contract, but Hammond defended Dylan and was supported by Johnny Cash.[30] In March 1962, Dylan contributed harmonica and back-up vocals to the album Three Kings and the Queen, accompanying Victoria Spivey and Big Joe Williams on a recording for Spivey Records.[32] While working for Columbia, Dylan recorded under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt,[33] for Broadside, a folk magazine and record label.[34] Dylan used the pseudonym Bob Landy to record as a piano player on The Blues Project, a 1964 anthology album by Elektra Records.[33] As Tedham Porterhouse, Dylan played harmonica on Ramblin' Jack Elliott's 1964 album, Jack Elliott.[33]
Dylan is seated, singing and playing guitar. Seated to his right is a woman gazing upwards and singing with him.

Dylan with his guitar onstage, laughing and looking downwards.
   
Dylan made two important career moves in August 1962: he legally changed his name to Bob Dylan,[36] and he signed a management contract with Albert Grossman.[37] (In June 1961, Dylan had signed an agreement with Roy Silver. In 1962, Grossman paid Silver $10,000 to become sole manager.)[38] Grossman remained Dylan's manager until 1970, and was notable for his sometimes confrontational personality and for protective loyalty.[39] Dylan said, "He was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker figure ... you could smell him coming."[18] Tensions between Grossman and John Hammond led to Hammond's being replaced as producer of Dylan's second album by the young African-American jazz producer, Tom Wilson.[40]

Dylan made his first trip to the United Kingdom from December 1962 to January 1963.[41] He had been invited by TV director Philip Saville to appear in a drama, Madhouse on Castle Street, which Saville was directing for BBC Television.[42] At the end of the play, Dylan performed "Blowin' in the Wind", one of its first public performances.[42] The film recording of Madhouse on Castle Street was destroyed by the BBC in 1968.[42] While in London, Dylan performed at London folk clubs, including the Troubadour, Les Cousins, and Bunjies.[41] He also learned material from UK performers, including Martin Carthy.[42]

By the time of Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in May 1963, he had begun to make his name as a singer and a songwriter. Many songs on this album were labeled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger's passion for topical songs.[43] "Oxford Town", for example, was an account of James Meredith's ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi.[44]

His most famous song at this time, "Blowin' in the Wind", partly derived its melody from the traditional slave song, "No More Auction Block". Its lyrics questioned the social and political status quo.[45] The song was widely recorded and became a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary. Many other artists had hits with Dylan's songs. "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" was based on the folk ballad "Lord Randall". With veiled references to an impending apocalypse, the song gained more resonance when the Cuban Missile Crisis developed a few weeks after Dylan began performing it.[46][a 2] Like "Blowin' in the Wind", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" marked a new direction in songwriting, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with traditional folk form.[47]

Dylan's topical songs enhanced his early reputation, and he came to be seen as more than just a songwriter. Janet Maslin wrote of Freewheelin‍ '​: "These were the songs that established [Dylan] as the voice of his generation—someone who implicitly understood how concerned young Americans felt about nuclear disarmament and the growing movement for civil rights: his mixture of moral authority and nonconformity was perhaps the most timely of his attributes."[48][a 3] Freewheelin‍ '​ also included love songs and surreal talking blues. Humor was an important part of Dylan's persona,[49] and the range of material on the album impressed listeners, including The Beatles. George Harrison 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."[50]

The rough edge of Dylan's singing was unsettling to some but an attraction to others. Joyce Carol Oates wrote: "When we first heard this raw, very young, and seemingly untrained voice, frankly nasal, as if sandpaper could sing, the effect was dramatic and electrifying."[51] Many early songs reached the public through more palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez, who became Dylan's advocate as well as his lover.[52] Baez was influential in bringing Dylan to prominence by recording several of his early songs and inviting him on stage during her concerts.[53]

Others who had hits with Dylan's songs in the early 1960s included the Byrds, Sonny & Cher, the Hollies, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Association, Manfred Mann and the Turtles. Most attempted a pop feel and rhythm, while Dylan and Baez performed them mostly as sparse folk songs. The covers became so ubiquitous that CBS promoted him with the slogan "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan."[54]

"Mixed-Up Confusion", recorded during the Freewheelin' sessions with a backing band, was released as a single and then quickly withdrawn. In contrast to the mostly solo acoustic performances on the album, the single showed a willingness to experiment with a rockabilly sound. Cameron Crowe described it as "a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards Elvis Presley and Sun Records."[55]
Protest and Another Side

In May 1963, Dylan's political profile rose when he walked out of The Ed Sullivan Show. During rehearsals, Dylan had been told by CBS television's head of program practices that "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Rather than comply with censorship, Dylan refused to appear.[56]
   
By this time, Dylan and Baez were prominent in the civil rights movement, singing together at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.[57] Dylan's third album, The Times They Are a-Changin', reflected a more politicized and cynical Dylan.[58] The songs often took as their subject matter contemporary stories, with "Only A Pawn In Their Game" addressing the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers; and the Brechtian "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" the death of black hotel barmaid Hattie Carroll, at the hands of young white socialite William Zantzinger.[59] On a more general theme, "Ballad of Hollis Brown" and "North Country Blues" addressed despair engendered by the breakdown of farming and mining communities. This political material was accompanied by two personal love songs, "Boots of Spanish Leather" and "One Too Many Mornings".[60]

By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements.[61] Accepting the "Tom Paine Award" from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, an intoxicated Dylan questioned the role of the committee, characterized the members as old and balding, and claimed to see something of himself and of every man in Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.[62]
A spotlight shines on Dylan as he performs onstage.

Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded on a single evening in June 1964,[63] had a lighter mood. The humorous Dylan reemerged on "I Shall Be Free No. 10" and "Motorpsycho Nightmare". "Spanish Harlem Incident" and "To Ramona" are passionate love songs, while "Black Crow Blues" and "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" suggest the rock and roll soon to dominate Dylan's music. "It Ain't Me Babe", on the surface a song about spurned love, has been described as a rejection of the role of political spokesman thrust upon him.[64] His newest direction was signaled by two lengthy songs: the impressionistic "Chimes of Freedom", which sets social commentary against a metaphorical landscape in a style characterized by Allen Ginsberg as "chains of flashing images,"[65] and "My Back Pages", which attacks the simplistic and arch seriousness of his own earlier topical songs and seems to predict the backlash he was about to encounter from his former champions as he took a new direction.[66]

In the latter half of 1964 and 1965, Dylan moved from folk songwriter to folk-rock pop-music star. His jeans and work shirts were replaced by a Carnaby Street wardrobe, sunglasses day or night, and pointed "Beatle boots". 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."[67] Dylan began to spar with interviewers. Appearing on the Les Crane television show and asked about a movie he planned, he told Crane it would be a cowboy horror movie. Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied, "No, I play my mother."[68]
Going electric

Dylan's late March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home was another leap,[69] featuring his first recordings with electric instruments. The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", owed much to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business";[70] its free association lyrics described as harkening back to the energy of beat poetry and as a forerunner of rap and hip-hop.[71] The song was provided with an early video, which opened D. A. Pennebaker's cinéma vérité presentation of Dylan's 1965 tour of Great Britain, Dont Look Back.[72] Instead of miming, Dylan illustrated the lyrics by throwing cue cards containing key words from the song on the ground. Pennebaker said the sequence was Dylan's idea, and it has been imitated in music videos and advertisements.[73]

The second side of Bringing It All Back Home contained four long songs on which Dylan accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica.[74] "Mr. Tambourine Man" became one of his best known songs when The Byrds recorded an electric version that reached number one in the US and UK .[75][76] "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" were two of Dylan's most important compositions.[74][77]

In 1965, heading the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed his first electric set since high school with a pickup group mostly from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, featuring Mike Bloomfield (guitar), Sam Lay (drums) and Jerome Arnold (bass), plus Al Kooper (organ) and Barry Goldberg (piano).[78] Dylan had appeared at Newport in 1963 and 1964, but in 1965 met with cheering and booing and left the stage after three songs. One version has it that the boos were from folk fans whom Dylan had alienated by appearing, unexpectedly, with an electric guitar. Murray Lerner, who filmed the performance, said: "I absolutely think that they were booing Dylan going electric."[79] An alternative account claims audience members were upset by poor sound and a short set. This account is supported by Kooper and one of the directors of the festival, who reports his recording proves the only boos were in reaction to the MC's announcement that there was only enough time for a short set.[80][81]

