Bob Dylan is an American songwriter, singer, 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. Early songs such as Blowin in the Wind and The Times They Are a Change in became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving behind his initial base in the American folk music revival, his six-minute single Like a Rolling Stone, recorded in 1965, enlarged the range of popular music. Dylan's lyrics incorporate a wide range of 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 songwriter of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson and Hank Williams, Dylan has amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning more than 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 in the great American songbook. Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards, and harmonica. Backed by a changing lineup 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 songwriter is considered his greatest contribution. Since 1994, Dylan has published seven books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. As a musician, Dylan has sold more than 100 and npsp, million records, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He has also received numerous awards including 11 Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. Dylan 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 President Barack Obama. In 2016, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. Life and Career Origins and Musical Beginnings Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman, Hebrew name Shabtizisul Ben Avraham, in St. Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Range west of Lake Superior. He has a younger brother, David. Dylan's paternal grandparents, Zygman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa, in the Russian Empire, now Ukraine, to the United States following the anti-Semitic pogroms of 1905. His maternal grandparents, Ben and Florence Stone, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the United States in 1902.In his autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. 1, Dylan wrote that his paternal grandmother's maiden name was Kirgiz and her family originated from Kazmen district of Kars province in northeastern Turkey. Dylan's father, Abram Zimmerman and Ndash, an electric appliance shop owner and Ndash, and mother, Beatrice Bady Stone, were part of a small, close-knit Jewish community. They lived in Duluth until Robert was six, when his father had polio and the family returned to his mother's hometown, Hibbing, where they lived for the rest of Robert's childhood. In his early years he listened to the radio first to blues and country stations from Shreveport, Louisiana, and later, when he was a teenager, to rock and roll. He formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School. In the Golden Courts, he performed covers of songs by Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Their performance of Danny and the Junior's rock and roll is here to stay at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone. In 1959, his high school yearbook carried the caption Robert Zimmerman, to join Little Richard. The same year, as Elston Gunn, he performed two dates with Bobby V, playing piano and clapping. In his autobiography, Dylan described this period as a lot of halting and waiting, little acknowledgement, little affirmation. He recounts how he was encouraged by a compliment from flamboyant wrestler Gorgeous George.Zimmerman and his band were playing in the lobby of the Veterans Memorial Building in Hibbing when it was hosting a wrestling match, but no one was paying much attention.He writes, quote the great wrestler roared in like the storm, didn't go through the backstage area, he came through the lobby of the building and he seemed like 40 men. It was Gorgeous George, in all his magnificent glory, he didn't break stride, but he looked at me, eyes flashing with moonshine. He winked and seemed to mouth the phrase you're making it come alive. For the young Zimmerman, it was all the recognition and encouragement I would need for years to come. In September 1959, he moved to Minneapolis and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. His focus on rock and roll gave way to American folk music. In 1985, he said. Quotation The thing about rock and 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. Living at the Jewish-centric fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu House Zimmerman began to perform at the Ten And Nbsp, a clock scholar, a coffee house a few blocks from campus, and became involved in the Dinky Town Folk Music Circuit. During his Dinky Town days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as Bob Dylan. In his memoir, Dylan said he hit upon using this less common variant for Dylan And Ndash, a surname he had considered adopting And Ndash, when he unexpectedly saw some poems by Dylan Thomas. 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.  This is The Land of the Free. 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, who was seriously ill with Huntington's disease in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. 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. 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 1. From February 1961, Dylan played at clubs around Greenwich Village. He befriended and picked up material from folk singers there, including Dave VanAndenbsp, Ronk, Fred Neal, Adetta, The New Lost City Ramblers, and Irish musicians The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Macam. In September, Dylan gained public recognition when Robert Shelton wrote a review in The New York Times of a show at Gerties Folk City. 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. Hammond signed Dylan to Columbia Records in October. The performances on his first Columbia album, Bob Dylan, in March 1962, consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel with two original compositions. The album sold only 5,000 in its first year, just enough to break even. Within Columbia Records, some referred to the singer as Hammond's Folly and suggested dropping his contract, but Hammond defended Dylan and was supported by Johnny Cash. 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. While working for Columbia, Dylan recorded under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt for Broadside, a folk magazine and record label. Dylan used the pseudonym Bob Landy to record as a piano player on The Blues Project, a 1964 anthology album by Electra Records.Astitum Porterhouse, Dylan played harmonica on Ramblin Jack Elliott's 1964 album Jack Elliott. Dylan made two important career moves in August 1962, he legally changed his name to Robert Dylan, and he signed a management contract with Albert Grossman. In June 1961, Dylan had signed an agreement with Roy Silver. In 1962, Grossman paid Silver $10,000 to become sole manager. Grossman remained Dylan's manager until 1970, and was notable for his sometimes confrontational personality and for protective loyalty. Dylan said, he was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker Figuri and NBSP, you could smell him coming. 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. Dylan made his first trip to the United Kingdom from December 1962 to January 1963. He had been invited by TV director Philip Seville to appear in a drama, Madhouse on Castle Street, which Seville was directing for BBC Television. At the end of the play, Dylan performed Blow-In in the Wind, one of its first public performances.The film recording of Madhouse on Castle Street was destroyed by the BBC in 1968. While in London, Dylan performed at London Folk Clubs, including The Troubadour, Les Cousins and Bungies.He also learned material from UK performers, including Martin Carthy. By the time of Dylan's second album, The Free Wheelan 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. Oxford Town, for example, was an account of James Meredith Sordeel as the first black student to risk enrolment at the University of Mississippi. The first song on the Free Wheelan album, Blow-In in the Wind, partly derived its melody from the traditional slave song, No More Auction Block, while its lyrics questioned the social and political status quo. The song was widely recorded by other artists and became a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary. Another Free Wheelan song, A Hard Rain's Agony 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. Like Blow-In in the Wind, A Hard Rain's Agony Fall marked a new direction in songwriter, blending a stream of consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with traditional folk form. Dylan's topical songs enhanced his early reputation, and he came to be seen as more than just a songwriter. Janet Maslin wrote of Free Wheelan, �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.