A story about Robert Zimmermann

1) Childhood – Influences

First of all, I want to admit that I am really fascinated by Bob Dylan and that he influences my lifestyle in some way. He is one of my idols and I chose him as my special topic, because there are so many different sides of Bob Dylan:

I want to start with Bob Dylan’s childhood, because it was extremely important for himself and shaped his style of music too. Bob was born with the name Robert Allen Zimmermann on May 24, 1941 in Minnesota, where he spent his whole childhood too (at first in Duluth, later in Hibbing). Robert was of Jewish descent. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants. Robert’s parents, Abraham Zimmermann and Beatrice Stone, lived a very religious life in the small Jewish community of the area where they lived in Minnesota. When Robert’s younger brother David Benjamin was born in 1946, his father lost his job at Standard Oil due to an illness, polio. The family moved to Robert’s grandparents, who lived in Hibbing, Minnesota and Robert spent the rest of his childhood there.

Robert was confronted with music very early. At first he listened to country and blues in the radio, but soon he started to listen to early rock and roll. As example, he names Little Richard, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry. But Robert was especially influenced by Elvis Presley. He learned how to play “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” (Elvis Presley) on the guitar, a song that he performed until 1999 in concert. As another interest of Robert’s I want to mention literature and exceptionally John Steinbeck.

When Robert attended high school he started to play in bands. His first band, “The Shadow Blasters”, didn’t last very long, so Robert tried to form another band, called “The Golden Chords”, that played Little Richard covers most of the time. It wasn’t very successful, but lasted much longer than his first band. But nevertheless, performing became more important for Robert and so he decided to “replace” his surname with some kind of stage name. He chose “Dylan” and performed (and still performs) under the pseudonym “Bob Dylan”. There are different explanations given by Dylan for choosing this name over the intervening years. One opportunity is, that “Dylan” is influenced by Matt Dillon, a character from the popular TV series “Gunsmoke”. Another explanation for the pseudonym could be Bob’s admiration for the poet Dylan Thomas, who was quite popular in the 1950s. Bob owns several of his books. I think this explanation is the most plausible one, because Bob often refers to himself as poet (“I’m a poet and I know it, hope I don’t blow it” [I Shall Be Free No. 10]). Dylan even said sometimes that he didn’t need any inspiration for finding a pseudonym and that he just thought about the name “Dylan”.

In 1959, Bob began to study art (with a special emphasis on music) in St. Paul, Minnesota. He didn’t attend any of his courses, but this was the time, when he came in touch with folk music, especially Woody Guthrie, who is one of Dylan’s greatest idols and who influenced his musical style very much, and Pete Seeger, who was politically very left-winged and showed that with his music. But even if Dylan was influenced by all those “left” musicians, he can’t be seen as a political person. He always just wanted to help people. He was very social, but never political, even though this role was imposed upon him.

2) Going to New York

During his time at university, he made several trips to Greenwich Village in New York, which was known for its “open mic”-evenings. Everybody could perform there for a small audience, which gave artists who weren’t yet popular, a great chance. Finally Dylan decided to move to Greenwich Village and try to become a professional musician. His parents weren’t too pleased with that, they even issued an ultimatum: He had to be successful one year after that, or they would force him to get back to Minnesota. So Dylan quit university at the end of his freshman year and went to New York City to perform in January 1961. About that time, he decided to visit Woody Guthrie in some New Jersey hospital. Guthrie was struck with Huntington disease and was going to die very soon. It wasn’t easy to talk to him, so Dylan performed some of Guthrie’s own songs for him. Later he paid tribute to Guthrie with the first song on an album that was written by Dylan himself, “Song To Woody”.

Well, after moving to Greenwich Village in New York, Bob Dylan didn’t have much success at first. He had many gigs in small bars and nightclubs, but that was it. Nevertheless there was a positive review about Bob Dylan in the New York Times, written by the renowned critic Robert Shelton. Due to this article, John Hammond, a legend in the music business, came to see Bob at a show and he liked, what he heard. So he decided to get Bob signed on Columbia Records.