Nevertheless, Dylan's performance provoked a hostile response from the folk music establishment.[82][83] In the September issue of Sing Out!, Ewan MacColl wrote: "Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside disciplines formulated over time ...'But what of Bobby Dylan?' scream the outraged teenagers ... Only a completely non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music, could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel."[84] On July 29, four days after Newport, Dylan was back in the studio in New York, recording "Positively 4th Street". The lyrics contained images of vengeance and paranoia,[85] and it was interpreted as Dylan's put-down of former friends from the folk community — friends he had known in clubs along West 4th Street.[86]

Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde
   
In July 1965, the single "Like a Rolling Stone" peaked at two in the U.S. and at four in the UK charts. At over six minutes, the song altered what a pop single could convey. Bruce Springsteen, in his speech for Dylan's inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said that on first hearing the single, "that snare shot sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind".[88] In 2004 and in 2011, Rolling Stone listed it as number one of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".[87][89] The song opened Dylan's next album, Highway 61 Revisited, after the road that led Dylan's Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans.[90] The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, flavored by Mike Bloomfield's blues guitar and Al Kooper's organ riffs. "Desolation Row", backed by acoustic guitar and understated bass,[91] offers the sole exception, with Dylan alluding to figures in Western culture in a song described by Andy Gill as "an 11-minute epic of entropy, which takes the form of a Fellini-esque parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge cast of celebrated characters, some historical (Einstein, Nero), some biblical (Noah, Cain and Abel), some fictional (Ophelia, Romeo, Cinderella), some literary (T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound), and some who fit into none of the above categories, notably Dr. Filth and his dubious nurse."[92]

In support of the album, Dylan was booked for two U.S. concerts with Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks from his studio crew and Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, former members of Ronnie Hawkins's backing band the Hawks.[93] On August 28 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the group was heckled by an audience still annoyed by Dylan's electric sound. The band's reception on September 3 at the Hollywood Bowl was more favorable.[94]

From September 24, in Austin, Texas, Dylan toured the US and Canada for six months, backed by the five musicians from the Hawks who became known as the Band.[95] While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences, their studio efforts floundered. Producer Bob Johnston persuaded Dylan to record in Nashville in February 1966, and surrounded him with top-notch session men. At Dylan's insistence, Robertson and Kooper came from New York City to play on the sessions.[96] The Nashville sessions produced the double album Blonde on Blonde (1966), featuring what Dylan called "that thin wild mercury sound".[97] Kooper described it as "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.[98]

On November 22, 1965, Dylan secretly married 25-year-old former model Sara Lownds.[99] Some of Dylan's friends, including Ramblin' Jack Elliott, say that, immediately after the event, Dylan denied he was married.[99] Journalist Nora Ephron made the news public in the New York Post in February 1966 with the headline "Hush! Bob Dylan is wed."[100]

Dylan toured Australia and Europe in April and May 1966. Each show was split in two. Dylan performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second, backed by the Hawks, he played electrically amplified music. This contrast provoked many fans, who jeered and slow handclapped.[101] The tour culminated in a raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England on May 17, 1966.[102] A recording of this concert was released in 1998: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966. At the climax of the evening, a member of the audience, angered by Dylan's electric backing, shouted: "Judas!" to which Dylan responded, "I don't believe you ... You're a liar!" Dylan turned to his band and said, "Play it fucking loud!"[103] as they launched into the final song of the night—"Like a Rolling Stone".

During his 1966 tour, Dylan was described as exhausted and acting "as if on a death trip".[104] D. A. Pennebaker, the film maker accompanying the tour, described Dylan as "taking a lot of amphetamine and who-knows-what-else."[105] In a 1969 interview with Jann Wenner, Dylan said, "I was on the road for almost five years. It wore me down. I was on drugs, a lot of things ... just to keep going, you know?"[106] In 2011, BBC Radio 4 reported that, in an interview that Robert Shelton taped in 1966, Dylan said he had kicked heroin in New York City: "I got very, very strung out for a while ... I had about a $25-a-day habit and I kicked it."[107] Some journalists questioned the validity of this confession, pointing out that Dylan had "been telling journalists wild lies about his past since the earliest days of his career."[108][109]
Motorcycle accident and reclusion

After his tour, Dylan returned to New York, but the pressures increased. ABC Television had paid an advance for a TV show.[110] His publisher, Macmillan, was demanding a manuscript of the poem/novel Tarantula. Manager Albert Grossman had scheduled a concert tour for that summer and fall.

On July 29, 1966, Dylan crashed his 500cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle near his home in Woodstock, New York and was thrown to the ground. Though the extent of his injuries was never disclosed, Dylan said that he broke several vertebrae in his neck.[111] Mystery still surrounds the circumstances of the accident since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized.[111][112] Dylan's biographers have written that the crash offered Dylan the chance to escape the pressures around him.[111][113] Dylan confirmed this interpretation in his autobiography: "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."[114] Dylan withdrew from public and, apart from a few appearances, did not tour again for almost eight years.[115]

Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began to edit D. A. Pennebaker's film of his 1966 tour. A rough cut was shown to ABC Television and rejected as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience.[116] The film was subsequently titled Eat the Document on bootleg copies, and it has been screened at a handful of film festivals.[117][118] In 1967 he began recording with the Hawks at his home and in the basement of the Hawks' nearby house, "Big Pink".[119] These songs, initially demos for other artists to record, provided hits for Julie Driscoll and the Brian Auger Trinity ("This Wheel's on Fire"), The Byrds ("You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Nothing Was Delivered"), and Manfred Mann ("Mighty Quinn"). Columbia released selections in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Over the years, more songs recorded by Dylan and his band in 1967 appeared on bootleg recordings, culminating in a five-CD set titled The Genuine Basement Tapes, containing 107 songs and alternative takes.[120] In the coming months, the Hawks recorded the album Music from Big Pink using songs they worked on in their basement in Woodstock, and renamed themselves the Band,[121] beginning a long recording and performing career of their own.

In October and November 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville.[122] Back in the studio after a 19 months, he was accompanied by Charlie McCoy on bass,[122] Kenny Buttrey on drums,[122] and Pete Drake on steel guitar.[122] The result was John Wesley Harding, a contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape that drew on the American West and the Bible. The sparse structure and instrumentation, with lyrics that took the Judeo-Christian tradition seriously, departed from Dylan's own work and from the psychedelic fervor of the 1960s.[123] It included "All Along the Watchtower", with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9). The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose version Dylan acknowledged as definitive.[16] Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, and Dylan made his first live appearance in twenty months at a Guthrie memorial concert held at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968, where he was backed by the Band.[124]
   
Dylan's next release, Nashville Skyline (1969), was mainstream country featuring Nashville musicians, a mellow-voiced Dylan, a duet with Johnny Cash, and the hit single "Lay Lady Lay".[126] Variety wrote, "Dylan is definitely doing something that can be called singing. Somehow he has managed to add an octave to his range."[127] Dylan and Cash also recorded a series of duets, but only their recording of Dylan's "Girl from the North Country" was used on the album.

In May 1969, Dylan appeared on the first episode of Johnny Cash's television show, duetting with Cash on "Girl from the North Country", "I Threw It All Away", and "Living the Blues". Dylan next traveled to England to top the bill at the Isle of Wight festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at the Woodstock Festival closer to his home.[128]
1970s

In the early 1970s, critics charged that Dylan's output was varied and unpredictable. Rolling Stone writer Greil Marcus asked "What is this shit?" on first listening to Self Portrait, released in June 1970.[129][130] Self Portrait, a double LP including few original songs, was poorly received.[131] In October 1970, Dylan released New Morning, considered a return to form.[132] In November 1968, Dylan had co-written "I'd Have You Anytime" with George Harrison;[133] Harrison recorded "I'd Have You Anytime" and Dylan's "If Not for You" for his 1970 solo triple album All Things Must Pass. Dylan's surprise appearance at Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh attracted media coverage, reflecting that Dylan's live appearances had become rare.[134]

Between March 16 and 19, 1971, Dylan reserved three days at Blue Rock, a small studio in Greenwich Village. These sessions resulted in "Watching the River Flow" and a new recording of "When I Paint My Masterpiece".[135] On November 4, 1971, Dylan recorded "George Jackson", which he released a week later. For many, the single was a surprising return to protest material, mourning the killing of Black Panther George Jackson in San Quentin State Prison that year.[136] Dylan contributed piano and harmony to Steve Goodman's album, Somebody Else's Troubles, under the pseudonym Robert Milkwood Thomas in September 1972.[137]

In 1972, Dylan signed to Sam Peckinpah's film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providing songs and backing music for the movie, and playing "Alias", a member of Billy's gang with some historical basis.[138] Despite the film's failure at the box office, the song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" became one of Dylan's most covered songs.[139][140]
Return to touring
Dylan together with three musicians from The Band onstage. Dylan is third from left, wearing a black jacket and pants. He is singing and playing an electric guitar.

