Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 69-year career. Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry". His lyrics incorporated political, social, and philosophical influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture.
Dylan was born and raised in Minnesota. He moved to New York City in 1961 to pursue a music career. His eponymous debut, containing traditional folk and blues material, was followed by his breakthrough album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), which included "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". His "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "The Times They Are a-Changin' (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements. Dylan sparked controversy when he used electrically amplified rock instrumentation on Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited (both 1965), and Blonde on Blonde (1966). His six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" (1965) expanded commercial and creative boundaries in popular music.
After a motorcycle crash in 1966, Dylan ceased touring for seven years. During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of the Band, released as The Basement Tapes (1975). Dylan explored country music and rural themes on John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969), and New Morning (1970). He acted in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and provided its soundtrack, which included "Knockin' on Heaven's Door". Blood on the Tracks (1975), featuring "Tangled Up in Blue", was seen as a return to form. In the late 1970s, he converted to Christianity and recorded gospel music. Time Out of Mind (1997) won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Dylan has toured since the late 1980s on the Never Ending Tour. He has published ten books of paintings and drawings and a memoir, Chronicles: Volume One (2004). His career has been chronicled in films, including the documentary No Direction Home (2005) and the biopic A Complete Unknown (2024).
With an estimated 125 million records sold worldwide, Dylan is one of the best-selling musicians of all time. His accolades include an Academy Award and ten Grammy Awards. He was honored with Kennedy Center Honors in 1997 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was awarded a 2008 Pulitzer Prize special citation and the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".
Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman (his Hebrew name being Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham; שבתאי-זיסל בן אברהם) on May 24, 1941, at St. Mary's Hospital, in Duluth, Minnesota. Dylan's paternal grandparents, Anna Kirghiz and Zigman Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States after the 1905 pogroms against Jews. His maternal grandparents, Florence and Ben Stone, were Lithuanian Jews who had arrived in the US in 1902. Dylan wrote that his paternal grandmother's family was originally from the Kağızman District of Kars Province, northeastern Turkey.
Dylan's father Abram Zimmerman and his mother Beatrice "Beatty" Stone were part of a small, close-knit Jewish community. They lived in Duluth until Dylan was six, when his father contracted polio and the family returned to his mother's hometown of Hibbing, where they lived for the rest of Dylan's childhood, and his father and paternal uncles ran a furniture and appliance store.
As a teenager, Dylan heard rock and roll on radio stations broadcasting from Shreveport and Little Rock. Dylan formed several bands while at Hibbing High School: the Golden Chords performed covers of songs by Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Their performance of Danny & the Juniors's "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone. On January 31, 1959, Dylan saw Buddy Holly play at the Duluth Armory, four days before Holly's fatal plane crash. Dylan was electrified: "Buddy wrote songs – songs that had beautiful melodies and imaginative verses. And he sang great – sang in more than a few voices. He was the archetype. Everything I wasn't and wanted to be."
In 1959, Dylan's high school yearbook carried the caption "Robert Zimmerman: to join 'Little Richard'". That year, as Elston Gunnn, he performed twice with Bobby Vee, playing piano and clapping. In September 1959, Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota. and began to perform at the Ten O'Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse near campus, becoming part of the Dinkytown folk music circuit. His focus on rock and roll gave way to American folk music, as he explained in 1985:
The thing about rock'n'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.
During this period, he began to introduce himself as "Bob Dylan". In a 2004 interview, he said, "You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free." Dylan's readings influenced him, notably Moby-Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and the Odyssey.
1960–1962: Move to New York and stardom
Dylan dropped out of college in May 1960 at the end of his first year. In January 1961, he traveled to New York City to perform and to visit his hero Woody Guthrie at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey. Guthrie had been a revelation: "The songs themselves had the infinite sweep of humanity in them. ... I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie's greatest disciple." His songwriting was also shaped by Robert Johnson's blues and the "architectural forms" of Hank Williams's country songs.
From February 1961, Dylan played at Greenwich Village clubs, befriending and borrowing material from folk singers, including Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, Odetta, the New Lost City Ramblers and the Clancy Brothers. In September, Robert Shelton boosted Dylan's career with an enthusiastic review of his performance at Gerde's Folk City. That month, Dylan played harmonica on Carolyn Hester's third album, bringing him to the attention of producer John Hammond, who signed Dylan to Columbia Records. Dylan's debut album, Bob Dylan, (1962), consisted of traditional folk, blues and gospel material with just two original compositions, "Talkin' New York" and "Song to Woody". The album sold 5,000 copies in its first year, just breaking even.
On August 9, 1962, Dylan legally changed his name to Robert Dylan in the St. Louis County Court, Hibbing. His father, Abraham Zimmerman, was the witness. That month, Dylan signed a management contract with Albert Grossman. Grossman remained Dylan's manager until 1970, and was known for his sometimes confrontational personality and protective loyalty. Dylan said, "He was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker figure ... you could smell him coming." Tension between Grossman and John Hammond led to Hammond's suggesting that Dylan work with the jazz producer Tom Wilson, who produced several tracks for Dylan's second album and went on to produce Dylan's next three albums.
Dylan made his first visit to England from December 1962 to January 1963. He was invited to perform in Philip Saville's production of Madhouse on Castle Street on BBC Television. While in London, Dylan performed at several folk clubs, including the Troubadour, Les Cousins, and Bunjies. He also learned material from UK performers, including Martin Carthy.