Bob’s first album, called “Bob Dylan”, was not at all a financial success. It contained lots of traditional folk covers and some of his own songs, for example “Song To Woody”. Of course Columbia wasn’t too delighted, but once again it was John Hammond, who spoke for Bob. Bob’s albums were very cheap to produce, because they were acoustic, so Columbia agreed on producing another album. In this period of his life, Bob got to know his first great love, Suze Rotolo, who was an enormous artistic inspiration for Bob and made his view of society more critical and who is also shown on the cover of Bob’s second LP “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”. Under her influence, Bob got into the works of French symbolists such as Paul Verlaine. Moreover Suze was the source of inspiration for Bob’s “love/hate”-songs, for instance “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” or “Ballad In Plain D”.

It was very hard for Suze to see Bob getting successful. He became even more egocentric than he was and lost interest in the world outside. All he cared about was he himself.

In 1963, when Bob Dylan’s second album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” was published, more and more people began to get interested in his musical skills. This album contains lots of protest songs (Bob is famous for writing them) that were inspired by Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger once again. The most famous song from this album is very likely “Blowin’ In The Wind”, in which Bob denounces the bigotry of society and the propensity to violence and just questions the status quo (“How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they’re forever banned?” [Blowin’ In The Wind]). “Blowin’ In The Wind” is a song, which was covered by several bands and that became a hit single for “Peter, Paul and Mary”. But “Blowin’ In The Wind” is just one of many protest songs on this album. For instance “Oxford Town” tries to inform people, how difficult it is for black citizens to enroll at university. But you have to know that Bob wasn’t only criticizing society, he is also known for presenting problems in a very humorous way. An example for this aspect of his songwriting on “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” is “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, which makes people aware of nuclear powers. In any case nobody can deny that Bob Dylan had his breakthrough with this album.

It was also in 1963, when Bob Dylan toured with Joan Baez for the first time. He was just a support gig for her concerts, because he wasn’t that famous then. Baez was already a big star in the USA and she helped Bob with his career. Everybody knew him at once: “Hey, this is the guy who tours with Joan Baez!”. There is an amazing fact about this tour. Although Baez was the star of the tour, Dylan’s manager managed to get more money for him than for Baez. The tour was extremely successful. Some time after that Bob Dylan and Joan Baez had a relationship to each other.

I think even Bob must admit that he had had a lot of luck. There was a new musical style called rock and roll, Bob was an untrained singer and performed folk songs, not really the best circumstances for becoming rich and successful with it, but actually this is what Bob did. His success started in a period of political and social changes. Kennedy was elected in 1961 and this new political “environment” was just perfect for Bob’s protest songs. The news were full of information about racial issues, reforms and especially the Cold War and Bob was somehow one of the chosen idols for the Civil Rights Movement. He wasn’t especially delighted with that role, but it certainly made him a more political and cynical person. There were loads of bands that covered Bob Dylan, the artist who wasn’t even more successful than them at this time. Some of them were: The Byrds, Sonny and Cher, Manfred Mann, The Hollies, but there were many more. In fact, there were so many of them that CBS introduced the slogan: “Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan”, which is true, because Bob Dylan had such an unusual singing voice. But not only his voice was unusual, but also his style of singing. He concentrated very much on the style of folk of the 1920s and 1930s. On Bob’s next album “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, which was published in 1963, you can tell by the lyrics, that he had become more cynical. He sings about subjects that were big topics in the civil rights movement, such as the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers. In this year Bob Dylan changed a lot in his way of thinking and living, so that his next album “Another Side Of Bob Dylan” (you can even tell from the title that it has to be different) is a milestone in Dylan’s work. It really shows an other side of Bob Dylan and the songs got a lot more humor, like for instance “I Shall Be Free #10” which goes: “I was shadowboxing earlier this day, I figured out I was ready for Cashius Clay, I said fe, fi, fo, fum, Casshius Clay, here I come, 26,27,28,29, I’m gonna make your face look just like mine” (I Shall Be Free #10). On this album he even attacks his own early lyrics in “My Back Pages”.