Dylan began 1973 by signing with a new label, David Geffen's Asylum Records, when his contract with Columbia Records expired. On his next album, Planet Waves, he used the Band as backing group, while rehearsing for a tour. The album included two versions of "Forever Young", which became one of his most popular songs.[141] As one critic described it, the song projected "something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke of the father in Dylan",[142] and Dylan himself commented: "I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental."[16]

Columbia Records simultaneously released Dylan, a collection of studio outtakes (almost exclusively covers), widely interpreted as a churlish response to Dylan's signing with a rival record label.[143] In January 1974, Dylan returned to touring after seven years; backed by the Band, he embarked on a North American tour of 40 concerts. A live double album, Before the Flood, was on Asylum Records. Soon, Columbia Records said word they "will spare nothing to bring Dylan back into the fold".[144] Dylan had second thoughts about Asylum, miffed that while there had been millions of unfulfilled ticket requests for the 1974 tour, Geffen had sold only 700,000 copies of Planet Waves.[144] Dylan returned to Columbia Records, which reissued his two Asylum albums.
   
After the tour, Dylan and his wife became estranged. He filled a small red notebook with songs about relationships and ruptures, and recorded an album entitled Blood on the Tracks in September 1974.[145] Dylan delayed the release and re-recorded half the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production assistance from his brother, David Zimmerman.[146]

Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. In the NME, Nick Kent described "the accompaniments [as] often so trashy they sound like mere practice takes."[147] In Rolling Stone, Jon Landau wrote that "the record has been made with typical shoddiness."[147] Over the years critics came to see it as one of Dylan's greatest achievements. In Salon.com, 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-1960s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years."[148] Novelist Rick Moody called it "the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape."[149]
Dylan, wearing a hat and leather coat, plays guitar and sings, seated. Crouched next to him is a bearded man, listening to him with head bent.

That summer Dylan wrote a ballad championing boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, imprisoned for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1966. After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote "Hurricane", presenting the case for Carter's innocence. Despite its length — over eight minutes — the song was released as a single, peaking at 33 on the U.S. Billboard chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue.[a 4][150] The tour featured about one hundred performers and supporters from the Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone Burnett, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Joni Mitchell,[151][152] David Mansfield, Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson, Joan Baez, and Scarlet Rivera, whom Dylan discovered walking down the street, her violin case on her back.[153] Allen Ginsberg accompanied the troupe, staging scenes for the film Dylan was shooting. Sam Shepard was hired to write the screenplay, but ended up accompanying the tour as informal chronicler.[154]

Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour encompassed the release of the album Desire, with many of Dylan's new songs featuring an travelogue-like narrative style, showing the influence of his new collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy.[155][156] The 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special, Hard Rain, and the LP Hard Rain; no concert album from the better-received and better-known opening half of the tour was released until 2002's Live 1975.[157]
Dylan performing in the Feyenoord Football Club Stadium, Rotterdam, June 23, 1978

The 1975 tour with the Revue provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara, a sprawling narrative mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received poor, sometimes scathing, reviews.[158][159] Later in that year, a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, was more widely released.[160]

In November 1976, Dylan appeared at the Band's "farewell" concert, with Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison and Neil Young. Martin Scorsese's cinematic chronicle, The Last Waltz, in 1978 included about half of Dylan's set.[161] In 1976, Dylan wrote and duetted on "Sign Language" for Eric Clapton's No Reason To Cry.[162]

In 1978, Dylan embarked on a year-long world tour, performing 114 shows in Japan, the Far East, Europe and the US, to a total audience of two million. Dylan assembled an eight piece band and three backing singers. Concerts in Tokyo in February and March were released as the live double album, Bob Dylan At Budokan.[163] Reviews were mixed. Robert Christgau awarded the album a C+ rating, giving the album a derisory review,[164] while Janet Maslin defended it in Rolling Stone, writing: "These latest live versions of his old songs have the effect of liberating Bob Dylan from the originals."[165] When Dylan brought the tour to the U.S. in September 1978, the press described the look and sound as a 'Las Vegas Tour'.[166] The 1978 tour grossed more than $20 million, and Dylan told the Los Angeles Times that he had debts because "I had a couple of bad years. I put a lot of money into the movie, built a big house ... and it costs a lot to get divorced in California."[163]

In April and May 1978, Dylan took the same band and vocalists into Rundown Studios in Santa Monica, California, to record an album of new material: Street-Legal.[167] It was described by Michael Gray as, "after Blood On The Tracks, arguably Dylan's best record of the 1970s: a crucial album documenting a crucial period in Dylan's own life".[168] However, it had poor sound and mixing (attributed to Dylan's studio practices), muddying the instrumental detail until a remastered CD release in 1999 restored some of the songs' strengths.[169]
Christian period
Further information: Slow Train Coming

In the late 1970s, Dylan became a born again Christian[170][171][172] and released two albums of Christian gospel music. Slow Train Coming (1979) featured the guitar accompaniment of Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) and was produced by veteran R&B producer Jerry Wexler. Wexler said Dylan had tried to evangelize him during the recording. He replied: "Bob, you're dealing with a 62-year-old Jewish atheist. Let's just make an album."[173] The album won a Grammy Award as "Best Male Vocalist" for the song "Gotta Serve Somebody". The second evangelical album, Saved (1980), received mixed reviews, described by Michael Gray as "the nearest thing to a follow-up album Dylan has ever made, Slow Train Coming II and inferior."[174] When touring in late 1979 and early 1980, Dylan would not play his older, secular works, and he delivered declarations of his faith from the 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.[175]

Dylan's Christianity was unpopular with some fans and musicians.[176] Shortly before his murder, John Lennon recorded "Serve Yourself" in response to Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody".[177] By 1981, Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times that "neither age (he's now 40) nor his much-publicized conversion to born-again Christianity has altered his essentially iconoclastic temperament."[178]
1980s
Dylan, onstage and with eyes closed, plays a chord on an electric guitar.

In late 1980 Dylan briefly played concerts billed as "A Musical Retrospective", restoring popular 1960s songs to the repertoire. Shot of Love, recorded next spring, featured his first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with Christian songs. "Every Grain of Sand" reminded some of William Blake's verses.[179]

In the 1980s reception of Dylan's recordings varied, from the well-regarded Infidels in 1983 to the panned Down in the Groove in 1988. Michael Gray condemned Dylan's 1980s albums for carelessness in the studio and for failing to release his best songs.[180] As an example of the latter, the Infidels recording sessions, which again employed Knopfler on lead guitar and also as the album's producer, resulted in several notable songs that Dylan left off the album. Best regarded of these were "Blind Willie McTell", a tribute to the dead blues musician and an evocation of African American history,[181] "Foot of Pride" and "Lord Protect My Child". These three songs were released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.[182]

Between July 1984 and March 1985, Dylan recorded Empire Burlesque.[183] Arthur Baker, who had remixed hits for Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper, was asked to engineer and mix the album. Baker said he felt he was hired to make Dylan's album sound "a little bit more contemporary".[183]

Dylan sang on USA for Africa's famine relief single "We Are the World". On July 13, 1985, he appeared at the climax at the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. Backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, he performed a ragged version of "Hollis Brown", his ballad of rural poverty, and then said to the 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."[184] His remarks were widely criticized as inappropriate, but they did inspire Willie Nelson to organize a series of events, Farm Aid, to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.[185]

In April 1986, Dylan made a foray into rap music when he added vocals to the opening verse of "Street Rock", featured on Kurtis Blow's album Kingdom Blow.[186] Dylan's next studio album, Knocked Out Loaded, in July 1986 contained three covers (by Little Junior Parker, Kris Kristofferson and the gospel hymn "Precious Memories"), plus three collaborations with (Tom Petty, Sam Shepard and Carole Bayer Sager), and two solo compositions by Dylan. One reviewer commented that "the record follows too many detours to be consistently compelling, and some of those detours wind down roads that are indisputably dead ends. By 1986, such uneven records weren't entirely unexpected by Dylan, but that didn't make them any less frustrating."[187] It was the first Dylan album since Freewheelin' (1963) to fail to make the Top 50.[188] Since then, some critics have called the 11-minute epic that Dylan co-wrote with Sam Shepard, "Brownsville Girl", a work of genius.[189]

In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. Dylan also toured with the Grateful Dead in 1987, resulting in a live album Dylan & The Dead. This received negative reviews: Allmusic said, "Quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead."[190] Dylan then initiated what came to be called the Never Ending Tour on June 7, 1988, performing with a back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. Dylan continued to tour with a small, evolving band for the next 20 years.[191]
Dylan plays his guitar and sings into a microphone onstage.

