The Life of Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan was born on May 24, 1941 to Jewish immigrants in the metropolitan area of Duluth, Minnesota. He remained in Duluth only until the age of seven, when he moved with his family to the smaller town of Hibbing, Minnesota (Wikipedia 1). Dylan devoured the music he heard on the radio and in his record collection; he was moved tremendously by the rich content of contemporary blues and folk music. Dylan existed as a sponge early in his life, absorbing, quietly and modestly, what was around him.

Dylan's early attempts at writing and performing music were characterized by playing covers and imitations of his idols with evanescent teenage bands. In his recently published memoir Chronicles, Dylan wrote "As far as I was concerned, Woody Guthrie had written the greatest songs and there was no way to top that" (Dylan). His early musical output was merely Dylan struggling to touch, with an outstretched hand, his musical heroes - especially Guthrie, whose songs Dylan covered constantly even into his young adulthood - and what they were able to accomplish.
Dylan's overlooked and underappreciated song "Let Me Die in My Footsteps" is a perfect example of his early inability to share his creative works. "...this song didn't break down any barriers for me or perform any miracle....I began performing Let Me Die in My Footsteps, I didn't even say I wrote it. I just slipped it in somewhere, said it was a Weavers song" (Dylan,2004). The song, sung by Dylan in a low, haunting tone in front of a sole acoustic guitar, is a vivid depiction of America's hysteria over a potential nuclear attack and the fear instilled by the idea of fallout shelters. "I will not go down under the ground, 'cause somebody tells me death's comin' 'round... when I go to my grave my head will be high," the song begins. The tremendously poignant song captures a sentiment that would be characteristic of Dylan's future work: his effort to describe the feelings held by many Americans just below the surface that were not tapped by other artists at the time.

Twenty-one-year-old Bob Dylan may not have been able to perform and take credit for the song, but his comfort zone was not far off.

In 1959, Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota, and shifted himself to Minneapolis, where the school was located. Not an exceptionally diligent student, Dylan concentrated more on the local folk-rock scene than on his schoolwork (Wikipedia 1). It was during this time that Robert Zimmerman began introducing himself by the name of Bob Dylan. Dylan had finally become comfortable with who he was and what he would become. He dropped out of college in 1960, traveling, without much direction, throughout the country, landing in several Midwestern states before ending up in New York City. His performances in New York City garnered him some favorable press coverage and eventually led to Columbia Records inking him to a record deal.

His first album was self-titled and released by Columbia in 1962. The record consisted mostly of popular gospel songs and folk ballads, with only a few original tracks. Meandering around without a specific style, Dylan eventually found his niche in 1963 when his landmark album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was released. The album's content helped gain Dylan recognition as a contemporary social reformer who spoke through his music.

In no song were his social criticisms made clearer than "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." The song was written early in 1962 and recorded in December of the same year. The song is a harrowing depiction of the devastating condition of the world after a nuclear apocalypse. "I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children," Dylan writes. The imagery throughout the uniquely structured song is effectively brutal and shocking.

The timing of the song - it was written months before the Cuban Missile Crisis began - made it a particularly powerful work in retrospect. The song gained popularity as the conflict escalated and finally ended; Dylan became regarded as a true social revolutionary who had an important message to deliver-and people were more willing than ever to listen.

Andy Warhol's painting "Red Race Riot" represents the sentiments of many of Dylan's songs during this time. The painting has a background of red brushed with white, with a single photo placed in several places. The photo appears to depict police officers, holding a dog, breaking up protests by Civil Rights demonstrators. The stark contrast of the photograph and the red background creates a chaotic appearance designed to shock the viewer. Dylan focused on the Civil Rights Movement in his famous song "Only a Park in Their Game," about Medgar Evers's murder. "A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' blood," the song goes. It is likely that Warhol was reflecting on the same violent events in his painting that Dylan was in the song, making the red throughout the painting symbolic of the blood unfairly spilled by Civil Rights advocates during the time.

Dylan conducted a famous set of tours in Europe and Australia during this time, performing the first half of every show with only acoustic guitar and the second half with electric; his full musical talents were on display in these shows, as his proficiency in both guitars, the harmonica, and the keyboard were put on display. After the controversial tours, Dylan was involved in a major motorcycle crash back in the United States, sustaining a great number of undisclosed injuries that forced him into hiding for over a year. Dylan only emerged after his hero Woody Guthrie died and he was asked to speak at the funeral (Wikipedia 1).

The albums he released during the late 1960s and 1970s did not sell very well or receive much praise from music critics. His album John Wesley Harding had songs that were rife with biblical overtones, including "All Along the Watchtower" a song that borrowed heavily from the Old Testament and is considered to be one of the greatest Dylan ever wrote. The song is very soft and quiet, using only three chords and letting the lyrics provide all the noise and power.

The song begins with dialogue between a thief and a joker, presumably during medieval times, who reflect on the chaos in their world and their need to escape: "There must be some way out of here...There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief."

The song proceeds with the same dialogue and reflection until the ominous final verse, in which "two riders" are described as traveling toward the castle where the song's characters are. The final words of the song are "the wind began to howl" suggesting a break-up from the normalcy of the world and the impending change that the riders will bring to the social structure.

The song, which has only 130 words, is my favorite Dylan piece because it delivers a complicated, powerful message in a brief way that only a musician as brilliant as Dylan could. The song has been endlessly covered by other artists, famously by Jimi Hendrix, whose version is played with his trademark electric guitar.

Bob Dylan is still writing and recording new material at a feverish pace at this present time. He has been on a hectic touring schedule since the eighties, has been a part of the Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home, and has published the first volume of his long-awaited series of books titled Chronicles. Dylan has created a truly staggering body of work throughout his life, with scores of brilliant and insightful lyrics. It is important to appreciate his music for what it is and not try to force labels upon it and classify it as a particular genre. As he writes in his famous song Subterranean Homesick Blues, "You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows."

WORKS CITED

"Chronicles, Volume 1." Bob Dylan. October 2004
"Bob Dylan." Wikipedia. www.wikipedia.com. 2006