3) Going electric
In 1964 and 1965 Dylan’s music really changed a lot, due to the fact that he started to use an electric guitar, instead of his acoustic one. Bob Dylan became a rock and roll star, even if many fans called him a traitor for that ever since. In this time, Bob began to “play a game” with the interviewers. He often gave them answers, which were quite unsatisfying, because he seemed to make fun of them. Nobody could get any information from him, if he didn’t want to tell.

This puzzling way, in which Dylan presented himself in public, can also be seen on “Another Side Of Bob Dylan”. His lyrics seem often mixed up and confusing. One example for his provoking, confusing way is the text of “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again”, a single from his album “Blonde On Blonde”, which is seen as his most challenging album by many critics. The lyrics go: “An' he just smoked my eyelids/An' punched my cigarette.”

Well, as Bob Dylan was in the news almost every day then, he could do everything he liked. On the one hand the newspapers called him “the idol of a generation”, on the other hand they called him a traitor, for using an electric guitar now. Of course many fans were skeptical too, because they liked the acoustic guitar, but he was able to get other people to like his music with the help of being a rock star now. He made history in 1965, when he performed his first electric gig at Newport Folk Festival. He got quite different reactions from the audience. Some were cheering, others were booing and Dylan left the stage after only three songs. He knew that he had alienated his folk fans. He had to know (during a gig in England someone even called him “Judas” for what he had done). Once again you can see that Bob Dylan has a very egocentric personality, he always did and still does what he wants, not caring about who might hate him for that. The song “Positively 4th Street” was written then, in which Bob Dylan tries to justify his change in his musical style. To explain the reasons, why Bob Dylan didn’t want to be a hero of the New Folk Movement anymore, I want to quote Greil Marcus, an author, who publishes several books about Bob Dylan. He wrote in his book “The Old, Weird America”: “Folksong collectors and singers often presented folk music as an innocent characteristic of lives lived without reflection or the false consciousness of capitalism.”

This was mainly the philosophy of folk music and of course it was perfect for the young, idealistic Bob Dylan, but Dylan was always an artist, who always made a point of achieving personal growth by being a musician.

4) Musical height
It was in 1965, when many people thought, Dylan’s time could be over soon, when he proved that his music only changed but was still great. He published “Highway 61 Revisited”, an album which will be a milestone of modern music for all time. With “Like A Rolling Stone” Bob Dylan had a hit-single in both, the US and the UK. It was chosen the best song ever by Rolling Stone Magazine and the renowned writer Greil Marcus wrote a book just about this one song in 2005.

On “Highway 61 Revisited” Dylan’s lyrics became even more complex and you can’t read a single line without metaphors. This fascinating album can be seen as Dylan’s tribute to the blues (especially the closing song “Desolation Row”).
On November 22 1965, Bob Dylan married Sara Lownds secretly. The couple had four children together: Jesse, Anna Lea, Samuel Isaac Abraham and Jakob, who was born in 1969 and is known as the front man of the band “The Wallflowers”.

In 1966, Bob Dylan was persuaded to play some sessions in Nashville. The result of it was another masterpiece: his next album, “Blonde on Blonde”. Dylan mixes the musical style of Nashville with his own New York-based style and once again, it was really a great idea to take this risk, “Blonde on Blonde” is a unique album.

On his world tour in spring 1966 Dylan tried to satisfy all of his fans. He divided every show in two parts: an acoustic one and an electric one. But once again the fans didn’t like that, there was too much of a contrast and they thought that he wants to provoke them.

After this tour, Bob Dylan returned to New York, but nevertheless the pressure on him didn’t decrease. His publisher wanted a finished manuscript of his first novel “Tarantula” and moreover his manager has scheduled another tour for the summer. But nothing should come as they thought.