In 1987, Dylan starred in Richard Marquand's movie Hearts of Fire, in which he played Billy Parker, a washed-up rock star turned chicken farmer whose teenage lover, (Fiona), leaves him for a jaded English synth-pop sensation played by Rupert Everett.[192] Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack—"Night After Night", and "I Had a Dream About You, Baby", as well as a cover of John Hiatt's "The Usual". The film was a critical and commercial flop.[193] Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1988, with Bruce Springsteen's introduction declaring, "Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body. He showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual.[194]

The album Down in the Groove in May 1988 sold even more unsuccessfully than his previous studio album.[195] Michael Gray wrote: "The very title undercuts any idea that inspired work may lie within. Here was a further devaluing of the notion of a new Bob Dylan album as something significant."[196] The critical and commercial disappointment of that album was swiftly followed by the success of the Traveling Wilburys. Dylan co-founded the band with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty, and in late 1988 their multi-platinum Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 reached three on the US album chart,[195] featuring songs that were described as Dylan's most accessible compositions in years.[197] Despite Orbison's death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990 with the title Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.[198]

Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with Oh Mercy produced by Daniel Lanois. Michael Gray wrote that the album was: "Attentively written, vocally distinctive, musically warm, and uncompromisingly professional, this cohesive whole is the nearest thing to a great Bob Dylan album in the 1980s."[196][199] The track "Most of the Time", a lost love composition, was later prominently featured in the film High Fidelity, while "What Was It You Wanted?" has been interpreted both as a catechism and a wry comment on the expectations of critics and fans.[200] The religious imagery of "Ring Them Bells" struck some critics as a re-affirmation of faith.[201]

1990s

Dylan's 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990), an about-face from the serious Oh Mercy. The album contained several apparently simple songs, including "Under the Red Sky" and "Wiggle Wiggle". The album was dedicated to "Gabby Goo Goo", a nickname for the daughter of Dylan and Carolyn Dennis, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, who was four.[202] Sidemen on the album included George Harrison, Slash from Guns N' Roses, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Elton John. Despite the line-up, the record received bad reviews and sold poorly.[203]

In 1991, Dylan received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from American actor Jack Nicholson.[204] The event coincided with the start of the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, and Dylan performed "Masters of War". Dylan then made a short speech, saying "My daddy once said to me, he said, 'Son, it is possible for you to become so defiled in this world that your own mother and father will abandon you. If that happens, God will believe in your ability to mend your own ways.'"[205] This sentiment was subsequently revealed to be a quote from 19th-century German Jewish intellectual, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.[206]

The next few years saw Dylan returning to his roots with two albums covering folk and blues numbers: Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), featuring interpretations and acoustic guitar work. Many critics and fans commented on the quiet beauty of the song "Lone Pilgrim",[207] written by a 19th-century teacher. In November 1994 Dylan recorded two live shows for MTV Unplugged. He said his wish to perform traditional songs was overruled by Sony executives who insisted on hits.[208] The album from it, MTV Unplugged, included "John Brown", an unreleased 1962 song of how enthusiasm for war ends in mutilation and disillusionment.[209]
Dylan and members of his band perform onstage. Dylan, wearing a red shirt and black pants, plays an electric guitar and sings.

With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed-in on his Minnesota ranch,[210] Dylan booked recording time with Daniel Lanois at Miami's Criteria Studios in January 1997. The subsequent recording sessions were, by some accounts, fraught with musical tension.[211] Late that spring, before the album's release, Dylan was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart infection, pericarditis, brought on by histoplasmosis. His scheduled European tour was cancelled, but Dylan made a speedy recovery and left the hospital saying, "I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon."[212] He was back on the road by midsummer, and performed before Pope John Paul II at the World Eucharistic Conference in Bologna, Italy. The Pope treated the audience of 200,000 people to a homily based on Dylan's lyric "Blowin' in the Wind".[213]

September saw the release of the new Lanois-produced album, Time Out of Mind. With its bitter assessment of love and morbid ruminations, Dylan's first collection of original songs in seven years was highly acclaimed. One critic wrote: "the songs themselves are uniformly powerful, adding up to Dylan's best overall collection in years."[214] This collection of complex songs won him his first solo "Album of the Year" Grammy Award.[215]

In December 1997, U.S. President Bill Clinton presented Dylan with a Kennedy Center Honor in the East Room of the White House, paying this tribute: "He probably had more impact on people of my generation than any other creative artist. His voice and lyrics haven't always been easy on the ear, but throughout his career Bob Dylan has never aimed to please. He's disturbed the peace and discomforted the powerful."[216]

In 1999, Dylan embarked on a North American tour with Paul Simon, where each alternated as headline act with a "middle" section where they performed together, starting on the first of June and ending September 18. The collaboration was generally well-received, with just one critic, Seth Rogovoy, from the Berkshire Eagle, questioning the collaboration.[217]
2000s
   
Dylan commenced the new millennium by winning the Polar Music Prize in May 2000 and his first Oscar; his song "Things Have Changed", written for the film Wonder Boys, won an Academy Award in March 2001.[219] The Oscar, by some reports a facsimile, tours with him, presiding over shows perched atop an amplifier.[220]

"Love and Theft" was released on September 11, 2001. Recorded with his touring band, Dylan produced the album himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost.[221] The album was critically well received and earned nominations for several Grammy awards.[222] Critics noted that Dylan was widening his musical palette to include rockabilly, Western swing, jazz, and even lounge ballads.[223] "Love and Theft" generated controversy when The Wall Street Journal pointed out similarities between the album's lyrics and Japanese author Junichi Saga's book Confessions of a Yakuza.[224][225]

In 2003, Dylan revisited the evangelical songs from his "born again" period and participated in the CD project Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan. That year also saw the release of the film Masked & Anonymous, which Dylan co-wrote with director Larry Charles under the alias Sergei Petrov.[226] Dylan played the central character in the film, Jack Fate, alongside a cast that included Jeff Bridges, Penélope Cruz and John Goodman. The film polarised critics: many dismissed it as an "incoherent mess";[227][228] a few treated it as a serious work of art.[229][230]

In October 2004, Dylan published the first part of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One. Confounding expectations,[231] Dylan devoted three chapters to his first year in New York City in 1961–1962, virtually ignoring the mid-1960s when his fame was at its height. He also devoted chapters to the albums New Morning (1970) and Oh Mercy (1989). The book reached number two on The New York Times' Hardcover Non-Fiction best seller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award.[232]

No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese's acclaimed film biography of Dylan,[233] was first broadcast on September 26–27, 2005, on BBC Two in the UK and PBS in the US.[234] The documentary focuses on the period from Dylan's arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle crash in 1966, featuring interviews with Suze Rotolo, Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples, and Dylan himself. The film received a Peabody Award in April 2006[235] and a Columbia-duPont Award in January 2007.[236] The accompanying soundtrack featured unreleased songs from Dylan's early career.[237]

Dylan earned yet another distinction in a 2007 study of US legal opinions and briefs that found his lyrics were quoted by judges and lawyers more than those of any other songwriter, 186 times versus 74 by the Beatles, who were second. Among those quoting Dylan were US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia, both conservatives. The most widely cited lines included "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" from "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "when you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose" from "Like a Rolling Stone".[238][239]

Modern Times

May 3, 2006, was the premiere of Dylan's radio presenting career, hosting a weekly radio program, Theme Time Radio Hour, for XM Satellite Radio, with song selections revolving around a chosen theme.[240][241] Dylan played classic and obscure records from the 1930s to the present day, including contemporary artists as diverse as Blur, Prince, L.L. Cool J and the Streets. The show was praised by fans and critics as "great radio," as Dylan told stories and made eclectic references with his sardonic humor, while achieving a thematic beauty with his musical choices.[242][243] In April 2009, Dylan broadcast the 100th show in his radio series; the theme was "Goodbye" and the final record played was Woody Guthrie's "So Long, It's Been Good To Know Yuh". This has led to speculation that Dylan's radio series may have ended.[244]
Dylan together with five members of his band onstage. Dylan, dressed in a white shirt and black pants, is second from right.

