An Introduction to the Life of Bob Dylan

Is it fair to call a rose a mere flower? The answer is obviously no. The rose in its beauty and essence is far more than a mere flower. And by this same comparison it is not fair to call Bob Dylan a mere musician, a mere artist, or even a mere god. Bob Dylan is a man of whose knowledge and power raises the proverbial bar against which all other men compare. It is unfair to allow Bob Dylan to be characterized the way other men are. He is not just a son of Minnesota, an American icon of 1960s folk-rock music, and the creator of perhaps the greatest song of protest of his era Blowin' in the Wind, no, while Bob Dylan is all of these things, he is much, much more.

Born in Duluth, he spent his growing-up years in Hibbing, Minnesota, where he was known as Bob Zimmerman. Starting out at coffee houses and other venues around the campus of the University of Minnesota, he shaped his art and soon moved on to the national stage, where he joined Joan Baez and other notable folksingers of the era. His contributions to American music and his society have received national and international recognition and awards. His music is sung and heard the world over.

To summarize who Bob Dylan is one must first look at Bob Dylans music. And, Bob Dylan was a lot more than a singer of protest songs. While that's how he started, he soon revealed a lyrical and musical talent that were far more developed than in any other folk-singer of his or any previous generation. Bob Dylan was the single most influential musician of the 1960s. He started the fire. He turned music into a form of mass communication. He galvanized a generation through folk songs that became anthems. The entire world of rock music followed his every step. When Dylan went electric, everybody went electric. When Dylan went country, everybody did. His legacy is monumental. Blowing In The Wind (1962) created the epitome of the finger-pointing protest song. A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall (1962) coined a new kind of folk ballad. Mr Tambourine Man (1965) opened the season of psychedelic music. The album Highway 61 Revisited (1965), after his conversion to electric instruments, contained Like A Rolling Stone, a somber six-minute portrait of a friend. Blonde On Blonde (1966), the first double-LP album ever, remains one of rock's all-time masterpieces: two lengthy, rambling, free-form, organ-driven elegies, After sinking into the depths of country-rock, Dylan would resurrect a decade later with a new sound, the elegant fusion of folk-rock, tex-mex and gospel- soul expounded on Desire (1976) and Street Legal (1978); a feat repeated a decade later with another synthesis of styles, the one embraced on Empire Burlesque (1985) and Oh Mercy (1989). One decade later, Dylan would still be surprising the rock audience, this time with Time Out Of Mind (1997), perhaps in the attempt to prove that he is as immortal as humanly possible. And most recently, after defying all doubts, released Love and Theft (2001), showing that no age has ever been, nor will ever be ahead of Bob Dylan.

While his music does describe him extremely well, the clich is true, actions speak louder than words. Bob Dylan followed in the tradition of other great folksingers who protested against unfair and inhuman social conditions. Like them, he helped bring about change in American society through his lyrics, composition, distinctive style, and performance. In the heat of the nation's struggles, he sang in support of the Civil Rights Movement and against the Vietnam War. Very few musician have influenced the music and the culture of their times as Bob Dylan has.

Dylan is, at the least, two things for his generation: the freewheeling folk singer - the one who stirred the masses by pointing an accusatory finger at the "masters of war", and the musician who made folk-rock a baroque art. But Dylan wasn't just that. Most of all Dylan is a myth, perhaps the only true myth rock history has ever had. His music is legendary. At least it was, from the the first political hymns until the religious conversion. Dylan's major influences were the Bible, the legends of the frontier and epic poets like Walt Whitman. Dylan's is truly an American myth. Dylans myth did not compare to the myths of the Ancient Greeks, or the myths of the Wild West. He did earn his myth. But, like them, he was mythological; his music was mythological, the music of a man enlightened by God to guide his people onto the righteous path.

The key to the interpretation of Bob Dylan is religion. From the beginning, from the very first "talking blues", Dylan's music has always had a religious essence. Dylan was a bursting visionary who addressed the times in apocalyptic terms, who commented as a universal judge would, who threw mournful condemnations against the forces of evil ("the masters of war) and who raised gentle tributes to his guardian angels ("sad-eyed lady of the lowlands"). The ethical and political perspectives of his times were natural offsprings of the heroic Neo-Christianity of which he was the prophet, the inflexible repository of the truth, and the enforcer of the commandments. Dylan's litanies, whether sung in underground cafes or at impressive rallies, replaced Holy Mass. His message became the new liturgy for a secular society that longed for religious relevance.

He was different, for a lot of reasons, not all of them obvious. Dylan had an unpleasant voice and a caustic, arrogant demeanor. His common format was a rattling litany of a sort, later defined as "talking blues", by which he put to music the alienation and the desperation of a generation. It didn't take long to figure that Dylan was better at blues than folk; what took time was the realization that blues was better suited to express the mood of his young white audience. His nasal baritone was the emblem, perhaps unconscious, of honesty and fairness.

Dylan wrote unusually refined lyrics. He was more of a surrealistic poet than a folk singer; his lyrics built literary bridges between metaphysical visions and the ferocious sociopolitical reality, to express the yearning and the anguish of his generation. In order to fashion a new oratory format Dylan took his inspiration from two old historical models - Whitman and the Bible - and molded them into an elaborate vernacular enjoyable for all.

To ask the question, Who is Bob Dylan? is to ask what one feels music is. Bob Dylan is the essence for which all things that American music stands. Bob Dylan is not a man to be characterized by his life, but by the lives of those he effects. Is he a revolutionary? Yes. Is he a rock legend? Yes. Is he a man to whom no one else can compare in deed or word? Yes. Bob Dylan is a man unlike the men of this world. Bob Dylan is a man who knows what he wants and wants what he feels. Bob Dylan is the kind of man all men should strive to be.

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