Bob Dylan: Private Man, Music Legend

By The Associated Press

He’s an American folk singer for the ages and the songwriting poet of the 20th century with a Pulitzer Prize to prove it. His musical legacy has inspired generations but he still thinks of himself as Robert Allen Zimmerman, the small-town boy from Minnesota. The world knows him as Bob Dylan. A bit of a recluse, the man behind the music is an enigma to his fans. He has avoided the trappings of celebrity, instead devoting his life to music and his never-ending tours across the globe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AP Editions
• Release date: Mar 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781633531024

Book preview

Overview

He’s an American folk singer for the ages and the songwriting poet of the 20th century with a Pulitzer Prize to prove it. His musical legacy has inspired generations but he still thinks of himself as Robert Allen Zimmerman, the small-town boy from Minnesota. The world knows him as Bob Dylan.

A bit of a recluse, the man behind the music is an enigma to his fans. He has avoided the trappings of celebrity, instead devoting his life to music and his never-ending tours across the globe.

Follow Dylan’s journey through decades of reporting and photography by The Associated Press, and get to know the artist ever at odds with the demands of fame, politics, and adulation.

Introduction

Dylan’s Beginnings

July 26, 2000

By Jeff Simons

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minn., on May 24, 1941, Bob Dylan grew up in nearby Hibbing. By age 12, he had learned to play guitar and harmonica, and a few years later, he was accompanying himself on piano. He left high school to follow Little Richard, according to a note he wrote in his yearbook.

Dylan gleaned his musical skills playing in local bands, and in 1959 struck out for New York City to visit the ailing Woody Guthrie. There, he found fertile ground for his music in the Greenwich Village folk clubs. By 1961 he had recorded his debut album. Bob Dylan was a bare-bones collection of traditional folk songs that featured his guitar and harmonica virtuosity.

By the mid-'60s, his albums The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home and Another Side of Bob Dylan had brought him to the forefront of the U.S. and British folk scenes. While the Beatles promoted his work, Peter, Paul and Mary scored big hits with covers of Blowin' in the Wind and Don't Think Twice, It's Alright, as did the Byrds with Mr. Tambourine Man.

In 1965 he released Highway 61 Revisited–to date, still one of the most critically acclaimed rock albums, which featured the classic Like a Rolling Stone. He followed that up a year later with Blonde on Blonde, which included Rainy Day Women 12 and 35, best known for the refrain, Everybody must get stoned!

Dylan was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in July 1966 and led a reclusive and relatively inactive life the following year.

His next album John Wesley Harding— released during a period when psychedelic music and British bands dominated the popular music scene— was a minimalist, country sound. In 1969 he followed that up with Nashville Skyline, which featured a duet with Johnny Cash on Girl From the North Country.

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Folk singer and songwriter Bob Dylan, 22, performs at an unknown location on November 8, 1963. (AP Photo)

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Bob Dylan performs at the Academy of Music in New York, January 1, 1972. (AP Photo/File)

During the '70s, '80s and '90s, Dylan recorded several classic albums, including Blood on the Tracks, Street Legal, Shot of Love and Time Out of Mind. He continued to perform before sellout audiences, and toured and recorded with Tom Petty and the Grateful Dead.

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Minnesota’s Native Son

Hometown Memories

June 25, 1986

By Jeff Baenen

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Bob Dylan is shown in London to help publicize the American-financed film Hearts of Fire, in which he will star as a retired rock star. Dylan, 45, protest songwriter/singer of the sixties, is doing film after an acting break of 12 years and wrote four songs for it, August 17, 1986. (AP Photo/Press Association)

Before his protest songs became the soundtrack of the 1960s, Bob Dylan was a shy, small-town Minnesota boy who wrote poetry and pounded rock 'n' roll on the piano.

''He was a dreamer, like he was way out. He kept to himself,'' said Dylan's godfather, George Berman of Duluth. ''He was writing poetry when he was 10 or 12 years old.''

Dylan returns June 26, 1986 for his first concert in his home state in eight years. He will perform at the Metrodome in Minneapolis with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the Grateful Dead.