On August 29, 2006, Dylan released his Modern Times album. Despite some coarsening of Dylan's voice (a critic for The Guardian characterised his singing on the album as "a catarrhal death rattle"[245]) most reviewers praised the album, and many described it as the final installment of a successful trilogy, embracing Time Out of Mind and "Love and Theft".[246] Modern Times entered the U.S. charts at number one, making it Dylan's first album to reach that position since 1976's Desire.[247] The New York Times published an article exploring similarities between some of Dylan's lyrics in Modern Times and the work of the Civil War poet Henry Timrod.[248]

Nominated for three Grammy Awards, Modern Times won Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album and Bob Dylan also won Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for "Someday Baby". Modern Times was named Album of the Year, 2006, by Rolling Stone magazine,[249] and by Uncut in the UK.[250] On the same day that Modern Times was released the iTunes Music Store released Bob Dylan: The Collection, a digital box set containing all of his albums (773 tracks in total), along with 42 rare and unreleased tracks.[251]

In August 2007, the award-winning film biography of Dylan I'm Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes, was released—bearing the tagline "inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan".[252][253] The movie used six different actors to represent different aspects of Dylan's life: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw.[253][254] Dylan's previously unreleased 1967 recording from which the film takes its name[255] was released for the first time on the film's original soundtrack; all other tracks are covers of Dylan songs, specially recorded for the movie by a diverse range of artists, including Sonic Youth, Eddie Vedder, Mason Jennings, Stephen Malkmus, Jeff Tweedy, Karen O, Willie Nelson, Cat Power, Richie Havens, and Tom Verlaine.[256]
Dylan, dressed in a black western outfit with red highlights, stands onstage and plays the keyboards. He gazes to the left of the photo. Behind him is a guitar player, dressed in black.

On October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released the triple CD retrospective album Dylan, anthologising his entire career under the Dylan 07 logo.[257] As part of this campaign, Mark Ronson produced a re-mix of Dylan's 1966 tune "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)", which was released as a maxi-single. This was the first time Dylan had sanctioned a re-mix of one of his classic recordings.[258]

The sophistication of the Dylan 07 marketing campaign was a reminder that Dylan's commercial profile had risen considerably since the 1990s. This first became evident in 2004, when Dylan appeared in a TV advertisement for Victoria's Secret lingerie.[259] Three years later, in October 2007, he participated in a multi-media campaign for the 2008 Cadillac Escalade.[260][261] Then, in 2009, he gave the highest profile endorsement of his career, appearing with rapper will.i.am in a Pepsi ad that debuted during the telecast of Super Bowl XLIII.[262] The ad, broadcast to a record audience of 98 million viewers, opened with Dylan singing the first verse of "Forever Young" followed by will.i.am doing a hip hop version of the song's third and final verse.[263]

In October 2008, Columbia released Volume 8 of Dylan's Bootleg Series, Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989–2006 as both a two-CD set and a three-CD version with a 150-page hardcover book. The set contains live performances and outtakes from selected studio albums from Oh Mercy to Modern Times, as well as soundtrack contributions and collaborations with David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley.[264] The pricing of the album—the two-CD set went on sale for $18.99 and the three-CD version for $129.99—led to complaints about "rip-off packaging" from some fans and commentators.[265][266] The release was widely acclaimed by critics.[267] The abundance of alternative takes and unreleased material suggested to one reviewer that this volume of old outtakes "feels like a new Bob Dylan record, not only for the astonishing freshness of the material, but also for the incredible sound quality and organic feeling of everything here."[268]
Together Through Life and Christmas in the Heart

Bob Dylan released his album Together Through Life on April 28, 2009. In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, published on Dylan's website, Dylan explained that the genesis of the record was when French film director Olivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his new road movie, My Own Love Song; initially only intending to record a single track, "Life Is Hard," "the record sort of took its own direction".[269] Nine of the ten songs on the album are credited as co-written by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter.[270]

The album received largely favorable reviews,[271] although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan's canon of work. Andy Gill wrote in The Independent that the record "features Dylan in fairly relaxed, spontaneous mood, content to grab such grooves and sentiments as flit momentarily across his radar. So while it may not contain too many landmark tracks, it's one of the most naturally enjoyable albums you'll hear all year."[272]

In its first week of release, the album reached number one in the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S.,[273] making Bob Dylan (67 years of age) the oldest artist to ever debut at number one on that chart.[273] It also reached number one on the UK album chart, 39 years after Dylan's previous UK album chart topper New Morning. This meant that Dylan currently holds the record for the longest gap between solo number one albums in the UK chart.[274]

On October 13, 2009, Dylan released a Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart, comprising such Christmas standards as "Little Drummer Boy", "Winter Wonderland" and "Here Comes Santa Claus".[275] Dylan's royalties from the sale of this album will benefit the charities Feeding America in the USA, Crisis in the UK, and the World Food Programme.[276]

The album received generally favorable reviews.[277] The New Yorker commented that Dylan had welded a pre-rock musical sound to "some of his croakiest vocals in a while", and speculated that Dylan's intentions might be ironic: "Dylan has a long and highly publicized history with Christianity; to claim there's not a wink in the childish optimism of 'Here Comes Santa Claus' or 'Winter Wonderland' is to ignore a half-century of biting satire."[278] In USA Today, Edna Gundersen pointed out that Dylan was "revisiting yuletide styles popularized by Nat King Cole, Mel Tormé, and the Ray Conniff Singers." Gundersen concluded that Dylan "couldn't sound more sentimental or sincere".[279]

In an interview published in The Big Issue, journalist Bill Flanagan asked Dylan why he had performed the songs in a straightforward style, and Dylan responded: "There wasn't any other way to play it. These songs are part of my life, just like folk songs. You have to play them straight too."[280]

2010s
   
On October 18, 2010, Dylan released Volume 9 of his Bootleg Series, The Witmark Demos. This comprised 47 demo recordings of songs taped between 1962 and 1964 for Dylan's earliest music publishers: Leeds Music in 1962, and Witmark Music from 1962 to 1964. One reviewer described the set as "a hearty glimpse of young Bob Dylan changing the music business, and the world, one note at a time."[281] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a Metascore of 86, indicating "universal acclaim".[282] In the same week, Sony Legacy released Bob Dylan: The Original Mono Recordings, a box set that for the first time presented Dylan's eight earliest albums, from Bob Dylan (1962) to John Wesley Harding (1967), in their original mono mix in the CD format. The CDs were housed in miniature facsimiles of the original album covers, replete with original liner notes. The set was accompanied by a booklet featuring an essay by music critic Greil Marcus.[283][284]

On April 12, 2011, Legacy Recordings released Bob Dylan in Concert – Brandeis University 1963, taped at Brandeis University on May 10, 1963, two weeks prior to the release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The tape was discovered in the archive of music writer Ralph J. Gleason, and the recording carries liner notes by Michael Gray, who writes the recording captures Dylan "from way back when Kennedy was President and the Beatles hadn't yet reached America. It reveals him not at any Big Moment but giving a performance like his folk club sets of the period... This is the last live performance we have of Bob Dylan before he becomes a star."[285]

The extent to which his work was studied at an academic level was demonstrated on Dylan's 70th birthday on May 24, 2011, when three universities organized symposia on his work. The University of Mainz,[286] the University of Vienna,[287] and the University of Bristol[288] invited literary critics and cultural historians to give papers on aspects of Dylan's work. Other events, including tribute bands, discussions and simple singalongs, took place around the world, as reported in The Guardian: "From Moscow to Madrid, Norway to Northampton and Malaysia to his home state of Minnesota, self-confessed 'Bobcats' will gather today to celebrate the 70th birthday of a giant of popular music."[289]
Dylan and the Obamas at the White House, after a performance celebrating music from the civil rights movement (February 9, 2010)