� Free Wheelan also included love songs and surreal talking blues. Humor was an important part of Dylan's persona, and the range of material on the album impressed listeners, including the Beatles. George Harrison said of the album, �We just played it, just wore it out.� The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude it was incredibly original and wonderful. 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.� 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. Baez was influential in bringing Dylan to prominence by recording several of his early songs and inviting him on stage during her concerts. �It didn�t take long before people got it, that he was pretty damned special,� says Baez. Others who had hits with Dylan�s songs in the early 1960s included The Birds, Sunny and 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.� Mixed up confusion, recorded during the freewheeling 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 son records.� 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 talking John Birch paranoid blues was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Rather than comply with censorship, Dylan refused to appear. By this time, Dylan and Baez were prominent in the civil rights movement, singing together at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. Dylan�s third album, The Times They Are a Change in, reflected a more politicized and cynical Dylan. 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 Brecht Yen and the lonesome death of Hattie Carroll � the death of black hotel barmaid Hattie Carroll, at the hands of young white socialite William Zanzinger. 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. During the Nashville skyline sessions in 1969, Dylan and Johnny Cash recorded a duet of the song which has not been released. By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements. Accepting the Idtom Payne 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. Another site of Bob Dylan, recorded on a single evening in June 1964, had a lighter mood. The humorous Dylan re-emerged on I Shall Be Free No And N' Bsp, 10 and Motor Psycho 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. 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 Alan Ginsberg as chains of flashing images, 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. 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 beetle boots. A London reporter wrote, �Hair that would set the teeth of a Coman Edge. A loud shirt that would dim the neon lights of Lester Square. He looks like an undernourished cockatoo.� 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.� Going Electric Dylan�s late March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home was another leap, featuring his first recordings with electric instruments. The first single, Subterranean Homesick Blues, owed much to Chuck Berry�s too much monkey business, its free association lyrics described as �harkening back to the energy of beat poetry� and as a forerunner of rap and hip-hop. The song was provided with an early video, which opened D. A. Penny Baker�s Cinema Verité presentation of Dylan�s 1965 tour of Great Britain, Don�t Look Back. Instead of miming, Dylan illustrated the lyrics by throwing cue cards containing key words from the song on the ground. Penny Baker said the sequence was Dylan�s idea, and it has been imitated in music videos and advertisements. The second side of Bringing It All Back Home contained four long songs on which Dylan accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. Mr. Tambourine Mann became one of his best-known songs when the birds recorded an electric version that reached number one in the U.S. and U.K. It�s All Over Now, Baby Blue and It�s All Right Ma, I�m Only Bleeding,� were two of Dylan�s most important compositions. In 1965, headlining the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed his first electric set since high school with a pickup group featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar and Al Cooper on organ. 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 booze 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.� An alternative account claims audience members were upset by poor sound and a short set. This account is supported by Cooper and one of the directors of the festival, who reports his recording proves the only booze were in reaction to the MC�s announcement that there was only enough time for a short set. Nevertheless, Dylan�s performance provoked a hostile response from the folk music establishment. In the September issue of Sing Out, Ewan McColl 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 teenager�?� Only a completely non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pop of pop music, could have fallen for such 10th rate drivel. 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, and it has been interpreted as Dylan�s put-down of former friends from the folk community friends he had known in clubs along West 4th Street. Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde en Blonde In July 1965, the single �Like a Rolling Stone� peaked at 2 in the U.S. and at 4 in the U.K. 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.� In 2004 and in 2011, Rolling Stone listed it as number one of the 500 greatest songs of all time. The song opened Dylan�s next album, Highway 61 Revisited, named after the road that led from Dylan�s Minnesota to the musical Hot Bed of New Orleans. The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, flavoured by Mike Bloomfield�s blues guitar and Al Cooper�s organ riffs. Desolation Row, backed by acoustic guitar and understated bass, 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. In support of the album, Dylan was booked for two U.S. concerts with Al Cooper and Harvey Brooks from his studio crew and Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, former members of Ronnie Hawkins�s backing band The Hawks. 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 favourable. From September 24, 1965, in Austin, Texas, Dylan toured the U.S. and Canada for six months, backed by the five musicians from The Hawks who became known as the band. 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 Cooper came from New York City to play on the sessions. The Nashville sessions produced the double-album Blonde en Blonde, 1966, featuring what Dylan called that �thin wild mercury� sound. Cooper 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. On November 22, 1965, Dylan secretly married 25-year-old former model Sarah Lones. Some of Dylan�s friends, including Ramblin� Jack Elliott, say that, immediately after the event, Dylan denied he was married.Journalist Nora Ephron made the news public in the New York Post in February 1966 with the headline Hush. Bob Dylan is Wednesday. 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 hand clapped. The tour culminated in a raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England on May 17, 1966. A recording of this concert was released in 1998, the bootleg series Volume 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 want NBSP.  During his 1966 tour, Dylan was described as �exhausted and acting as if on a death trip.� D. A. Penny Baker, the filmmaker accompanying the tour, described Dylan as �taking a lot of amphetamine and who knows what else.� In a 1969 interview with Jan Winner, Dylan said, �I was on the road for almost five years. It wore me down. I was on drugs, a lot of things and NBSP, just to keep going, you know.� 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 wily and NBSP. I had about a $25 a day habit and I kicked it.� 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. 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. His publisher, Macmillan, was demanding a manuscript of the poem-slash-novel Tarantula.Manager Albert Grossman had scheduled a concert tour for the latter part of the year. On July 29, 1966, Dylan crashed his 500 cubic centimetres 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. Mystery still surrounds the circumstances of the accident since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized.Dylan�s biographers have written that the crash offered Dylan the chance to escape the pressures around him.