On July 29 1965, Bob Dylan was driving on his motorcycle near Woodstock, when suddenly his brakes locked. Dylan was thrown to the ground and broke his neck. That day changed Bob Dylan’s life, even if he survived, he needed much time to get over it. He didn’t record music for some time and spent much time with his family in the following 2 years. In 1967, when he finally decided to come back, he recorded music with “The Hawks” (the band, that played with him on his tours) either in a basement or at home. A selection of those records was published by Columbia afterwards and is now known as “The Basement Tapes”. In the same year, “The Hawks” (later known as “The Band”) recorded an album themselves, called “Music From The Big Pink” and they had success too.

Dylan’s first album after his accident, “John Wesley Harding” was published in December 1967. His music had become quieter, his songs shorter and he used the Bible as his inspiration. On that and the next album (“Nashville Skyline”), Bob Dylan gives another musical style a chance: country. On “Nashville Skyline” he even collaborates with country legend Johnny Cash. Moreover the hit-single “Lay Lady Lay” is part of this album. Dylan was mainstream now and “Nashville Skyline” was the most successful album by Dylan in the charts and not only that, he was also one of the precursors of country rock, beside Neil Young, Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds.

5) The 1970s
In the early 1970s, it seemed once again as if Dylan was going to flop. His new album “Self Portrait” wasn’t successful at all and even Dylan loyalist Greil Marcus, who was a writer for the Rolling Stone too, let him down (“What is this shit?”).

In the following years, none of the albums that he wrote became real masterpieces. Of course there were some successful songs, like for instance “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, but nonetheless many of his fans thought that the source for his songwriting was worn out. In 1972, Dylan acted in the film “Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid”, also providing the soundtrack for the film. But neither the film nor the music were really successful, except for “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”.

In 1973, Bob Dylan changed the label, but that didn’t change anything. His next albums (“Dylan”, “Planet Waves”) didn’t top the charts. Dylan had to do something about all that and so he toured again. His tour with “The Band” in 1974 was quite successful and the live double album “Before The Flood” was released on Asylum Records. After the tour Bob Dylan had severe problems with his wife Sara. He wrote many songs about problems concerning his married-life and that is the reason why his next album “Blood On The Tracks” (released in 1975) was his most emotional one too.

It is not only his most emotional album, but the first that is emotional at all. He gets very intimate and direct on “Blood On The Tracks”, whereas he never talked about his own life directly on his other records. But nobody called him a traitor this time, everybody was impressed, how Dylan found a way to keep his career going once again. In the summer of 1975 Bob Dylan wrote a protest song again, his first since twelve years. In this song (“Hurricane”) he tells the story of Rubin Carter, a boxer, who had been imprisoned for triple homicide. In the song Dylan tries to convince the listener that Hurricane (Carter’s nickname) is innocent. “Hurricane” was also published as a single, despite its length of more than eight minutes.

Another project, which Dylan started in 1975, was the Rolling Thunder Revue, some kind of musical driving circus with many musicians. During that tour Dylan played with Joan Baez again for the first time in a decade. “Desire”, the album that was released while touring, was both a commercial and an artistic success.

In 1977 Dylan was finally divorced from his wife Sara.
On his following albums, Bob Dylan was inspired by Christianity. He had some kind of experience, when someone in the crowd threw a silver cross onto the stage during a concert at the “Zeppelinfeld” in Nürnberg. Even if he won his first Grammy with this type of music, his fans didn’t like this change too much. Dylan preached on the stage at concerts and told his fans that Jesus Christ would be the answer.

Not only Dylan’s fans were surprised at his becoming a Christian, also his fellow artists were puzzled. For instance, John Lennon wrote his song “Serve Yourself” as a reaction to Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody”. But as Dylan always knew, how to stay successful, he wrote secular songs again in 1980.

6) The 80s
The 1980s were just chaotic for Bob Dylan. He produced many albums with a wide range of musical styles, but the success stayed away most of the time. With the album “Down In The Groove” (1988), Dylan hit rock bottom.
In 1985, when Dylan performed at a Live Aid concert, he shocked some people with saying that he hoped that just a little bit of the money could be used for the American farmers, who lived in poverty too. His statement was criticized and people said that it was highly inappropriate, because everybody knew that Live Aid should help the people in Africa. But Dylan prove once again that he didn’t care too much about public opinion and he got what he wanted in the end: some Farm Aid concerts.