On October 4, 2011, Dylan's label, Egyptian Records, released an album of previously unheard Hank Williams songs, The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams. Dylan had helped to curate this project, in which songs unfinished when Williams died in 1953 were completed and recorded by a variety of artists, including Dylan himself, his son Jakob Dylan, Levon Helm, Norah Jones, Jack White, and others.[290][291]

On May 29, 2012, US President Barack Obama awarded Dylan a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the White House. At the ceremony, Obama praised Dylan's voice for its "unique gravelly power that redefined not just what music sounded like but the message it carried and how it made people feel".[292]

On September 11, 2012, Dylan released his 35th studio album, Tempest.[293] The album features a tribute to John Lennon, "Roll On John", and the title track is a 14 minute song about the sinking of the Titanic.[294] Reviewing Tempest for Rolling Stone, Will Hermes gave the album five out of five stars, writing: "Lyrically, Dylan is at the top of his game, joking around, dropping wordplay and allegories that evade pat readings and quoting other folks' words like a freestyle rapper on fire." Hermes called Tempest "one of [Dylan's] weirdest albums ever", and opined, "It may also be the single darkest record in Dylan's catalog."[295] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a score of 83 out of 100, indicating "universal acclaim".[296]

On August 27, 2013, Columbia Records released Volume 10 of Dylan's Bootleg Series, Another Self Portrait (1969–1971), and posted an on-line documentary about the project.[297][298] The album contained 35 previously unreleased tracks, including alternate takes and demos from Dylan's 1969–1971 recording sessions during the making of the Self Portrait and New Morning albums. The box set also included a live recording of Dylan's performance with the Band at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969. Another Self Portrait received favorable reviews, earning a score of 81 on the critical aggregator, Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim".[299] AllMusic critic Thom Jurek wrote, "For fans, this is more than a curiosity, it's an indispensable addition to the catalog."[300]

On November 4, 2013, Columbia Records released Bob Dylan: Complete Album Collection: Vol. One, a boxed set containing all 35 of Dylan's studio albums, six albums of live recordings, and a collection, entitled Sidetracks, of singles, songs from films and non-album material.[301] The box includes new album-by-album liner notes written by Clinton Heylin with an introduction by Bill Flanagan. On the same date, Columbia released a compilation, The Very Best of Bob Dylan, which is available in both single CD and double CD formats.[302] To publicize the 35 album box set, an innovative video of the song "Like a Rolling Stone" was released on Dylan's website. The interactive video, created by director Vania Heymann, allowed viewers to switch between 16 simulated TV channels, all featuring characters who are lip-synching the lyrics of the 48-year old song.[303] In December 2013 Time magazine named the video best music video of 2013.[304]

On February 2, 2014, Dylan appeared in a commercial for the Chrysler 200 car which was screened during the 2014 Super Bowl American football game. At the end of the commercial, Dylan says: "So let Germany brew your beer, let Switzerland make your watch, let Asia assemble your phone. We will build your car." Dylan's Superbowl commercial generated controversy and op-ed pieces discussing the protectionist implications of his words, and whether the singer had "sold out" to corporate interests.[305][306][307][308][309] In his songs, from "North Country Blues" in 1964 to "Union Sundown" on Infidels in 1983, Dylan has addressed the theme of how global capitalism and cheap imported goods have destroyed jobs in America.[310]

In 2013 and 2014, auction house sales demonstrated the high cultural value attached to Dylan's mid-1960s work, and the record prices that collectors were willing to pay for artefacts from this period. In December 2013, the Fender Stratocaster which Dylan had played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival fetched $965,000, a record figure for a guitar.[311] In June 2014, Dylan's hand-written lyrics of "Like a Rolling Stone", his 1965 hit single, fetched $2 million dollars at auction, a record for a popular music manuscript.[312][313]

On October 28, 2014, Simon & Schuster published a massive 960 page, thirteen and a half pound edition of Dylan's lyrics, Lyrics: Since 1962. The book was edited by literary critic Christopher Ricks, Julie Nemrow and Lisa Nemrow, to offer variant versions of Dylan's songs, sourced from out-takes and live performances. A limited edition of 50 books, signed by Dylan, was priced at $5,000. "It’s the biggest, most expensive book we’ve ever published, as far as I know," said Jonathan Karp, Simon & Schuster’s president and publisher.[314][315]

On November 4, 2014, Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings released The Basement Tapes Complete by Bob Dylan and The Band. These 138 tracks in a six-CD box form Volume 11 of Dylan's Bootleg Series. The 1975 album, The Basement Tapes, contained some of the songs which Dylan and the Band recorded in their homes in Woodstock, New York, in 1967. Subsequently, over 100 recordings and alternate takes have circulated on bootleg records. The sleeve notes for the new box set are by Sid Griffin, American musician and author of Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, The Band, and The Basement Tapes.[316][317]

On February 3, 2015, Dylan released Shadows in the Night, his 36th studio album. The album contains ten songs written between 1923 and 1963,[318][319] which have been described as part of the Great American Songbook.[320] All the songs on the album were recorded by Frank Sinatra but both critics and Dylan himself cautioned against seeing the record as a collection of "Sinatra covers".[318][321] Dylan explained, "I don't see myself as covering these songs in any way. They've been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day."[322] In an interview, Dylan said he had been thinking about making this record since hearing Willie Nelson's 1978 album Stardust.[323]

Shadows In the Night received favorable reviews, scoring 84 on the critical aggregator Metacritic, which indicates "universal acclaim".[324] Critics praised the restrained instrumental backings and Dylan's singing, saying that the material had elicited his best vocal performances in recent years.[325][320] Bill Prince in GQ commented: "A performer who's had to hear his influence in virtually every white pop recording made since he debuted his own self-titled album back in 1962 imagines himself into the songs of his pre-rock'n'roll early youth." [321] In The Independent, Andy Gill wrote that the recordings "have a lingering, languid charm, which... help to liberate the material from the rusting manacles of big-band and cabaret mannerisms."[326] The album debuted at number one in the UK albums chart in its first week of release.[327]

Never Ending Tour

The Never Ending Tour commenced on June 7, 1988,[328] and Dylan has played roughly 100 dates a year for the entirety of the 1990s and 2000s—a heavier schedule than most performers who started out in the 1960s.[329] By May 2013, Dylan and his band had played more than 2,500 shows,[330][331] anchored by long-time bassist Tony Garnier, multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron, and guitarist Charlie Sexton. To the dismay of some of his audience,[332] Dylan's performances remain unpredictable as he alters his arrangements and changes his vocal approach night after night.[333] Critical opinion about Dylan's shows remains divided. Critics such as Richard Williams and Andy Gill have argued that Dylan has found a successful way to present his rich legacy of material.[334][335] Others have criticized his live performances for mangling and spitting out "the greatest lyrics ever written so that they are effectively unrecognisable", and giving so little to the audience that "it is difficult to understand what he is doing on stage at all."[336]

Dylan's performances in China in April 2011 generated controversy. Some criticised him for not making any explicit comment on the political situation in China, and for, allegedly, allowing the Chinese authorities to censor his set-list.[337][338] Others defended Dylan's performances, arguing that such criticism represented a misunderstanding of Dylan's art, and that no evidence for the censorship of Dylan's set-list existed.[339][340] In response to these allegations, Dylan posted a statement on his website: "As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play."[341]

On April 10, 2015, Dylan commenced a United States tour in Atlantic City,[342] which is scheduled to conclude in South Bend, Indiana, on May 17.[343] Dylan has also announced his touring schedule in Europe in June and July, and further scheduled performances in Denmark, England and Wales in October.[343]
Artist

Over a decade after Random House had published Drawn Blank (1994), a book of Dylan's drawings, The Drawn Blank Series opened in October 2007 at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany.[344] This first public exhibition of Dylan's paintings showcased more than 200 watercolors and gouaches made from the original drawings. The exhibition coincided with the publication of the book Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series.[344][345] From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, The Brazil Series.[346]

In July 2011, a leading contemporary art gallery, Gagosian Gallery, announced their representation of Dylan's paintings.[347] An exhibition of Dylan's art, The Asia Series, opened at the Gagosian Madison Avenue Gallery on September 20, displaying Dylan's paintings of scenes in China and the Far East.[348] The New York Times reported that "some fans and Dylanologists have raised questions about whether some of these paintings are based on the singer's own experiences and observations, or on photographs that are widely available and were not taken by Mr. Dylan." The Times pointed to close resemblances between Dylan's paintings and historic photos of Japan and China, and photos taken by Dmitri Kessel and Henri Cartier-Bresson.[349] The Magnum photo agency confirmed that Dylan had licensed the reproduction rights of these photographs.[350]