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.� Dylan withdrew from public and, apart from a few appearances, did not tour again for almost eight years. Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began to edit D. A. Penny Baker�s film of his 1966 tour. A rough cut was shown to ABC Television and rejected as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience. The film was subsequently titled �Eat the Document� on bootleg copies, and it has been screened at a handful of film festivals. In 1967 he began recording with The Hawks at his home and in the basement of The Hawks� nearby house, Big Pink. These songs, initially demos for other artists to record, provided hits for Julie Driscoll and the Brian Auger Trinity, �This Wheels on Fire, The Birds, 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. 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, beginning a long recording and performing career of their own. In October and November 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville. Back in the studio after 19 months, he was accompanied by Charlie McCoy on bass Kenny Buttrey on drums and Pete Drake on steel guitar.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. It included �All Along the Watchtower�, with lyrics derived from the book of Isaiah, 21,59. The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose version Dylan acknowledged as definitive. Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, and Dylan made his first live appearance in 20 months at a Guthrie Memorial Concert held at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968, where he was backed by the band. 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.� Variety wrote, �Dylan is definitely doing something that can be called singing.� Somehow he has managed to add an octave to his range. During one recording session, Dylan and Cash recorded a series of duets but only their version of Dylan�s Girl from the North Country was released on the album. In May 1969, Dylan appeared on the first episode of Johnny Cash�s television show and sang a duet with Cash of Girl from the North Country, with solos of Living the Blues and I threw it all away. Dylan next travelled to England to top the bill at the Isle of White Festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at the Woodstock Festival closer to his home. 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. It was a double LP including few original songs, and was poorly received. In October 1970, Dylan released New Morning, considered a return to form. This album included Day of the Locusts, a song in which Dylan gave an account of receiving an honorary degree from Princeton University on June 9, 1970. In November 1968, Dylan had CEO written �I�d have you anytime� with George Harrison, 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. Between March 16 and 19, 1971, Dylan reserved three days at Blue Rock, a small studio in Greenwich Village, to record with Leon Russell. These sessions resulted in watching the river flow and a new recording of When I Paint My Masterpiece. 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. Dylan contributed piano and harmony to Steve Goodman�s album, �Somebody Else�s Troubles, under the pseudonym Robert Milkwood Thomas, referencing the play Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas and his own previous name, in September 1972. In 1972, Dylan signed to Sam Peckinpaw�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. Despite the film�s failure at the box office, the song �Knockin� on Heaven�s Door� became one of Dylan�s most covered songs. Also in 1972, Dylan protested the move to deport John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who had been convicted of possessing cannabis, by sending a letter to the U.S. immigration service, in part, hooray for John and Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The countries got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko�s day. Return to Turing. Dylan began 1973 by signing with a new label, David Jeffins Asylum Records, an island in the U.K., 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. As one critic described it, the song projected �something hymnal and heartfelt� that spoke of the father in Dylan, and Dylan himself commented, �I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental.� 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. In January 1974, Dylan returned to Turing 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, according to Clive Davis, Columbia Records sent word they will spare nothing to bring Dylan back into the fold. Dylan had second thoughts about Asylum, miffed that while there had been millions of unfulfilled ticket requests for the 1974 tour, Jeffin had sold only 700,000 copies of Planet Waves.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. Dylan delayed the release and re-recorded half the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production assistants from his brother, David Zimmerman. 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. In Rolling Stone, John Landor wrote that the record has been made with typical shoddiness. 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 logarithm plagued excesses of his mid-1960s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years. Novelist Rick Moody called it the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape. In the middle of that year, Dylan wrote a ballad championing boxer Reuben Hurricane Carter, imprisoned for a triple murder in Patterson, 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 US Billboard chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the Rolling Thunder Review. The tour featured about 100 performers and supporters from the Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone Burnett, Ramblin Jack Elliott, Joni Mitchell, David Mansfield, Roger McGinn, Mick Ronson, Joan Baez and Scarlett Rivera, whom Dylan discovered walking down the street, her violin case on her back. 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. 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 a travelogue-like narrative style, showing the influence of his new collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy. 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. The 1975 tour with the review provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film Rinaldo and Clara, a sprawling narrative mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received poor, sometimes scathing, reviews. Later in that year, a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, was more widely released. 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. In 1976, Dylan wrote and duet on sign language for Eric Clapton's No Reason to Cry. 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 2 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. Reviews were mixed. Robert Christgaw awarded the album AC and Rating, giving the album a derisory review, 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. When Dylan brought the tour to the US in September 1978, the press described the look and sound as a Las Vegas tour. The 1978 tour grossed more than $20 and nbsp, 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 nbsp, and it costs a lot to get divorced in California. 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. 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. 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 song's strengths. Christian Period In the late 1970s, Dylan became a born-again Christian and released two albums of contemporary gospel music. Slow Train Coming, 1979, featured the guitar accompaniment of Mark Knopfler, of Dire Straits, and was produced by veteran Rand B. producer Jerry Wexler. Wexler said that 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.� Dylan won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the song �Gotta Serve Somebody.� His second Christian-themed 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 2 and Inferior 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, �Dylan's Christianity was unpopular with some fans and musicians. Shortly before his murder, John Lennon recorded �Serve Yourself� in response to Dylan's �Gotta Serve Somebody.� 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. 