In 1986, Dylan married one of his black back-up singers and the couple had a baby too. Their relationship was hidden from public and only their best friends knew about it. After all the marriage was divorced again in the early 1990.
All in all, you can definitely say that the 80s were just one big flop for Bob Dylan. He acted in some films too, but not even one of them was successful. There were just two things that kept his career going:
1) Dylan was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1988
2) Dylan formed a group, together with George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, called “Traveling Wilburys”. Their first album “Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1” was quite successful and they produced some great singles. Unfortunately this extraordinary group didn’t exist too long, because Roy Orbison died in 1990 and the group only existed for one more album (funnily enough called “Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3”).

Another achievement of the late 1980s was that Dylan made some music videos for his songs, but regrettably only one of them found regular airplay on MTV. What is more to mention, is Dylan’s problem with alcohol in the 1980s that lead to a number of embarrassing concerts for him.

7) The 1990s
It seems like Dylan can’t write a good album at the beginning of a decade. He got bad reviews for “Under The Red Sky” (1990), which he dedicated to his daughter. After that, he didn’t release a studio album of new songs for seven years. Nevertheless this time was extremely important for Bob Dylan. He got back to his roots and published albums with interpretations of old folk and blues songs. In 1995, he had to perform “newer” songs too, because he produced a live album for MTV Unplugged and MTV insisted on a greatest hits show. Two years later, Dylan almost died for the second time. This time he had a life-threatening heart infection and his tour had to be cancelled. But Dylan recovered soon and his statement to all this was just: “I thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon”.

In fall of 1997, he released “Time Out Of Mind” and although nobody thought that it would be successful, it was in the end. A lot of young listeners discovered the fascination in Dylan’s music and he won the “Album of the year”-Grammy for it the same year.

The 00s
Finally in the 2000s Dylan managed to do something, nobody thought of him. He released a great album at the beginning of the 2000s, “Love And Theft”. Most of the musicians on the album are part of Dylan’s touring band, which lead to a familiar sound. The album was nominated for several Grammies and was well received.

In 2003, Dylan published the film “Masked & Anonymous”, which flopped, like all the films, in which he acted or which he wrote. The story was far too complex like some of his lyrics and many people didn’t even understand what it is all about. After all, there is one great documentation about Bob Dylan by Martin Scorsese. “No Direction Home” won several prices and gives you a good survey of both, Dylan’s life and his personality.

His latest album “Modern Times”, of which everybody had high expectations, was released in 2006. Some renowned critics say that “Modern Times” is Dylan’s fourth masterpiece. The other three are “Bringing It All Back Home”, “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde On Blonde”, all part of the so-called mid-60s trilogy. It was also his first album for 30 years to top the US charts.
Since May 2006, Bob Dylan even has his own weekly radio show, in which he is the DJ and chooses not only music from his youth, but also bands like Blur or Billy Bragg & Wilco (an alternative country band). So as everybody will admit, it doesn’t look like Bob Dylan’s career is coming to an end. It is going to last for another decade perhaps, maybe longer, maybe shorter. It depends on when Dylan is finally going to “see Elvis”.

Finally, I want to mention Dylan’s enormous fan base. He has not only millions of fans, but also (which is very impressing) many fans that are artists themselves. His music influences loads of musicians, just to mention some: Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Cave, David Bowie, Tom Waits and many more.

Moreover there is a never-ending discussion about the “new” Bob Dylans. Although he is still alive, many people try to find someone who could one day be as important for music as Bob Dylan is now. Some talented artists who were called the “new Dylan” throughout their careers are Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Kris Kristofferson and Elvis Costello. Every single one of them is talented and I can’t deny that, but there is one problem: they aren’t much younger than Dylan is. In my opinion there can only be one “new Dylan” and he is given that nickname quite often: Conor Oberst. He has the same awful voice and his songwriting is very similar to Dylan’s greatness. Moreover he plays in two bands and has his own music label, although he is only 26 years old.