Dylan's second show at the Gagosian Gallery, Revisionist Art, opened in November, 2012. The show consisted of thirty paintings, transforming and satirizing popular magazines including Playboy and Babytalk.[351][352] In February 2013, Dylan exhibited the New Orleans Series of paintings at the Palazzo Reale in Milan.[353] In August 2013, Britain's National Portrait Gallery in London hosted Dylan's first major UK exhibition, Face Value, featuring twelve pastel portraits.[354]

In November 2013, the Halcyon Gallery, London, hosted an exhibition of seven wrought iron gates that Dylan had created. The exhibition was titled Mood Swings. In a statement released by the gallery, Dylan said: "I've been around iron all my life ever since I was a kid. I was born and raised in iron ore country, where you could breathe it and smell it every day. Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference."
Since 1994, Dylan has published six books of painting and drawing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan

Bob Dylan - Lonesome Whistle Blues 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmZAfw4SPOU 

Bob Dylan -Tangled Up in Blue - Cadillac Palace Theater, Chi IL Nov 10, 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWq_mEXqmyo

Montse Pratdesaba (Big Mama Montse)  *24.05.1963

Wundervoller akustischer traditioneller Blues. Die Spanierin mit der kraftvollen Stimme spielt des Blues wie er sein soll: gefühlvoll und ohne Schnörkel.

http://blues-baltica.de/blues-festival/geschichte/2016/programm/sonntag/big-mama-montse/

Montserrat Pratdesaba was born at  St Quirze de Besora (Catalonia-Spain) in 1963, and was nicknamed Big Mama at Barcelona's legendary "La Cova del Drac" club where her career and love for the Blues began. With only 6 years she studied piano and at age 12 she started with the guitar. Big Mama Montse is telecom engineer specialist in image and sound and has been working for 6 years in the Catalan Television (TV3) but she decided to leave that job to pursue music professionally. Since then she has been strongly committed to the Blues, singing in numerous concerts and festivals. She has produced 18 records and a long list of collaborations on albums in which she has participated. In addition, Big Mama's career has been related to educational work, by offering countless concerts to initiate children and adults in the Blues. She is also a musical journalist of the French magazine Blues & Co since 2008. Her artistry has also had international impact, as Putumayo Records included "No way out", a song by Big Mama & Victor Uris, for the compilation "Blues Around The World" which also featured international artists such as Taj Mahal, Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur, Eric Bibb, Habib Koitié, etc. She is the President of the Barcelona Blues Society and also member of the Board of the Association of Professional Musicians from Catalunya - Musicat. Between 2013-16 she's been one of the 12 members of the Board of the European Blues Union. On 2013, Montserrat Pratdesaba celebrated her 25th Anniversary as Big Mama on tour with the band Taller de Músics All Stars. On 2015 she receives the award "Jazzterrassaman" by Terrassa International Jazz Festival. She has also received the Capibola Blues Award 2010 by Barcelona Blues Festival, an ukelele for her 25th Anniversary as Big Mama by Barcelona Blues Society, Honorific Member by Rubí Blues Society on 2015, Artist BluesCat 2007, "Dones d´Enllaç" Award 2008, "Best Jazz Album1994" by Radio4, Finalist as "Best Jazz Album" by SGAE and AIE at III Premios de la Música, Finalist of the Bands Challenge by Getxo International Jazz Festival 1991, etc.

She has participated in numerous concerts and Jazz and Blues Festivals such as Marciac (95), Bayonne (95), Monségur (95), San Sebastián (95-2000), Lisieux (91), Orange (95), Mégève (95), Getxo (91), Santiago de Compostela (89-91-95-2003), Córdoba (94), Santander (95), Cerdanyola (90-91-92-98-2001-07-13), Barcelona (92-94-2001-02-06-09-12-13-14), Terrassa (89-90-93-95-96-2000-07-08-09-10-13-15), Madrid (San Juan Evangelista) (91), Mantes-la-Jolie (2002-05), Chaumont (2003), Les Escaldes-Engordany (2002-03), Le Pouliguen (2004), Cognac (2004), Condat sur Vienne (2005), Val d´Oise (2006), Roses (93-2000-04-07-08), Thouars (2010-12), Sem (2012), Sofia (2013), Cahors (2013), Frederikshavn (2013), Trieux Tonic Blues (2014), Guitare en Save (2014), Clarijazz (2014), Getxo (2014), Notodden (2014), Cheliabynsk (2015), Benicàssim (2015), Blavoevgrad (2016), Eutin (2016), etc.

http://www.bigmamamontse.com/id80.htm

Big Mama Montse & Riqui Sabatés. Migraciones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecYaLGWyIrs

Big Mama Montse y Victor Uris (03/01/2015) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5Vtdg_Vnis 

Bluesfest Eutin 2016 Big Mama Montse (E) Trad. acoustic Blues 15.05.2016 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERpIpJNRTYk 

Edgar Rebel  *24.05.1966

https://www.facebook.com/edgar.rebel.3/photos_albums

http://www.edgarundmarie.de/

Edgar&Marie - Damals in Weisswasser *OFFICIAL* 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhDuq5-bAhM&index=2&list=PLkDjik80x1YLHPZLfPArCvD5naJ2LNzsN 

R.I.P.

 

Elmore James   +24.05.1963

Elmore James (* 27. Januar 1918 in Mississippi; † 24. Mai 1963 in Chicago, Illinois) war ein US-amerikanischer Bluesmusiker. Er gehört neben Muddy Waters zu den einflussreichsten Slide-Gitarristen des Chicago Blues, dessen Stil viele Bluesrock- und Rockmusiker geprägt hat.
Typisch für James war sein kraftvoller, rauher Gesang, den er mit seinem elektrisch verstärktem Slideguitar-Spiel, das deutlich von Robert Nighthawk und vor allem Robert Johnson beeinflusst worden war, begleitete.
Leben
Elmore James wurde 1918 als unehelicher Sohn von Leora Brooks in Richland (nach anderen Quellen in Lexington oder Canton), Mississippi geboren. Er arbeitete in der Landwirtschaft, bevor er seine Karriere als Wandermusiker begann. Hier arbeitete er mit Musikern wie Robert Johnson, der ihn stark prägte, und Sonny Boy Williamson II. (Rice Miller) zusammen. Robert Johnson beeinflusste sowohl seinen Gitarrenstil als auch einen Teil seines Repertoires (Dust My Broom und Crossroads). Begleitet von seinem kraftvollen Spiel auf einer verstärkten Slide-Gitarre und seiner Falsettstimme wurde Elmore James zu einem der einflussreichsten Musiker des elektrifizierten Chicago Blues.
Zwischen 1943 und 1945 lebte er, ausgenommen die Zeit als Marinesoldat, als Hobo und trampte durch die Südstaaten. Seine Plattenkarriere begann Elmore James 1951 bei Lillian McMurrys Plattenlabel Trumpet Records. In den folgenden zwölf Jahren machte James unter anderem Aufnahmen bei den großen Blueslabels Modern Records und Chess Records. Seine größten Hits waren Dust My Broom (Blues Hall of Fame 1983, Grammy Hall of Fame 1998), The Sky Is Crying, Shake Your Money Maker und It Hurts Me Too, die bis heute von unzähligen Musikern der Blues- und Rockszene nachgespielt werden. Der Song Dust My Broom wurde bereits zuvor 1936 von Robert Johnson aufgenommen. Auf Seiten der Bluesgitarristen haben vor allem Homesick James – ein Cousin von Elmore James, sein erster Slide-Gitarrenlehrer und späterer Band-Bassist – Hound Dog Taylor und J. B. Hutto das musikalische Erbe von Elmore James bewahrt und weitergeführt. Bei den Rockgitarristen wurden Duane Allman von The Allman Brothers Band, Billy Gibbons von ZZ Top und Johnny Winter maßgeblich von Elmore James beeinflusst.
Begleiten ließ sich Elmore James häufig von Musikern der Band von Tampa Red, in der auch der Saxophonist J. T. Brown spielte, welcher bei Rockfans vor allem durch seine Aufnahmen mit Fleetwood Mac Bekanntheit erlangte, sowie von dem Jazzmusiker Boyd Atkins.
Gerade als man ihn in Europa (besonders in Großbritannien) im Rahmen des Blues Revivals zur Kenntnis genommen hatte, verstarb Elmore James an einem Herzanfall.
Er wurde 1980 in die Blues Hall of Fame aufgenommen.
Erbe
Elmore James beeinflusste mit seinem Stil vor allem junge britische Bands, die sich in den frühen 1960er Jahren auf den afro-amerikanischen Blues beriefen. Zu seinen Verehrern gehören neben anderen Keith Richards und Brian Jones von den Rolling Stones, John Mayall,Jimi Hendrix und Eric Clapton
Die britische Band Fleetwood Mac war ursprünglich eine Bluesband – in den 1960er-Jahren mit dem Gitarristen Peter Green. Ein weiteres Mitglied dieser Formation war Jeremy Spencer. Er war dazu in der Lage, Elmore James gesanglich und instrumental (fast) perfekt zu imitieren und war in seiner Zeit bekannter als das Original.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmore_James 

Elmore James (January 27, 1918 – May 24, 1963) was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and band leader.[1] He was known as King of the Slide Guitar, but he was also noted for his use of loud amplification and his stirring voice.