1980s. In late 1980, Dylan briefly played concerts built as a musical retrospective, restoring popular 1960s songs to the repertoire. Shot of Love, recorded early the next year, 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. 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. 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 MacTell, a tribute to the Dead Blues musician and an evocation of African-American history, Foot of Pride and Lord Protect My Child. These three songs were released on the bootleg series Vol. 1-3, Rare and Unreleased, 1961-1991. Between July 1984 and March 1985, Dylan recorded Empire Burlesque. Arthur Baker, who had remixed hits for Bruce Springsteen and Cindy 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. 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 1 billion people, I hope that some of the money and nbsp, maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe and nbsp, 1 or 2 million, maybe and nbsp, and use it to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks. 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. In April 1986, Dylan made a foray into rap music when he added vocals to the opening verse of Street Rock, featured on Curtis Blow's album Kingdom Blow. Dylan's next studio album, Knocked Outloaded, in July 1986 contained three covers, by Little Junior Parker, Chris Christopherson and the Gospel hymn Precious Memories, plus three collaborations with, Tom Petty, Sam Shepard and Carol 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. It was the first Dylan album since Freewheelen, 1963, to fail to make the top 50. Since then, some critics have called the 11-minute epic that Dylan Cio wrote with Sam Shepard, Brownsville Girl, a work of genius. 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 and the Dead. This received negative reviews, all music said, quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or The Grateful Dead. 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. In 1987, Dylan starred in Richard Marquan'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. 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 Hyatt's The Usual. The film was a critical and commercial flop. 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. The album Down in the Groove in May 1988 sold even more unsuccessfully than his previous studio album. 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. The critical and commercial disappointment of that album was swiftly followed by the success of The Traveling Wilburys. Dylan Cio founded the band with George Harrison, Jeff Lynn, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty, and in late 1988 their multi-platinum Traveling Wilburys Volume 1 reached 3 on the US album chart featuring songs that were described as Dylan's most accessible compositions in years. Despite Orbison's death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990 with the title Traveling Wilburys Volume 3. Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with Oh Mercy produced by Daniel Lenoy. 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. 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 rye comment on the expectations of critics and fans. The religious imagery of Ring Them Bells struck some critics as a reaffirmation of faith. 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. Sidemen on the album included George Harrison, Slash from Guns N' Roses, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Elton John. Despite the lineup, the record received bad reviews and sold poorly. In 1991, Dylan received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from American actor Jack Nicholson. 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.� This sentiment was subsequently revealed to be a quote from 19th-century German-Jewish intellectual, Rabbi Sampson Raphael Hirsch. Over the next few years Dylan returned 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, 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. The album from it, MTV Unplugged, included John Browne, an unreleased 1962 song of how enthusiasm for war ends in mutilation and disillusionment. Dylan's longtime road manager Victor Maymudes has claimed that the singer quit drinking alcohol in 1994. Maymudes felt that Dylan sobering up made him more introverted and a little less social. With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed in on his Minnesota ranch, Dylan booked recording time with Daniel Lanoy at Miami's Criteria Studios in January 1997. The subsequent recording sessions were, by some accounts, fraught with musical tension. 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.� He was back on the road by mid-year, 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�. In September Dylan released the new Lanoy-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.� This collection of complex songs won him his first solo album of the year Grammy Award. 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 discomfort the powerful. 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 1st of June and ending September 18. The collaboration was generally well received, with just one critic, Seth Rogovoy, from the Eberkshire Eagle, questioning the collaboration. 20 HUNDREDS Dylan commenced the 20 hundreds 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. The Oscar, by some reports a facsimile, tours with him, presiding over shows perched atop an amplifier. Love and Theft was released on September 11, 2001. Recorded with his touring band, Dylan produced the album himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost. The album was critically well received and earned nominations for several Grammy Awards. Critics noted that Dylan was widening his musical palette to include rockabilly, western swing, jazz, and even lounge ballads. Love and Theft generated controversy when The Wall Street Journal pointed out similarities between the album�s lyrics and Japanese author Janichi Saga�s book Confessions of a Yakuza. 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 Dylan also released the film Masked and Anonymous, which he co-wrote with director Larry Charles under the alias Sergei Petrov. Dylan played the central character in the film, Jack Fate, alongside a cast that included Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz and John Goodman. The film polarized critics, many dismissed it as an incoherent mess, a few treated it as a serious work of art. In October 2004, Dylan published the first part of his autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. 1. Confounding Expectations, 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 album�s New Morning, 1970, and Elmercy, 1989. The book reached No. 2 on the New York Times� hardcover non-fiction bestseller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award. No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese�s acclaimed film biography of Dylan, was first broadcast on September 26, 2007, 2005, on BBC Two in the UK and PBS in the US. The documentary focuses on the period from Dylan�s arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle crash in 1966, featuring interviews with Susie Rotolo, Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples and Dylan himself. The film received a Peabody Award in April 2006 and a Columbia Dupont Award in January 2007. The accompanying soundtrack featured unreleased songs from Dylan�s early career. 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 vs. 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. 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. Dylan played classic and obscure records from the 1930s to the present day, including contemporary artists as diverse as Blur, Prince, LOL 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. 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 You. This led to speculation that Dylan�s radio excursion had ended. On August 29, 2006, Dylan released his Modern Times album. Despite some coarsening of Dylan�s voice, a critic for The Guardian characterized his singing on the album as �a cataral death rattle,� 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. Modern Times entered the U.S. charts at No. 1, making it Dylan�s first album to reach that position since 1970�s I.X.S. Desire. 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. Nominated for three Grammy Awards, Modern Times won Best Contemporary Folk Slash 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, and by Uncut in the UK. 