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Bob Dylan opens his True Confessions tour in the San Diego Sports Arena to a sold-out house of about 17,000. It is Dylan's first U.S. tour since 1981. Also appearing with Dylan is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, June 9, 1986. (AP Photo/Howard Lipin)

''He was into pretty heavy rock 'n' roll,'' said Hibbing Mayor Dick Nordvold, who attended high school with Dylan and graduated the year after he did.

In 1959 Dylan was kicked off the stage of Hibbing High School by the stage manager after the young musician broke the soundboard of a Steinway during a talent show rehearsal. He was doing an impersonation of one of his heroes, Little Richard, the flamboyant 1950s rock star known for his pounding piano style.

''There were many that liked him and were excited by his music,'' Nordvold said of Dylan. ''His audience was screaming right along with him.''

Music and poetry were Dylan's main interests as a youngster.

''Bob was quiet, retiring,'' said Berman's wife, Betty. ''He always showed an interest in writing—short stories, poems. He'd write poems to his grandmother who he was very devoted to.''

''He's always put everything into a beautiful rhyme,'' said Dylan's 71- year-old mother, Beatty.

After high school, Dylan attended the University of Minnnesota and played guitar in local coffeehouses. He changed his name one night before going on at the Scholar, a former Minneapolis coffeehouse.

He dropped out of college and moved to New York, where he honed the rough brand of singing and harmonica playing that became his trademark.

His first album, ''Bob Dylan,'' was released in March 1962 and featured folk songs done in the style of Woody Guthrie, Dylan's idol. It also included a tune Dylan wrote, ''Song to Woody.''

Dylan had read Guthrie's memoir about depression-era America, Bound for Glory, and he developed a deep attachment. Dylan made frequent visits to Guthrie when the legendary folk singer was hospitalized in New Jersey with Huntington's Disease.

A moral urgency crept into Dylan's music by the time his second LP, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, came out. He sang against war and injustice with such songs as ''Blowin' in the Wind,'' ''Masters of War'' and ''A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall.''

They became anthems of protest for the '60s. As did ''The Times They Are A- Changin','' the title song of his third LP released in 1964.

However, said Nordvold, ''The Bobby Zimmerman I knew was the clean-cut, all-American kid, hardly the protester.''

Nearly 25 years later, Dylan's 28 albums have sold more than 35 million copies. He has started his first U.S. tour in five years after appearing at last year's Live Aid and Farm Aid concerts.

''He happened to be in the right place at the right time at his age,'' his mother said. ''If he didn't have something to say, he wouldn't be here today.

''I think Bob would have done very well in anything he chose to. He's a worker and he knows how to work.''

Critics have tried to analyze Dylan's enigmatic lyrics. They've also tried to analyze the singer who has experimented with different musical styles—folk, rock, country, gospel—and religions.

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Bob Dylan and others sing at a benefit at Madison Square Garden in New York. In honor of the late Chilean President Salvador Allende, show, from left, are: actor Dennis Hopper, Arlo Guthrie, film director Melvin Van Peebles (behind Guthrie), Melanie, Dylan and Dave Van Ronk, May 9, 1974. (AP Photo/Ray Stubblebine)

Born Jewish, Dylan found Jesus in 1979 and converted to Christianity. He's now reportedly studying Orthodox Judaism.

Although known for his reclusiveness, Dylan occasionally visits Hibbing, where his late father, Abe, ran an appliance and furniture store. His mother, who has remarried, lives in St. Paul. His brother, David, also lives in the Twin Cities.

Though Nordvold and others in the area take pride in their native son's accomplishments, Steve Zimmerman, Dylan's cousin, said the town of 21,000 has not properly acknowledged the singer.

''The town has a big banner saying this is Gov. Rudy Perpich's hometown, but there's nothing here about Bob Dylan,'' Zimmerman said.

As for what Minnesota means to the famed singer, Dylan recently summed it up: ''The trees and the lakes and the clouds. And when I was growing up, the trains.''

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Bob Dylan performs in the Houston Astrodome in Houston, Tex., on January 25, 1975. (AP Photo)

Bob Dylan Returns Home

October 23, 1998

By Jeff Baenen

If Bob Dylan was excited to perform his first major concert in the town where he was born, he kept it to himself.

The folk-rock poet charged through a mix of classics and new songs Thursday night before a wildly enthusiastic crowd. In typical Dylan fashion, though, he never acknowledged he