Biography

James was born Elmore Brooks in Richland, Holmes County, Mississippi, the illegitimate son of 15-year-old Leola Brooks, a field hand. His father was probably Joe Willie "Frost" James, who moved in with Leola, and so Elmore took this as his name. Elmore began making music at the age of 12 using a simple one-string instrument ("diddley bow" or "jitterbug") strung up on a shack wall. As a teen he was playing at local dances under the names Cleanhead and Joe Willie James. His first marriage, circa 1942, was to Minnie Mae.[2] He subsequently married at least twice more.[citation needed]

James was strongly influenced by Robert Johnson, as well as by Kokomo Arnold and Tampa Red. James recorded several of Tampa's songs, and even inherited from his band two of his famous "Broomdusters", "Little" Johnny Jones (piano) and Odie Payne (drums). There is a dispute as to whether Robert Johnson or Elmore wrote James' trademark song, "Dust My Broom".[2]

During World War II, James joined the United States Navy, was promoted to coxswain and took part in the invasion of Guam. Upon his discharge, James returned to central Mississippi and settled in the town of Canton with his adopted brother Robert Holston. Working in Robert's electrical shop, he devised his unique electric sound, using parts from the shop and an unusual placement of two D'Armond pickups.[2] Around this time James learned that he had a serious heart condition.

He began recording with Trumpet Records in nearby Jackson in January 1951, first as sideman to the second Sonny Boy Williamson and also to their mutual friend Willie Love and possibly others, then debuting as a session leader in August with "Dust My Broom", which was a surprise R&B hit in 1952.[1] He broke his recording contract with Trumpet Records to sign up with the Bihari Brothers through their "scout" Ike Turner who played guitar and piano on a couple of his early Bihari recordings. His "I Believe" was another hit a year later.[1] During the 1950s he recorded for the Bihari brothers' Flair Records, Meteor Records[3] and Modern Records labels, as well as for Chess Records and Mel London's Chief Records.[4]

He played lead guitar on Joe Turner's 1954 top 10 R&B hit "TV Mama".[5] His backing musicians were known as the Broomdusters.[1] In 1959, he began recording for Bobby Robinson's Fire Records label. These include "The Sky Is Crying", "My Bleeding Heart", "Stranger Blues", "Look on Yonder Wall", "Done Somebody Wrong", and "Shake Your Moneymaker".[1]

Death

James died of a heart attack in Chicago in 1963,[1] just prior to a tour of Europe with that year's American Folk Blues Festival. He was buried in the Newport Baptist Church Cemetery in Ebenezer, Mississippi.[6]

Sound

James played a wide variety of "blues" (which often crossed over into other styles of music) similar to that of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and some of B. B. King's work, but distinguished by his guitar's unique tone coming from a modified, hollow body traditional acoustic guitar, which sounded like an amped up version of the "more modern" solid body guitars. Muddy Waters took the Belgian blues fan George Adins to see James play in Chicago in 1959, Adins recalled,

    Elmore will always remain the most exciting, dramatic blues singer and guitarist that I've ever had a chance to see perform in the flesh. On our way we listened to him on the radio as Big Bill Hill ... was broadcasting direct from that place. I was burning to see Elmore James and before we even pushed open the door of the club, we could hear Elmore's violent guitar sound. Although the place was overcrowded, we managed to find a seat close to the bandstand and the blues came falling down on me as it had never done before. Watching Elmore sing and play, backed by a solid blues band (Homesick James, J.T. Brown, Boyd Atkins and Sam Cassell) made me feel real fine. Wearing thick glasses, Elmore's face always had an expressive and dramatic look, especially when he was real gone on the slow blues. Singing with a strong and rough voice, he really didn't need a mike. On such slow blues as "I'm Worried – "Make My Dreams Come True" – "It Hurts Me", his voice reached a climax and created a tension that was unmistakably the down and out blues. Notwithstanding that raw voice, Elmore sang his blues with a particular feeling, an emotion and depth that showed his country background. His singing was... fed, reinforced by his own guitar accompaniment which was as rough, violent and expressive as was his voice. Using the bottleneck technique most of the time, Elmore really let his guitar sound as I had never heard a guitar sound before. You just couldn't sit still! You had to move...

Adins also witnessed James at 'Alex Club' in West Side Chicago where...

    ...he always played for a dance audience and he made the people jump. "Bobby's Rock" was at that time one of the favourite numbers with the crowd and Elmore used to play [it] for fifteen minutes and more. You just couldn't stand that hysteric sound coming down on you. The place was rocking, swinging![7]

His best known song is the blues standard "Dust My Broom" (also known as "Dust My Blues"). The song gave its name to James' band, The Broomdusters. The song's opening slide guitar riff is one of the best-known sounds in all of blues. It is essentially the same riff that appeared in the recording of the same song by Robert Johnson, but James played the riff with electric slide guitar. B. B. King used this riff to open his 1953 #1 R&B hit "Please Love Me." It was even transformed into a doo-wop chorus on Jesse Stone's "Down in the Alley", recorded by The Clovers and Elvis Presley. Stone transcribed the riff as: "Changety changety changety changety chang chang!"[citation needed]
Influence

Many electric slide guitar players will admit to the influence of James' style. He was also a major influence on such successful blues guitarists as Homesick James, John Littlejohn, Hound Dog Taylor, J. B. Hutto and many others. He also influenced many rock guitarists such as The Rolling Stones' Brian Jones (Keith Richards wrote in his book that at the time he met Brian Jones, Brian called himself Elmo Lewis, and that he wanted to be Elmore James), Canned Heat's Alan Wilson and in particular Fleetwood Mac's Jeremy Spencer. John Mayall included "Mr. James" on his 1969 "Looking Back" album as a dedication to James. James' songs "Done Somebody Wrong" and "One Way Out" were often covered by The Allman Brothers Band, who were influenced by James.[8]

James was also covered by blues-rock band Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble many times in concert. The most famous of these covers is one that came by an indirect route – James' fellow bluesman Albert King recorded a cover of "The Sky Is Crying", and Stevie Ray Vaughan copied King's version of the song. That song was also covered by George Thorogood on his second album, Move It on Over and by Eric Clapton on his album There's One in Every Crowd. The most famous guitarist who admired James was Jimi Hendrix. Early in his career Hendrix styled himself variously as 'Maurice James' and subsequently as 'Jimmy James.' This, according to former bandmate and recording partner Lonnie Youngblood, was a tribute to Elmore James.[9] There is a photo of Hendrix (that can be seen in the sleeve of his Blues album) in London wearing his iconic military jacket and holding Elmore James's UK LP The Best of Elmore James. (Hendrix was frequently photographed throughout his performing career holding LP covers of musicians that influenced him.) He performed James' "Bleeding Heart" during the Experience's Royal Albert Hall concert in 1969, and also with the Band of Gypsys at their New Year's concerts at the Fillmore East in 1969/70 as well as recording two different versions of it in the studio.[citation needed]

James is referenced in The Beatles' song "For You Blue". While John Lennon evokes James' signature sound with a Höfner 5140 Hawaiian Standard lap steel guitar,[10] George Harrison says, "Elmore James got nothin' on this, baby." Other artists influenced by Elmore James include Frank Zappa[11]

Eric Burdon performed a song "No More Elmore" and appears on the album Crawling King Snake (1982)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmore_James

Elmore James - It Hurts Me Too 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAa-lCowVMY