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. In August 2007, the award-winning film Biography of Dylan I Am Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes, was released bearing the tagline inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan. The movie used six different actors to represent different aspects of Dylan�s life, Christian Bale, Kate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Wishaw.Dylan�s previously unreleased 1967 recording from which the film takes its name was released for the first time on the film�s original soundtrack. All other tracks are covers of Dylan�s songs, specially recorded for the movie by a diverse range of artists, including Sonic Youth, Eddie Vedder, Mason Jennings, Steven. Machmas, Jeff Tweedy, Karen Oh, Willie Nelson, Kat Power, Richie Havens, and Tom Verlin. On October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released the triple CD retrospective album Dylan, anthologizing his entire career under the Dylan 07 logo.  This was the first time Dylan had sanctioned a remix of one of his classic recordings. 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. Three years later, in October 2007, he participated in a multimedia campaign for the 2008 Cadillac Escalade. 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 43. 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. In October 2008, Columbia released the bootleg series Volume 8 and NBSP, Tell Tale Signs 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 Elmercy to Modern Times, as well as soundtrack contributions and collaborations with David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley. The pricing of the album the two CD set went on sale for $18.99 and the three CD version for $1.29.99 led to complaints about rip-off packaging from some fans and commentators. The release was widely acclaimed by critics. 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. 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. Nine of the ten songs on the album are credited as CO-RIDDEN by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter. The album received largely favorable reviews, 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. In its first week of release, the album reached No. 1 in the Billboard 200 chart in the US, making Bob Dylan, 67 years of age, the oldest artist to ever debut at No. 1 on that chart. It also reached No. 1 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 No. 1 albums in the UK chart. 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. 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 Program. The album received generally favorable reviews. The New Yorker commented that Dylan had welded a pre-rock musical sound to some of his crokiest 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. In USA Today, Edna Gunderson pointed out that Dylan was revisiting yuletide styles popularized by Nat King Cole, Mel Tormé and the Ray Kahniff singers. Gunderson concluded that Dylan couldn't sound more sentimental or sincere. 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.  You have to play them straight too. 2010s Tempest On October 18, 2010, Dylan released Volume 9 of his bootleg series, The Whitmark Demos. This comprised 47 demo recordings of songs taped between 1962 and 1964 for Dylan's earliest music publishers, leads music in 1962, and Whitmark 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. The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a Metascore of 86, indicating universal acclaim. 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. On April 12, 2011, Legacy Recordings released Bob Dylan in concert and NBSP, Brandeis University 1963 taped at Brandeis University on May 10, 1963, two weeks prior to the release of The Free Wheel and 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 says it 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. 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, the University of Vienna, and the University of Bristol 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. 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 Jacob Dylan, LeVon Helm, Nora Jones, Jack White and others. 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. On September 11, 2012, Dylan released his 35th studio album, Tempest. The album features a tribute to John Lennon, Role on John, and the title track is a 14-minute song about the sinking of the Titanic. 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 folk's words like a freestyle rapper on fire. Hermes called Tempest one of Dylan's weirdest albums ever, an opined, it may also be the single darkest record in Dylan's catalogue. The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a score of 83 out of 100, indicating universal acclaim. On August 27, 2013, Columbia Records released Volume 10 of Dylan's bootleg series, another self-portrait, 1969-1971. 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 White Festival in 1969. Another self-portrait received favorable reviews, earning a score of 81 on the critical aggregator, Metacritic, indicating universal acclaim. All music critic Tom Jurak wrote, For fans, this is more than a curiosity, it's an indispensable addition to the catalogue. On November 4, 2013, Columbia Records released Bob Dylan, complete album collection, Vaughn. 1. A boxed set containing all 35 of Dylan's studio albums, six albums of live recordings, and a collection, entitled Side Tracks, of singles, songs from films and non-album material. The box includes new album by album liner notes written by Clinton Halen 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. 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 Hamon, allowed viewers to switch between 16 simulated TV channels, all featuring characters who are lip-syncing the lyrics of the 48-year-old song. 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 Super Bowl commercial generated controversy and op-ed pieces discussing the protectionist implications of his words, and whether the singer had sold out to corporate interests. 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 artifacts from this period. In December 2013, the Fender Stratocaster which Dylan had played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival fetched $965,000, the second highest price paid for a guitar. In June 2014, Dylan's hand-written lyrics of Like a Rolling Stone, his 1965 hit single, fetched $2 million at auction, a record for a popular music manuscript. On October 28, 2014, Simon & Schuster published a massive 960-page, 13½-pound edition of Dylan's lyrics, lyrics, since 1962. The book was edited by literary critic Christopher Ricks, Julie Nemro and Lisa Nemro, to offer variant versions of Dylan's songs, sourced from outtakes 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 and Schuster�s president and publisher. On November 4, 2014, Columbia Records Slash Legacy Recordings released The Basement Tapes Complete by Bob Dylan and the band. These 138 tracks in a 6 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. Shadows in the Night and Fallen Angels On February 3, 2015, Dylan released Shadows in the Night, featuring 10 songs written between 1923 and 1963, which have been described as part of the Great American Songbook. 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.Dylan explained, �I don�t see myself as covering these songs in any way. They�ve been covered enough. Buried, as a matter of 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.� In an interview, Dylan said he had been thinking about making this record since hearing Willie Nelson�s 1978 album Stardust. Shadows in the Night received favorable reviews, scoring 82 on the critical aggregator Metacritic, which indicates universal acclaim. Critics praised the restrained instrumental backings and Dylan�s singing, saying that the material had elicited his best vocal performances in recent years.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-and-roll early youth.� 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.� The album debuted at number one in the UK Albums chart in its first week of release. On October 5, 2015, IBM launched a marketing campaign for its Watson computer system which featured Dylan. Dylan is seen conversing with the computer which says it has read all his lyrics and reports, �My analysis shows that your major themes are that time passes and love fades.� Dylan replies, �That sounds about right.� On November 6, 2015, Sony Music released the bootleg series Vol. 12, The Cutting Edge 1965-1966. This work consists of previously unreleased material from the three albums Dylan recorded between January 1965 and March 1966, bringing it all back home, Highway 61 revisited and blonde on blonde. The records have been released in three formats, a 2 CD Best of Version, a 6 CD Deluxe Edition, and an 18 CD Collectors Edition in a limited edition of 5,000 units. On Dylan�s website the Collectors Edition was described as �containing� every single note recorded by Bob Dylan in the studio in 1965-1966. The critical aggregator website met a critic awarded Cutting Edge a score of 99, indicating universal acclaim. The Best of the Cutting Edge entered the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart at No. 1 on November 18, based on its first week sales. On March 2, 2016, it was announced that Dylan had sold an extensive archive of about 6,000 items to the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the University of Tulsa. It was reported that the sale price was an estimated $15 million to $20 million, and the archive comprises notebooks, drafts of Dylan lyrics, recordings and correspondence. Filmed material in the collection includes 30 hours of outtakes from the 1965 tour documentary Don�t Look Back, 30 hours of footage shot on Dylan�s legendary 1966 electric tour, and 50 hours shot on the 1975 Rolling Thunder Review. The archive will be housed at Helmeric Center for American Research, a facility at the Gilcrease Museum. On May 20, 2016, Dylan released his 37th studio album, Fallen Angels, which was described as �a direct continuation of the work of uncovering the great songbook that he began on last year�s Shadows in the Night. The album contained 12 songs by classic songwriters such as Harold Arlen, Sammy Kahn and Johnny Mercer, 11 of which had been recorded by Sinatra.Jim Farber wrote in Entertainment Weekly, tellingly, �Dylan delivers these songs of love lost and cherished not with a burning passion but with the wistfulness of experience. Their memory songs now, entombed with a present sense of commitment. Released just four days ahead of his 75th birthday, they couldn�t be more age-appropriate. The album received a score of 79 on critical aggregator website Metacritic, denoting generally favorable reviews. On October 13, 2016, the Nobel Prize Committee announced it had awarded Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. On November 11, 2016, Legacy Recordings released a 36 CD set, Bob Dylan, the 1966 live recordings, including every known recording of Bob Dylan�s 1966 concert tour. Legacy Recordings president Adam Block said, �While doing the archival research for the cutting-edge 1965-1966 last year�s box set of Dylan�s mid-60s studio sessions, we were continually struck by how great his 1966 live recordings really are.� The recordings commence with the concert in White Plains, New York on February 5, 1966, and end with the Royal Albert Hall concert in London on May 27. The liner notes for the set are by Clinton Halen, author of the book, Judas, From Forest Hills to the Free Trade Hall, a historical view of Dylan�s Big Boo, a study of the 1966 tour. The New York Times reported most of the concerts had never been heard in any form, and described the set as �a monumental addition to the corpus.� On January 31, 2017, Dylan announced the release of a triple album, Triplicate, on March 31. The album will comprise 30 new recordings of classic American songs, including �As Time Goes By� by Herman Huppfeld and �Stormy Weather� by Harold Arlen and Ted Kohler. The album was recorded in Hollywood�s Capitol Studios and features Dylan�s touring band. Triplicate will be Dylan�s 38th studio album. Never-Ending Tour The Never-Ending Tour commenced on June 7, 1988, 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. By May 2013, Dylan and his band had played more than 2,500 shows, anchored by longtime bassist Tony Garny, drummer George Reisile, multi-instrumentalist Donnie Harron, and guitarist Charlie Sexton. To the dismay of some of his audience, Dylan�s performances remain unpredictable as he alters his arrangements and changes his vocal approach night after night. 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. Others have criticized his live performances for mangling and spitting out the greatest lyrics ever written so that they are effectively unrecognizable, and giving so little to the audience that it is difficult to understand what he is doing on stage at all. Dylan�s performances in China in April 2011 generated controversy. Some criticized 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. 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. 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 three 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. At the beginning of 2017, Dylan announced his forthcoming tour of Europe, commencing in Stockholm on April 1, and ending in Dublin on May 11. Visual Artist The cover of Dylan�s album Self Portrait, 1970, is a reproduction of a painting of a face by Dylan. Another of his paintings is reproduced on the cover of the 1974 album Planet Waves. In 1994 Random House published �Drawn Blank,� a book of Dylan�s drawings. In 2007, the first public exhibition of Dylan�s paintings, the �Drawn Blank� series, opened at the Kunstsam Lungen in Chemnitz, Germany, it showcased more than 200 watercolours and washes made from the original drawings. The exhibition coincided with the publication of Bob Dylan, the �Drawn Blank� series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series. From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, the Brazil series. In July 2011, a leading contemporary art gallery, Gagogion Gallery, announced their representation of Dylan�s paintings. An exhibition of Dylan�s art, the Asia series, opened at the Gagogion Madison Avenue Gallery on September 20, displaying Dylan�s paintings of scenes in China and the Far East. The New York Times reported that some fans and delaynologists 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. The Magnum Photo Agency confirmed that Dylan had licensed the reproduction rights of these photographs. Dylan�s second show at the Gagogion Gallery, Revisionist Art, opened in November 2012. The show consisted of 30 paintings, transforming and satirizing popular magazines, including Playboy and Bay by Talk. In February 2013, Dylan exhibited the New Orleans series of paintings at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. In August 2013, Britain�s National Portrait Gallery in London hosted Dylan�s first major UK exhibition, Face Value, featuring 12 pastel portraits. In November 2013, the Halcyon Gallery in London mounted Mood Swings, an exhibition in which Dylan displayed seven wrought iron gates he had made. 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.  And in some ways there is no difference.� In November 2016, the Halcyon Gallery featured a collection of drawings, watercolors and acrylic works by Dylan. The exhibition, The Beaten Path, depicted American landscapes and urban scenes, inspired by Dylan�s travels across the USA. The show was well-reviewed by Vanity Fair, The Telegraph, and Asia Times Online, and is scheduled to tour in 2017. Since 1994, Dylan has published seven books of paintings and drawings. Bibliography Dylan has published Tarantula, a work of prose poetry, Chronicles, Volume 1, the first part of his memoirs, several books of the lyrics of his songs, and seven books of his art. He has been the subject of many biographies and critical studies. Accolades Dylan has won many awards throughout his career including the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, 12 Grammy Awards, 1 Academy Award and 1 Golden Globe Award. He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. In May 2000, Dylan received the Polar Music Prize from Sweden�s King Carl XVI. In June 2007, Dylan received the Prince of Asturias Award in the arts category. Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in May 2012. In February 2015, Dylan accepted the Moussi Cares person of the Year Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, in recognition of his philanthropic and artistic contributions to society. In November 2013, Dylan received the Accolade of Ligeandonar from the French Education Minister Oralie-Philippe Petit. The Nobel Prize Committee announced on October 13, 2016 that it would be awarding Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. The New York Times reported, �Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901. It is the first time since 1993 that the Nobel Committee has offered the award in the category of American Literature. On October 21, a member of the Swedish Academy, writer Per Wastberg, termed Dylan rude and arrogant for ignoring the Nobel Committee�s attempts to contact him. Academy Permanent Secretary Sarah Danious answered, �The Swedish Academy has never held a view on a prize-winner�s decision in this context, neither will it now. Dylan subsequently contacted the Nobel Foundation, telling Danious by phone, �The news about the Nobel Prize left me speechless. I appreciate the honour so much.� After two weeks of speculation about Dylan�s silence concerning the Nobel Prize, he said in an interview with Edna Gunderson that getting the award was, �amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that.� On November 17, the Swedish Academy announced that Dylan would not travel to Stockholm for the Nobel Prize ceremony due to �pre-existing commitments.� At the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm on December 10, 2016, Dylan�s speech was given by Azita Rajai, U.S. Ambassador to Sweden. The speech ended, �Like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavours and dealing with all aspects of life�s mundane matters. Who are the best musicians for these songs? Am I recording in the right studio? Is this song in the right key? Some things never change, even in four hundred years. Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, �Are my songs literature?� So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer. Patty Smith accepted Dylan�s Nobel with a �transcendent performance� of his song �A Hard Rain��s Agana Fall, to orchestral accompaniment. Personal Life Romantic Relationships Susie Rotolo Dylan�s first serious relationship was with artist Susie Rotolo, a daughter of American Communist Party radicals. According to Dylan, �She was the most erotic thing I�d ever seen.� The air was suddenly filled with banana leaves. We started talking and my head started to spin. Rotolo was photographed arm-in-arm with Dylan on the cover of his album The Free Wheelan Bob Dylan. Critics have connected Rotolo to some of Dylan�s early love songs, including �Don�t Think Twice� �It�s All Right.� The relationship ended in 1964. In 2008, Rotolo published a memoir about her life in Greenwich Village in the 1960s, A Free Wheelan Time. Joan Baez When Joan Baez first met Dylan in April 1961, she had already released her first album and was acclaimed as �The Queen of Folk.� On hearing Dylan perform his song with God on our side, Baez later said, �I never thought anything so powerful could come out of that little toad.� In July 1963, Baez invited Dylan to join her on stage at the Newport Folk Festival, setting the scene for similar duets over the next two years. By the time of Dylan�s 1965 tour of the UK, their romantic relationship had begun to fizzle out, as captured in D. A. Penny Baker�s documentary film �Don�t Look Back.� Baez later toured with Dylan as a performer on his Rolling Thunder review in 1975-76, and sang four songs with Dylan on the live album of the tour, �Bob Dylan Live 1975�, the Rolling Thunder review. Baez appeared with Dylan in the one-hour TV special �Hard Rain�, filmed at Fort Collins, Colorado, in May 1976. Baez also starred as the woman in white in the film �Ronaldo and Clara, 1978�, directed by Dylan and filmed during the Rolling Thunder review. Dylan and Baez toured together again in 1984 with Carlos Santana. Baez recalled her relationship with Dylan in Martin Scorsese�s documentary film �No Direction Home�, 2005. Baez wrote about Dylan in two autobiographies �Admiringly in Daybreak�, 1968, and �Less Admiringly in An A Voice to Sing With�, 1987. Baez�s �relationship� with Dylan is the subject of her song Diamonds and Rust, which has been described as �an acute portrait of Dylan.� Sarah Dylan Dylan married Sarah Lones, who had worked as a model and a secretary to Drew Associates, on November 22, 1965. Their first child, Jesse Byron Dylan, was born on January 6, 1966, and they had three more children, Annaly, Samuel Isaac Abram, and Jacob Luke. Dylan also adopted Sarah's daughter from a prior marriage, Maria Lones, later Dylan, born October 21, 1961. Bob and Sarah Dylan were divorced on June 29, 1977. Maria married musician Peter Himmelman in 1988. In the 1990s, Jacob became well known as the lead singer of the band The Wall Flowers. Jesse Dylan is a film director and a successful businessman. Carolyn Dennis Dylan married his backup singer Carolyn Dennis, often professionally known as Carol Dennis, on June 4, 1986. Desiree Gabrielle Dennis Dylan, their daughter had been born on January 31, 1986. The couple divorced in October 1992. Their marriage and child remained a closely guarded secret until the publication of Howard Sone's biography, Down the Highway, The Life of Bob Dylan, in 2001. Home When not touring, Dylan is believed to live primarily in Pointe du May, a promontory on the coast of Malibu, California, though he also owns property around the world. Religious Beliefs Growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, Dylan and his family were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community, and in May 1954 Dylan had his bar mitzvah. Around the time of his 30th birthday, in 1971, Dylan visited Israel, and also met Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the New York-based Jewish Defense League. Time magazine quoted him saying about Kahane, �He�s a really sincere guy. He�s really put it all together.� Subsequently, Dylan Down played the extent of his contact with Kahane. During the late 1970s, Dylan converted to Christianity. In November 1978, guided by his friend Mary Alice Arts, Dylan made contact with the Vineyard School of Discipleship. Vineyard pastor Ken Gullickson has recalled, �Larry Meyers and Paul Emmond went over to Bob�s house and ministered to him.� He responded by saying, �Yes he did in fact want Christ in his life.� And he prayed that day and received the Lord. From January to March 1979, Dylan attended the Vineyard Bible Study classes in Recita, California. By 1984, Dylan was distancing himself from the �Born Again� label. He told Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone magazine, �I�ve never said I�m born again.� That�s just a media term. I don�t think I�ve been an agnostic. I�ve always thought there�s a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there�s a world to come. In response to Loder�s asking whether he belonged to any church or synagogue, Dylan laughingly replied, �Not really.� �Uh, the church of the poison mind.� In 1997, he told David Gates of Newsweek, �Here�s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth, I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don�t find it anywhere else. Songs like �Let me rest on a peaceful mountain� or �I saw the light� that�s my religion. I don�t adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I�ve learned more from the songs than I�ve learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs. In an interview published in The New York Times on September 28, 1997, journalist John Perelz reported that Dylan says he now subscribes to no organized religion. Dylan has supported the HaBad Lubavitch movement, and has privately participated in Jewish religious events, including the Bar Mitzvahs of his sons and attending Huder Huttora, a HaBad Lubavitch Yeshiva. In September 1989 and September 1991, he appeared on the HaBad Telethon. On Yom Kippur in 2007 he attended Congregation Beth Tefilah, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was called to the Torah for the sixth aliyah. Dylan has continued to perform songs from his gospel albums in concert, occasionally covering traditional religious songs. He has also made passing references to his religious faith such as in a 2004 interview with 60 Minutes, when he told Ed Bradley that the only person you have to think twice about lying to is either yourself or to God. He also explained his constant touring schedule as part of a bargain he made a long time ago with the chief commander in this earth and in the world we can't see. In a 2009 interview with Bill Flanagan promoting Dylan's Christmas LP, Christmas in the Heart, Flanagan commented on the heroic performance Dylan gave of a little town of Bethlehem and that he delivered the song like a true believer. Dylan replied, Well, I am a true believer. Legacy Dylan has been described as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, musically and culturally. He was included in the Time 100, the most important people of the century where he was called master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation. In 2008, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded him a special citation for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power. President Barack Obama said of Dylan in 2012, There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music. For 20 years, academics lobbied the Swedish Academy to give Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature, which awarded it to him in 2016.Dylan became the first musician to be awarded the Literature Prize, placing him in the company of Dario F. O. Tony Morrison and Samuel Beckett. Horace Engdahl, a member of the Nobel Committee, described Dylan's place in literary history. Rolling Stone has ranked Dylan at number one in its 2015 list of the 100 greatest songwriters of all time, and listed like a Rolling Stone as the greatest song of all time in their 2011 list. In 2008, it was estimated that Dylan had sold about 120 million albums worldwide. Initially modeling his writing style on the songs of Woody Guthrie, the blues of Robert Johnson, and what he termed the architectural forms of Hank Williams' songs, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry. Paul Simon suggested that Dylan's early compositions virtually took over the folk genre, Dylan's early songs were very rich and nbsp, with strong melodies. Blowin' in the Wind has a really strong melody. He so enlarged himself through the folk background that he incorporated it for a while. He defined the genre for a while. When Dylan made his move from acoustic folk and blues music to a rock backing, the mix became more complex. For many critics, his greatest achievement was the cultural synthesis exemplified by his mid-1960s trilogy of albums bringing it all back home, Highway 61 revisited and Blonde en Blonde. In Mike Marcuse's words, Between late 1964 and the middle of 1966, Dylan created a body of work that remains unique. Owing on folk, blues, country, randbee, rock'n'roll, gospel, British beat, symbolist, modernist and beat poetry, surrealism and da-da, advertising jargon, and social commentary, Fellini and Mad Magazine, he forged a coherent and original artistic voice and vision. The beauty of these albums retains the power to shock and console. Dylan's lyrics began to receive detailed scrutiny from academics and poets. Richard F. Thomas, classics professor at Harvard University, created a freshman seminar titled Dylan in 2004 to put the artist in context of not just popular culture of the last half century, but the tradition of classical poets like Virgil and Homer. William R. Tonder O'Brien, literary scholar and professor of German and comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego, memorialized the significance of Dylan's contribution to world literature when he created a full academic course in 2009 devoted to Dylan, which analyzed and celebrated the historical, political, economic, aesthetic and cultural significance of Dylan's work. Literary critic Christopher Ricks published Dylan's Visions of Sin, a 500-page analysis of Dylan's work, and has said, I'd not have written a book about Dylan, to stand alongside my books on Milton and Keats, Tennyson and T. S. Eliot, if I didn't think Dylan a genius of and with language. Former British poet Laureate Andrew Motion suggested his lyrics should be studied in schools. The critical consensus that Dylan's songwriting was his outstanding creative achievement was articulated by Encyclopedia Britannica where his entry stated, hailed as the Shakespeare of his generation, Dylan, set the standard for lyric writing. Dylan's voice also received critical attention. New York Times critic Robert Shelton described his early vocal style as a rusty voice suggesting Guthrie's old performances, edged in gravel like Dave Van Ronks. David Bowie, in his tribute, song for Bob Dylan, described Dylan's singing as a voice like sand and glue. His voice continued to develop as he began to work with rock and roll backing bands, like Michael Gray described the sound of Dylan's vocal work on like a rolling stone as at once young and jeeringly cynical. As Dylan's voice aged during the 1980s, for some critics, it became more expressive. Christof LeBold writes in the journal Oral Tradition, Dylan's more recent broken voice enables him to present a worldview at the sonic surface of the songs this voice carries us across the landscape of a broken, fallen world. The anatomy of a broken world in Everything Is Broken, on the album O Mercy, is but an example of how the thematic concern with all things broken is grounded in a concrete sonic reality. Dylan is considered a seminal influence on many musical genres. As Edna Gunderson stated in USA Today, Dylan's musical DNA has informed nearly every simple twist of pop since 1962. Rock musician Joe Strummer praised Dylan for having laid down the template for lyric, tune, seriousness, spirituality, depth of rock music. Other major musicians who acknowledged Dylan's importance include Johnny Cash, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Pete Townsend, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen David Bowie, Brian Ferry, Nick Cave, Patty Smith, Sid Barrett, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. Dylan significantly contributed to the initial success of both the Burt's and the band, the Burt's achieved chart success with their version of Mr. Tambourine Man and the subsequent album, while the band were Dylan's backing band on his 1966 tour, recorded the basement tapes with him in 1967, and featured three previously unreleased Dylan songs on their debut album. Some critics have dissented from the view of Dylan as a visionary figure in popular music. In his book A Whoppa Loopop Allop Bamboom, Nick Cohn objected, I can't take the vision of Dylan as seer, as teenage messiah, as everything else he's been worshipped as. The way I see him, he's a minor talent with a major gift for self-hype. Australian critic Jack Marks credited Dylan with changing the persona of the rock star, but cannot be disputed is that Dylan invented the arrogant, faux-cerebral posturing that has been the dominant style in rock since, with everyone from Mick Jagger to Eminem educating themselves from the Dylan handbook. Fellow musicians also presented dissenting views. Joni Mitchell described Dylan as a plagiarist and his voice as fake in a 2010 interview in the Los Angeles Times, in response to a suggestion that she and Dylan were similar since they had both created personas. Mitchell's comment led to discussions of Dylan's use of other people's material, both supporting and criticising him. Talking to Mikkel Gilmore in Rolling Stone in 2012, Dylan responded to the allegation of plagiarism, including his use of Henry Timrod's verse in his album Modern Times by saying that it was part of the tradition. If Dylan's work in the 1960s was seen as bringing intellectual ambition to popular music critics in the 21st century described him as a figure who had greatly expanded the folk culture from which he initially emerged. Following the release of Todd Haynes' Dylan Biopic I Am Not There, J. Hoberman wrote in his 2007 Village Voice review, �Elvis might never have been born, but someone else would surely have brought the world rock and roll. No such logic accounts for Bob Dylan. No iron law of history demanded that a would-be Elvis from Hibbing, Minnesota, would swerve through the Greenwich Village folk revival to become the world's first and greatest rock and roll beatnik-bart and then having achieved fame and adoration beyond reckoning vanish into a folk tradition of his own making.� When Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the New York Times commented, in choosing a popular musician for the literary world's highest honor, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics have the same artistic value as poetry or novels. Responses varied from the sarcasm of Irvine Welch, who described it as �an ill-conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies, to the enthusiasm of Salman Rushdie who tweeted, �From Orpheus to Faiz, song and poetry have been closely linked.� Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the Bardic tradition. Great choice.